Continuing from the point that
the previous blog ended with, abortion is an issue that should be debated and
resolved (as much as it can ever be resolved) at the state level, and not at
the federal level. At the state level we
can contrast and learn from the various approaches the different states will
use and thereby approach unto resolution.
If we continue to try and deal with this issue at the federal level we
will move away from resolution and the innately divisive nature of abortion
will continue to divide us as a nation. Not to mention that a federal approach
is unconstitutional.
There are, however, a number of
dire cultural and spiritual problems that still attach to the issue of
abortion, even if we limit the debate to state houses of government. The most prominent of these sticking points
is epitomized by feminists who insist that abortion is strictly a women's
issue, to be decided by a woman in consultation with her doctor, and that males
should have no say because a man does not have a uterus. This is first of all disingenuous rhetoric,
because while a man does not have a uterus, he does have children, and
therefore a natural stake in the abortion debate. More importantly, this
radical feminist logic has extremely detrimental effects on society, and will
lead the nation, and possibly the entire planet, toward triggering an ancient
curse from God.
I was always what you could call
a “sensitive” male, empathetic to the feelings and pain of others. Some today would call that a beta male, but
they would be wrong to do so. A
sensitive man does not mean a weak or cowardly man.
At around the age of twelve I
read a single sentence which changed my life.
It was referring to parenting and said, “They give the most important
job in the world to the people with the least experience.” I have been considering how best to nurture
and help children develop into adulthood ever since.
During the process of my own
childhood development I was always mystified by the actions and attitudes of a
lot of the males around me. Why, I
wondered, are so many guys so violent and brutal? Why do they have to be so mean? What made them that way?
A lot of my questions about male
brutality were answered one day while I was studying at University. I had gotten into a discussion with a woman
studying to be a mid-wife, and since I had long been friends with an
accomplished mid-wife (a mutual friend of us both) I shared my long held
opinion. That opinion, which I still
hold, is that since the woman usually needs some assistance in birthing a
child, I think it is obvious that the father/ husband should be trained and
ready to perform that office. He was
there when the child was conceived so it is only right that he be there when
the child is delivered.
I was surprised that she adamantly
disagreed, asserting that men are not really equipped for that role because
they, once again, don't have a uterus. I
responded that it is the man's child and wife, both of whom he probably loves
and feels more empathy towards than any other person is capable of. So, I reasoned, who better to catch the
baby? We two never came to an agreement
on the issue..
In the course of my normal three
mile walk home from campus that early spring day, contemplating the unresolved
argument, I was suddenly astounded to realize what she had denied me. On the walk, I saw birds, male and female,
building nests. I saw trees putting out
new buds and growing new limbs. I saw
them all participating in and connected with the flow of life. I realized that
she was denying that connection with life to me. She was saying that since I did not have a
uterus I did not have any real and meaningful place in the flow of life.
Then, during that walk to my
home, for the first time I understood and empathized with the brutal hard heartedness
that so many men live with. Happily,
while I felt that attitude for the time of the walk, I did not hold on to it
after that time.
I realized that the hard hearted,
emotionally alienated men had come to see themselves relegated to being merely
penises, useful only for impregnation, and not welcomed or needed after that
for human life to sustain. They come to
regard themselves as not connected to the flow of life. The alienation that
mind set engenders in the hearts of men, I realized that afternoon, is what
equips men to rape, murder, steal, bully and otherwise do any damn thing they
feel like. Their natural selves, and
their essential nature as a nurturing spiritual being has been denied them. Consequently, many men internalize and
embrace that alienated role they have been relegated to. “Damn it all to hell,” becomes their silent
battle cry, and it erupts from a deeply wounded heart.
Now let's consider legal abortion
along with its cultural and spiritual effects on the human race.
The legal basis for abortion is
the assertion that life, at least human life, does not begin at
conception. But if life doesn't begin at
conception, then fatherhood doesn't begin at conception. Going further with this line of reasoning, if
fatherhood doesn't begin at conception, then fatherhood never really
begins. How can a man be held
responsible for something (the start of a new human life) that happens when he
is thousands of miles away, or eight months deceased, or not in any other way
connected to the new human being? Men can be expected to feel a deep connection
to the child only if it is considered that life begins at conception.
If it is life only when the
mother says it is, then the male of the species is going to be pushed to one of
two positions. Either he will begin to deal with the woman as though she is in
some sense divine, and unlike himself, entitled to determine whether or not a
child is alive. On the other hand, he
can withdraw his heart from the whole process, and become just a baby daddy,
taking little or no interest or care in his children's lives. In that environment, a social environment
created by legalized and unlimited abortion, we can expect a decrease in the
consciousness of fatherhood, an increase in single motherhood, and probably a
huge increase in violent crime.
Feminists will scoff and say, “So
what? Those men, and their fragile male
egos just need to buck up.” Buck up
huh? As in harden your hearts so as to
not get hurt? Okay, sure, we can do
that. In fact, some of us are very good
at it. Do you want to meet a bunch of
men that have “bucked up” to the point they are almost impossible to
emotionally wound? Go to any prison
yard, especially the ones with death row hardened criminals. Plenty of “bucked up” men there. Do you want a world filled with such men?
That then is the point of this
blog. Consider what has happened to the
culture, especially in the inner cities, since the advent of unlimited legal
abortion. There has been an astounding
increase in single motherhood, going up to seventy percent or more (in some
communities) of all children being raised without the biological father present
in the life of the child.
At the same time, in the same
neighborhoods, we see an appalling increase in all kinds of crime, such as
rape, murder and theft, along with a disheartening increase in drug use, with
despair and degradation on all fronts.
This seems to be the direct and inevitable result of society legalizing
abortion and relegating males to a peripheral role in life. Fatherlessness and
all the problems that stem from that social pathology abound.
There are a number of curses from
God set down in the Bible. The most
famous are the ones we were hit with right after we ate of the forbidden fruit
and were banished from the Garden of Eden.
The first said that women from then on would travail at childbirth. That seems to be true. Another said that from then on man would have
to make his living by the sweat of his brow.
That also seems to have come true.
The fact is most people don't
understand what these “curses” amount to .
They seem to think that God was sitting there concocting some kind
of punishment because we had disobeyed
Him. The truth is, to the contrary, that
He was merely telling us what was going to happen to us now that we had decided
to not listen to His voice and follow His guidance. He wasn't concocting or predicting, He was
predicating, telling us that since we did X, Y was going to follow.
That set of curses was pronounced
very close to the beginning of the Bible.
There is another much less well known curse, at least a curse that might
be released on the earth, pronounced at the end of the Old Testament. (the Protestant Old Testament)
Those last two verses of the Old
Testament, Malachi 4:5,6 reads, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:
And he shall turn the heart of
the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers,
lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”
As we enter into an era of
properly struggling over the issue of abortion in our respective states, we
should all, even non-believers, allow this warning from our Creator to sink
into our hearts. Let us consider the
crime, hatred, mayhem and chaos that grows in places where the consciousness of
fatherhood has been diminished, and how they are probably the early symptoms of
that curse from God descending on our world.
Then let us all, with empathy, compassion and understanding, deeply
consider and prayerfully come together to settle this most unsettling of
issues: whether or not to legalize, limit, and or prohibit abortion.
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