Sex, Lies & Abortion

In an article for Christianity Today (Sex, Lies, and Abortion), Dinesh D'Souza looks at "Why then, in the face of its bad arguments, does the pro-choice movement continue to prevail legally and politically?" His answer is well worth pondering.

He says: "I think it's because abortion is the debris of the sexual revolution. We have seen a great shift in the sexual mores of Americans in the past half-century. Today a widespread social understanding persists that if there is going to be sex outside marriage, there will be a considerable number of unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is viewed as a necessary clean-up solution to this social reality.
In order to have a sexual revolution, women must have the same sexual autonomy as men. But the laws of biology contradict this ideology, so feminists who have championed the sexual revolution—Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem, Shulamith Firestone, among others—have found it necessary to denounce pregnancy as an invasion of the female body. The fetus becomes, in Firestone's phrase, an "uninvited guest." As long as the fetus occupies the mother's womb, these activists argue, the mother should be able to keep it or get rid of it at her discretion.

If you're going to make an omelet, the Marxist revolutionaries used to say, you have to be ready to break some eggs. And if you're going to have a sexual revolution, you have to be ready to clean up the debris. After 35 years, the debris has become a mountain, and as a society, we are still adding bodies to the heap. No one in the pro-choice camp, of course, wants to admit any of this. It's not only politically embarrassing, it's also painful to one's self-image to acknowledge a willingness to sustain permissive sexual values by killing the unborn.
This analysis might help to explain why otherwise compassionate people fight so tenaciously against the most helpless and vulnerable of all living creatures, unborn persons."

As I said, well worth pondering.

& while we do need to keep talking about the fact that the unborn child is a human being he points out the problem in taking this as the sole approach: "If I'm on the right track, pro-life arguments are not likely to succeed by simply continuing to stress the humanity of the fetus. The opposition already knows this, as probably do most women who have an abortion." We do need to continue to bring this up. That women know this in their minds may be true. But those ultrasounds make it a reality that isn't always there when you think about it as a scientific fact. Seeing that 4d picture of your child hits home in a way that scientific facts bt themselves doesn't always do.

But he doesn't leave it at that. He does suggest an additional prong of attack: "Rather, the pro-life movement must take into account the larger cultural context of the sexual revolution that invisibly but surely sustains the triumphant advocates of abortion."

While he doesn't give any specific ways to do so in the article he does admit it won't be easy. "It won't be easy, but somehow the case against abortion must include a case against sexual libertinism. It is time to return to the drawing board."

While it would have been nice for him to have given some guidelines, I suspect that there are good reasons for why he didn't.

But, I do have to say that I see 1 thing we can do. & to some extent is being done. & that is to preach the Gospel, call sin sin, call people to repentance & to develop teachings on sexuality using the guidelines found in Pope John Paul's Tehology of the Body. It is a start. Abortion, refusing to accept the Church's teaching on birth control & sexual libertinism are all tied in. & any solutions must deal with all 3. It won't be easy, but with God's help, it can be done.