Today’s March for Life is the most ignored annual protest in the nation. The media scarcely covers it, despite its size, and not even all Republicans support it. I missed the March for the first time in years due to work requirements, and my family’s small child. (Forty-six degrees was just a little too cold for her.) But as I reflected on the people who generally participate – especially the families and Catholic students – it hit me that it is the Left’s obsession with abortion which promotes and propagates a significant amount of the so-called “toxic masculinity” in our culture. After all, it’s not family men and true followers of Christ who are sleeping around. We are the ones who waited until marriage before engaging in sexual intercourse. I always “checked in” with girlfriends – and still do with my wife – about physical affection, which before marriage was strictly limited. In short, it’s not the types of people who attend the March that bully others, excuse sexual harassment or assault with the mantra “boys will be boys,” or engage in sexual harassment and assault themselves. In fact, we are more likely to oppose such behavior explicitly as “immoral,” a concept we’ve defended for decades. What do toxically masculine men do? They use and ditch women Toxic masculinity is part and parcel of the Left’s ideal culture. Sex anytime, anywhere, with any device or drug – and if a child comes about, abort it. It is toxic masculinity that sees women as sexual objects instead of partners in intercourse. It is this toxicity which sees sex as physical instead of metaphysical, as a “good time” instead of part of a sacrificial and life-giving covenant. And this toxicity also sees babies as inconvenient, instead of as the fulfillment of a sexual relationship. Abortion doesn’t help anyone. But from a short-term, self-centered perspective, toxic men gain a great deal from abortion. They get out of parent jail for free, they are able to continue “consequence-free” sex, and they often get to push the financial burden of their decisions on women or taxpayers. In fact, the entire abortion movement might be best understood as a toxic-male-created industry. That’s the argument that was made by three female pro-life leaders at a Heritage Foundation event on January 15. According to former Cosmopolitan writer and current pro-life activist Sue Ellen Browder, it was two pro-abortion doctors who in 1967 appropriated the then-burgeoning feminist movement to support abortion. One of those men, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, later become an avid pro-lifer. But the harm he caused lives on today through NARAL, which he helped found. Men Pressure Women Into Abortion A study published in the Winter of 2017 found that almost three-quarters of women who were surveyed in 2012 and 2013 felt somewhat or very pressured into getting an abortion. While not all of this pressure came from sexual partners, over one-quarter of women “aborted out of fear of losing their partner.” The women ranged in age from their 20s to 72 years old. The study has its weaknesses; it was done online and “the majority of the women who completed the survey had contacted a crisis pregnancy center inquiring about post-abortion services,” meaning that they were likely to be more pro-life when they were surveyed. However, it does provide a window into how toxic men treat women and babies like commodities instead of people. Women Say They Aborted Because of Men I contacted the pro-abortion research group Guttmacher Institute earlier today to see if they had any credible studies about women who were pressured into abortion. While I did not hear back by publication time, a Guttmacher “fact sheet” published in early 2018 noted that about three-quarters of women who got abortions in 2014 “were poor or low-income.” Perhaps most telling, Guttmacher’s research highlights how pervasive the toxicity is for many men whose sexual partners get abortions. HALF of women were having relationship issues; 75 percent of women were concerned about the finances of raising a child. In other words, women often get abortions because the father of the child isn’t being a father. He’s just a sperm donor. And the pressure he’s providing to the mother may not be explicitly forcing her to get an abortion – he’s just ditching her, leaving her desperate and alone. That’s what toxic men do. Real men stand for chastity, marriage, and life.]]>
