Al Mohler summarizes a post by Richard Stith:
Stith argues that the legalization of abortion “was supposed to grant enormous freedom to women, but it has had the perverse result of freeing men and trapping women.”
Over 30 years after Roe v. Wade, we now know that abortion “has increased the expectation and frequency of sexual intercourse (including unprotected intercourse) among young people,” Stith observes. As he explains, the post-Roe expectation is that a woman now has less justification for refusing the sexual advances of a male. By and large, abortion has liberated men from the fear of parenthood, if not of pregnancy. Beyond this, if the woman with whom they are having sex becomes pregnant, the availability of abortion serves, in the mind of men, to reduce if not to remove their responsibility for fatherhood.
The availability of abortion means, in the thinking of many men, that the entire responsibility for pregnancy and parenthood now falls to women. If a woman refuses to have an abortion, having the baby is simply her “choice.” As Stith realizes, this gives many men even more leverage as they demand an abortion as the cost of continuing the relationship. Stith cites a report from the Medical Science Monitor indicating that 64% of American women who have had abortions felt pressure from others to do so.
That’s the ugly truth about legal abortion: not only does it facilitate the slaughter of millions of human lives, it also enslaves the very women it was supposed to liberate.
This is a civil rights issue more serious than any we’ve ever faced, and we need to pray that our nation will see what Martin Luther King saw: that all men, women, and children are created equal. We need to proclaim loudly that women are not created in order to be sex objects, and children are not created in order to be accepted or rejected at their parents’ convenience.
We also need to put our money, time, and energy where our mouths are by providing women with realistic alternatives to abortion. That’s why I’m stoked to see bold initiatives like this one: a church in Georgia has announced that it will care for any newborn baby who is brought to the church. Our church is partnering with Aloha Pregnancy Care to help women escape from the shackles placed on them by our abortion culture. If you’re a Harborite, keep your ears open for details about how you can get involved.