My fellow men and forum members
As a father who lost a child to abortion I have some things on my heart that I must share here. My son, Tyler Andrew, would be 28 years old today. He suffered an untimely and tragic death in 1979 at the hands of an Abortionist. Tyler was conceived by my girlfriend at that time and me. This girlfriend thanks to God’s grace is now my wife of 27 years.
Our journey to healing was a long and difficult one because there were no sources for healing and restoration as there are today. Roe v. Wade had been passed only five years earlier and the right to access through equal protection was a celebration of the continuing battle of the women’s liberation movement. For those who might not know what the real issue at debate in Roe v. Wade was, it was upheld as a violation of the fourteenth amendment. Roe v. Wade did not “legalize abortion” rather it struck down abortion prohibition laws because the Supreme Court determined that they violated the fourteenth amendment, which is equal protection and access, and the right to privacy under the liberty clause granted by it. It was seen as a watershed moment in the advancement of women’s rights.
Not only were there no resources for recovery or healing from the pain and devastation of abortion, you were considered a mental hypochondriac of sorts if you even hinted that abortion had hurt you mentally or emotionally in any way. In fact it would not be until the late 1980s that health care profession and mental health professionals began to recognize the devastation to the mental and emotional states of women who were suffering after having an abortion. In addition it was not until the early 1990s that the health profession began to recognize and admit that abortion often causes physical injury especially to the reproductive system that are long term or even permanent in women who have had abortions.
The recognition that men too suffer from the affects of abortion did not become an accepted reality until the early 2000s and the new millennium. Before this time men who allowed them selves to be affected by an abortion of their child were seen as weak and emotionally unstable. There was a pervasive attitude that said “well men don’t have to go through the abortion procedure why should they have any problems, after all it is the woman who really suffers”. How far we have come, how long the journey has been. I thank God that technology has shrunk our world and erased the barriers of communication and access to information which is so vital. I thank God for websites and forums like this and many others which allow the tragedy and shame of abortion to be dealt with openly and honestly.
My personal journey throuh the valley of death called abortion has been a very difficult one indeed. For many years I did not believe that I was entitled to grieve or suggest that the abortion of my son had permanently changed me as a man and a father. My road to recovery and healing came primarily through my faith in God and my belief that the gift of salvation and forgiveness provided by Jesus was sufficient to redeem me from this tragedy I had caused to happen. Yes, I had caused, I will speak directly to this in a moment. Today we recognize the pain, injury and devastation caused by abortion to both women and men. In fact the very person that successfully secured the right to privacy and equal access, Jane Roe, has herself recanted her stance and even admitted the pain and heartbreak her ‘choice’ caused in personal life. Jane Roe, an assumed name for the real Norma L. McCorvey has since given her life to Christ and even petitioned the courts to overturn the landmark decision she was instrumental in causing.
What I want to communicate in this post is that we are fighting a battle that even if successful in our efforts, will not change the reality of abortion nor women seeking to have them. Even if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow it would not bring an end to abortion. Abortion is like the illegal drug trade, as long as there is demand there will be a supplier. Abortion is only a symptom of a much deeper problem, and this problem cannot be solved or resolved by even the highest court in the land. Enacting laws prohibiting abortion, while certainly a step in the right direction, will not ultimately bring abortion to an end. Abortion is a visible symptom of a much greater and more deadly problem which has captured our focus because it is something we can put our finger on. We perceive that we can solve the problem by fighting the battle against abortion through treating the symptoms. The reality of abortion is that it is an end result of the true disease, only the final step in the process of this terrible epidemic.
In the last few years God has truly shown me that even though He hates abortion and the destruction of human life, He is much more grieved over the real problems that abortion signifies. The sad truth is that abortion is simply the puss and discharge from the wound caused by the disease of immorality and irresponsibility. Our true disease as a nation and as a people is one of lack, lack of moral and sexual purity, lack of personal responsibility and integrity, lack of Godly character, and lack of respect for life. Now here comes the hardest part about dealing with this disease, personally this part was very tough to accept and admit, WE AS MEN ARE MOSTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DISEASE! That’s right guys, us, men we are the source of this strain of infection that is destroying our families, homes, country and millions of innocent lives sacrificed in abortion clinics.
So I hear you guys thinking, “what does he mean, how can he say we are responsible, that really makes me mad.” Great, I hope it makes you mad, because when men get mad about something they are usually willing to try and change it. We as men have been given the ultimate responsibility for many things and situations by our creator, I call Him Jehovah God, and Go has given us as men a good bit of instruction about life. Let me review or for some of you perhaps share for the first time what some of these instructions and assignments are. God says that as men we are responsible for our actions, our homes, our relationships and our character. So knowing what God says is fact and truth we must then assess ourselves by His words and His character.
The reality is that abortion is caused by men… yes guys, by us. When we choose to exercise our human nature and lead a woman sexually to submit to us, we take on the responsibility for the consequences of that action. We have been given by God the place of leadership and responsibility for our relationships with women. God has also given us clear instruction on the act of sex and its relational context. When, as I did personally, we choose to commit ourselves in a sexual relationship with a woman outside of God’s prescribed conditions, we propagate the disease that leads so many women to abortion. The disease by its real name is sexual impurity and immorality. By crossing over that line with a woman we open the door to an infection that too often leads to death, not only our death spiritually, but the death of an innocent life we are responsible for. In marriage, this responsibility is even more profound because we have accepted, committed, and become responsible for everything concerning our wives and our families. When a married man exchanges the gift of sexual love with his wife he absolutely accepts responsibility for the potential outcome of that exchange. Just because one of those birth control flukes occurs and a little surprise is the result of that relationship, does not suddenly resend a man’s responsibility just because it is inconvenient or unplanned.
Men it seems that we have no problem exercising our masculinity and our sexual prowess with women, and we can always make time, resources, and conditions right for sex. So why is it that when that act does not turn out like we planned it we suddenly become too busy, too young, too old, too strapped for money, too ill timed in our plans, too immature, too irresponsible, and too overwhelmed to act like men? What about before we commit the act of sex? It seems as men we can be in control of everything around us, in fact, most men I know are somewhere between control oriented and all out control obsessed. We can manage our jobs, our money, careers, and pretty much anything we choose to. So then why is it we have such a difficult time controlling and managing ourselves, our bodies, our minds, and our sexual nature? Why is it so many times that when a woman gets pregnant by the demonstration of our sexual prowess it suddenly becomes her problem? Please guys don’t give into that “well she threw herself at me, I tried to resist” garbage either. We have an ancestor from way back who tried that routine with God and it didn’t go so well for him either. Maybe you remember him, his name was Adam and he had a very sweet pretty woman by his side named Eve. When temptation came and Adam stepped over the line, he tried the old, “it was that woman you gave me God, she made me do it” excuse as well, and God didn’t buy it then either. We are responsible men!
So how can we as men end abortion? Well just in case you still don’t get it; let me share the answer with you. It is by being MEN! real men, Godly men, men of character and integrity. We need to be men who commit themselves to sexual purity and moral behavior, men who accept the full responsibility and the consequences for their actions and behavior. Men who do not put women in the awful position of having to give in or choose to do something they know they shouldn’t just to please us. We need to be men who say that I love God, you as a woman, and myself too much to cross that line without being fully and properly committed to each other. When a man takes the gift of sexual love and perverts it out of marriage he becomes a thief of the first order. When you take a woman’s purity and body for your pleasure and are not her husband you are taking something that does not belong to you! A woman’s body and purity belong to God, her and her future husband, NOT YOU! As men we must commit ourselves to teach this to our sons and younger men. Fathers who raise sons that become sexually active before they are committed to a woman in marriage with a “that’s my boy” macho nonsense attitude need to take a big boy pill, get up, get a clue, and stand for what’s right so that their sons understand the way a man is truly supposed to live and treat a woman.
What we must realize is that we have the power to heal through prevention. We have the power to heal a nation from the ongoing slaughter of our future children, leaders, doctors, scientists, workers, inventors, parents, teachers, and the hopes for our future. We have the power men to end abortion, right now, right here, today. We need to quit telling our young men and women to practice birth control and practice self control for a change. We need to teach young men to reach for the God man inside them instead of the Trojan man in a package. For those men who are married like me and do not want to have more children, then be a man and take the responsibility for controlling that issue. Go get a vasectomy and quit putting the responsibility of birth control on your wives which is not 100% reliable, has serious potential health problems and really amounts to an abortion with drugs. God is going to hold us accountable for our failure as men and we better get right and get honest with ourselves and with God before it is too late. If men will stand up and be men abortion will end because there will be no demand. For you men who blame the woman for aborting your baby saying, “well I told her I wanted to marry her, or that I would help raise the baby” first go look into the mirror and ask that man what he could have done to have prevented her from getting pregnant to begin with. Offering to marry a woman after you get her pregnant is equivalent to ready, fire, aim.
Let us commit men, let us stand up and be what God has called us to be. Isn’t it ironic that most Abortionists are men? Abortion is a conspiracy of murder of the unborn. Abortion is never the result of one person’s actions, but of many and that makes it a conspiracy. Men what we need to admit to ourselves is that we are the chief conspirators in abortion because we literally plant the seed of that conspiracy through the satisfaction of our flesh. Today if you are a single man will you commit to ending abortion on your part before it begins y remaining sexually and morally pure? If you are a married man will you end abortion on your part and commit to honoring your wife, your family, God and yourself by accepting responsibility as the man in the relationship and committing to honoring and preserving life even if you didn’t plan to create it?
If we will stand up as men and be men, we have the power to stop abortion in this country and put those money loving, life rejecting Abortionists and their operations out of business, and the real joy we will have men is the knowledge that we nailed up the going out of business sign ourselves!
Because I am redeemed I remain,
A Father Forever!