January 24, 2012 (LiveAction.org) – Recently I wrote about the similarities between abortion and slavery, and how great thinkers of the time, such as Edmund Burke, struggled with the issue of how to handle what promised to be the rocky transitioning of slaves into free men. It was a problem with serious social and economic implications. Fears of a war between the races, though they may sound silly today, were very real at the time. Even those who favored an end to slavery worried that sudden, radical emancipation would cripple the economy and result in poverty, misery, and danger for freed slave families.
We face a similar crisis today. Of course, if I could press a button and make abortion illegal in all 50 states right this second, I would do so, gladly and without hesitation, and face whatever problems arose.
However, as far as I know, there is no such button. (If you are aware of the existence of such a button, please email me.) Meanwhile, there are two essential things we must do between now and that golden day when abortion is no longer legal in our country.
I told you yesterday the key to getting America ready for one million more babies every year – many of them born to reluctant mothers – is simple, but not easy.
In our time, education is often mistaken for information. A wise young woman who was a teen mom — and is now a wonderful, strong, inspirational stay-at-home mother of four, so don’t believe everything you see on MTV — once told me that all the “information” she and her peers got as teenagers was part of why she got pregnant in high school. Her boyfriend knew enough about sex to know it was more fun without a condom, and how to talk her into not using one.
The idea that more information is what we need, in the age of Google, Facebook, and Youtube, is absurd. We need education – not just information, but instruction in what to do with that information, and that includes moral instruction.
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I have said it before: abortion does not exist in a vacuum. As long as teenagers are encouraged to believe that they are mature enough to have sex, that sex is “no big deal,” that being promiscuous is cool, that birth control pills are harmless and fail-safe, and that condoms make all your problems go away, we are going to keep seeing unplanned pregnancies.
We can never stop all unplanned pregnancies from happening. Human nature is what it is; people fail to live up to standards every day. But the first and essential step is having standards. As a society, we simply don’t anymore. Mothers put their 15-year-old daughters on the pill and buy them Ke CDs.
There has to be a paradigm shift. We need to begin to make young women understand that being slutty is not synonymous with being cool, funny, and smart. We need to show them that in today’s culture, not rebelling against traditional morality is the truly rebellious thing.
Almost a century ago, G.K. Chesterton said, “The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.” It is even truer now. Today, the counter-culture and the status quo are one and the same. Nothing is more rebellious, nothing is more counter-cultural, than refusing “the degrading slavery of being a child of [one’s] age.”
Organizations like New Wave Feminists seek to reach young women before they have sacrificed their intelligence, self-respect, and virtue at the altar of MTV. We need young women who remain chaste until marriage, who uphold and affirm the sanctity of life, and who view marriage and motherhood as sacred vocations. In order to see more of those young women, we need to change the perception that teenage girls who are intelligent and chaste are miserable, unpopular, naive, and brainwashed.
You can be smart, funny, and cool while having morals. I’ve seen it happen.
It won’t be easy to accomplish this, but it is possible. Radical mainstream feminism turned women on themselves. By trying to be just like the boys, women ended up using their sexuality as a weapon or a commodity. If you don’t believe me, watch a Rihanna video.
I would like to see a day when the average 16-year-old rolls her eyes in disgust at a booty-shaking Barbie on MTV. I would like to see a day when women don’t engage in baby-making activities until they have a diploma or degree in one hand and a ring on the other. I would like to see a day when young men have to work for young women’s attention again, because said women are too busy going out into the world and doing splendid things to shake their rumps in some club.
And it’s a chain reaction: those young women will raise strong daughters whose daddies showed them enough love that they don’t need to give anyone a lap dance to feel worthy, and whose mothers showed them enough discipline that they can tell boys “no” without feeling like the world is going to end.
That is the New Wave of feminism: virtuous, intelligent, and unapologetic. It’s not just for women, either. Men are not incapable of virtue; they’ve just been convinced they are by the media.
Speaking of which: the media is our greatest enemy in this fight for the minds and hearts of youth. Being promiscuous, dumb, and reckless is easy, flashy, fun, and on every single channel. New media is the key to getting our message across. And we have to do it now. There is no time to waste. I saw a roughly 11-year-old girl the other day walking around at the mall wearing a Playboy bunny T-shirt. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call rock bottom.
There is hope for the younger generations. We have to lead by example among our peers and those who look up to us. We have to show them that leaving behind ego and instant gratification doesn’t mean leaving behind your brain or your sense of fun.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, and no matter how we change the perception of virtue among young people and reestablish the idea of sexual standards, people will fail to meet them, and unwanted pregnancies will happen.
There is one other thing we must do before abortion ends in the U.S., and I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.
Reprinted with permission from the LiveAction blog.