The Most Important Voice in the Pro-Life Movement

Feminist Ideology Is Driving the Abortion Debate

Whether Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, the abortion debate has come to be framed as a woman’s issue. The focus for these groups has been on how women are affected by abortion or how they lack access to it as a fundamental right.

Women are viewed as either secondary victims of the abortion industry or as subhuman citizens being stripped of their bodily autonomy. The most important figures and talking heads for both parties are women.

The central concern behind their strategies and methods is how to appease and reach women. The ideology that drives both of these movements is feminism. 

Insights from a Roundtable Discussion

This was reflected in a recent roundtable discussion featuring prominent evangelical Dr. Albert Mohler. The topic of the panel discussion was the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Dr. Mohler commented on the fact that there are those who make the argument that “a movement where too many men are speaking with an insufficient number of women is at a cultural disadvantage.”

Correspondent Erika Andersen stated in response that the most powerful voices in the Pro-Life movement are from women due to the reality that only mothers can truly understand what it’s like to be pregnant. Her contention was that women can reach other women in a way that men cannot. 

His comment can be found at the 51-minute mark.

The Legal Implications on Fathers’ Rights and the Preborn

It is true enough that only mothers can understand what it is to be pregnant and carry a baby. This is a design feature that God has uniquely fitted for women. Does it then follow that because only women perform this function that they have the most powerful voice in the cause for life?

Before the recent explosion of self-managed abortion in our culture, one of the oft repeated mantras was: “abortion is a decision that should be left to a woman and her doctor.” Sentiments like this stemmed from the infamous Roe opinion that effectively cut off fathers from having any legal authority over their own children.

By placing the “choice” squarely in the hands of women, preborn children were reduced to orphans. In America, babies in the womb can be killed by their mother and the father has no legal ground for objecting.

The Biblical Mandate to Protect the Fatherless

Fatherlessness is a prominent theme in the Bible. It is tied closely to the heart of God himself who takes up the mantle of the destitute and becomes their Redeemer (Proverbs 23:10-11). The Lord himself is described as father to the fatherless and a protector of widows (Psalm 68:8).

Therefore, it is no coincidence that there are such frequent demands for justice to be enacted on their behalf. Consider just a few examples:

You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge. – Deuteronomy 24:17

‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ – Deuteronomy 27:19

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. – Psalm 82:3

Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does not come to them. – Isaiah 1:23

In every case, what makes the innocent the prey of the strong is that they do not have the protection of a father. The reason they are vulnerable and open to oppression at the hands of the mighty is that they lack a man to speak for them and ensure their protection.

Biblically speaking, the most important voice in the plight of the preborn is that of a man, and specifically a father. 

The Lack of Strong, Godly Male Leadership and Its Impact on the Abortion Epidemic

The reason we live in a culture filled with the blood of the innocents is that the same culture is famished for strong, godly male leadership. It is fathers that have abdicated personal responsibility for the protection of the needy.

Fathers in the home have not taken responsibility for the children they have sired. Sons and daughters have been abandoned to go the way of the world without discipleship in gendered piety.

The churchmen and shepherds have not preached hard on the glory of Biblical sexuality or the horrors of child sacrifice. They have wrongly believed themselves to be compassionate by failing to bring the Word of God to the women in their churches with the sin of abortion on their consciences.

City fathers have refused to protect children in the womb by the same lawful standards as everyone else. Men consistently defer to female politicians and female-led special interest groups because they’ve bought the cultural lie that women are better suited to speak to the issue. 

The Responsibility of Men in the Abortion Crisis

The very ones God has invested with the authority to guard and tend their domains as the faithful watchmen of their communities have turned over the care of the most innocent and defenseless to those that continually trample their rights.

God charges men with the task of protecting, providing for, and rescuing those being led away to the slaughter (Proverbs 24:10-11). It is without question that women are absolutely essential to the cause for life and play a critical role in counseling and caring for abortive mothers.

But abortion can only exist in a society filled with weak men that have shirked their duty for the sake of comfort, laziness, selfishness and cowardice.  

Fatherlessness and the Collapse of Society: The Role of Men in Driving Out Abortion

It is men that have opted for security and service to self rather than the kind of sacrificial love that leads and takes ownership over those in their care. Fatherlessness is the root cause that ails our land.

Men have turned their hearts away from God and toward the delusions of the world. The result of this is the collapse of families and, ultimately, society. The idolatry of abortion can only be driven out of our culture by true worship, led by men who act as chief stewards over their families and churches. 

Men Must Speak Truth about Abortion to End Legalized Child Sacrifice

Feminism in all of its forms, including “Pro-Life feminism,” needs uprooting. The prevalent idea in the mainstream movement for life is that women do not need abortions to succeed and achieve their goals.

Here is the hard truth: women do not get abortions because they need them. Women get abortions because they want abortion. At a foundational level, it is men who must be willing to say this if we are to witness the end of legalized child sacrifice.

Until we say this, babies in the womb will not receive the justice God says they are due. We must stop treating women with the kind of hatred that deprives them of their own moral agency and ultimately the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If they are treated as victims of abortion, then they do not see their guilt. If they do not see their guilt, they cannot repent and ask Christ for his blood to cleanse them from the sin of abortion.  

Masculine Voices Need to Restore the Sanctity of Life in Abortion Debate

The glory of godly femininity and motherhood ought to be highly prized. Just because women are the ones that can get pregnant does not mean abortion is a woman’s issue.

Christian brothers who prostrate themselves before the Lord of Glory need not give any quarter to the “no uterus, no opinion” crowd, especially when that same group is unable to discern the difference between male and female.

Now more than ever, it is the masculine voice that is most needed to restore the sanctity of life in a nation that has cut a covenant with death.