As a Catholic working mother of seven, I have a personal interest in family policy. This Mother’s Day I can tell you: What we have isn’t working.

But even I had no idea just how desperately America’s mothers need better support, culturally, politically, and economically, until May 2022. When the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press, the full cost of abortion on demand on generations of mothers came into sharp focus almost overnight. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a great win, a necessary win. But the fact remained: America had failed mothers.

For pro-lifers, the overwhelming joy of Dobbs was quickly tempered by the reality that we were left with an America conditioned by five decades of abortion on demand. Even deeply red states such as Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio would rather keep it that way than do the hard work of compromising on abortion.

For pro-choicers, the defeat of Roe, coupled with their victories to preserve abortion in various states, inspired the Democratic Party to put all its eggs in the “codify Roe” basket rather than do the hard work of finding ways to support mothers and their babies.

Abortion was the fallback option for failed family policy. After all, if a pregnant woman surveyed her support options and found them lacking, then she could always “take care of it” herself. The choice to abort, even if she didn’t take it, effectively made motherhood into a one-person project of her choice.

For my husband and me, the choice to raise a large family independent of the government school system was made with the understanding that we could expect very little help from the state or even the culture at large. We were privileged with the support of our own family and church communities, and with sacrifice and hard work, we were able to welcome each child joyfully as he or she came.

I got to be a mother, but no thanks to the government. It was intermediary social institutions that gave us the material support and courage to build our family.

But it is not so for countless women. The breakdown of the nuclear family, the failure of schools, runaway inflation, leftist ideological hegemony, and the out-of-control cost of healthcare all contribute to a society that discourages motherhood.

Now that abortion is no longer a guaranteed option in all 50 states, it’s time for people to come together and find real solutions that make motherhood the best and obvious choice. Our divided country will never come together until we begin to heal the very foundation of society: the family.

The mother is the heart of the family, and the heart needs more than just an annual Hallmark card. This Mother’s Day, legislators can set their sights on a host of policy changes that would make a material difference to women facing motherhood without the support I enjoyed.

We could start by striking the terms “gestational/birthing parent” and “egg producer” from local, state, and federal governments and restoring the word “mother” when crafting policy supporting … mothers.

The best strategy for a long-term transformation of American culture into a pro-family, pro-mother, and pro-child society is to maximize the conditions that give every mother the best shot at raising her children from conception through adulthood. The best condition is the lifelong commitment of a strong and supportive father, a condition formerly known as marriage.

Policy solutions to strengthen the enduring relationship between mothers and fathers could include obvious measures such as eliminating marriage penalties from the federal tax code, as well as investing in American industry to create stable, high-paying jobs.

Permanently expanding the federal child tax credit would help people of all socio-economic classes and could be coupled with reforming the childcare benefit system in a way that puts single-income families on a level playing field with dual-income homes.

Additionally, school choice laws sweeping the nation give prospective mothers in the lower and middle classes hope that they will have real options for an education that will give their children a better life.

Supporting mothers also means listening to what women want. Surveys indicate that most middle-to-lower-class mothers want their small children cared for at home rather than in institutional daycare. Attention should accordingly shift from universal daycare and preschool to finding ways to spend tax dollars on stay-at-home mothers with guaranteed better outcomes for both mothers and children.

Listening to what women want also means promoting alternatives to abortion. Peer-reviewed research shows that nearly 70% of post-abortive mothers say their abortions were coerced, unwanted, or inconsistent with their preferences, and 60% said they would have chosen to give birth if they had received either more emotional support or had more financial security. These mothers deserve better than a government that pushes abortion as the only solution. There are thousands of pregnancy resource centers and maternity homes across the nation addressing the real problems women face, and they could use laws that are friendly rather than hostile to that cause.

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A myriad of other changes in policy sectors as far-ranging as housing, industry, and healthcare could go a long way in shifting America’s focus away from its abortion obsession and toward building up the most important relationship in any society: the bond between a mother and her child.

A society built around the mother and child is something we can all get behind this Mother’s Day.

Erika Ahern is mother to seven children, the associate editor of CatholicVote, and a co-host of LOOPcast.