Life

Today, thousands of people will gather on our nation's National Mall to give witness to a part of our nation that lives in darkness. This gathering will be ignored by all media outlets. The liberal media will dismiss them as a group of uninformed, hate-filled people clinging to an archaic ideology. The conservative media have given up hope and would rather not be called names by the liberals. Our country wishes we would remain silent, that we would "respect the rights of others," and that we would "open our minds" to understand the other way of thinking.

Abortion has plagued this country for many years. Currently, 3500 babies are killed everyday in this country alone. That figure does not account for the number that are conceived each year, but are not given the chance to develop because they are unable to attach themselves to the mother's uterine wall thanks to some form of birth control like the pill. The death will continue, and because the individuals being killed cannot be seen and at the moment, lack voice, it will go largely forgotten and unnoticed. But not entirely. Though it is an uncomfortable truth, it is a truth nonetheless. That truth will be given a voice again today.

As a male, it is often difficult to speak about such things. Arguments that this is a women's issue are often used to quiet a voice like mine. Those arguments are appealing because men often want to comfort and protect women. I've watched a man walk his partner into an abortion clinic with his arm around her in an attempt to do just that. The skewed notion of protection is disturbing, evil in its subtlety.

Men have been happy to leave this as a women's issue. But this slothfulness is just as disturbing. Abortion is not the root problem. Abortion is merely a fruit of the tainted tree of our twisted sexual desires. Christopher West said, "Behind every abortion in this country is a man who went looking for an orgasm." Rather blunt, but to the point. The creation of every child requires two individuals. Men who have been consumed by their sexual desire rather than mastering it are one of the roots, and I would argue the root of this problem. Every man who has allowed himself to view a woman as object for his pleasure shares the blame for this insidiousness.

It is ironic that I write this little note on the internet, whose very creation and growth was fueled by a man's lust for pornography and his desire for easy access to it. The objectification of women is a sin that man... men, will have to answer dearly for. But in the midst of all this evil is hope. Christ did not abandon us to wallow in our sin. We have hope of overcoming this evil. We have hope of untwisting those desires. We have hope of redemption of our bodies. We have hope! "Evil had made itself unmistakably manifest... in the exploitation of one human being by another, economically, politically, or sexually. But evil did not have the final word, because at the center of the human drama is Christ, whose entry into the human condition and whose conquest of death meant that hope was neither a vain illusion nor a defensive fantasy constructed against the fear at the heart of modern darkness." (-George Wiegel)

We have hope. We have voice. We have determination. And we have the power of life supporting our cause.