Making Sex Sacred: The First Pro-Life Message

By Jennifer Hartline Published on July 23, 2015

With the second video showing another Planned Parenthood abortionist haggling over prices for the baby body parts she procures, the shock and horror is growing, as the clinical, benevolent veneer is ripped off the abortion giant. Good.

Still, are we shocked at the right thing? It may be disgusting, unethical, and ghoulish to know these people perform abortions so as to preserve as many in-demand human organs as possible. But surely the real horror is that our tiniest babies are butchered on a regular basis, for convenience and for profit, often with taxpayer money, under the guise of women’s health care. The evil is not simply the sale of their little organs; it’s that they were torn limb from limb in the first place.

It’s never been more evident that we need to rebuild a culture of life in America, so that the gruesome “services” Planned Parenthood offers are considered unimaginable. To do that, we have to start at the beginning, which is long before the young woman finds out she’s pregnant.

Imagine it this way: people on board a ship, on their knees, hard at work plugging up holes in the deck and the hull. They work tirelessly and gladly, and they manage to keep the ship from going under. But as one hole is fixed, another appears.

That’s because other people on board are still walking around with shotguns blowing holes in the ship. Faster than those devoted souls can patch ’em up, their shipmates are shooting more holes.

If we hope to send legal abortion into extinction, we have to convince people to stop shooting holes in their lives, while also patching up the holes.

Let’s remember the mother long before she becomes a mother.

Telling teenagers/young women that they are not alone in an unexpected pregnancy, that there is hope and help and they are loved is essential to the effort to abolish abortion. It’s essential to the Christian mission, period.

But it shouldn’t be the first message.

If we’re truly going to create a culture of life in which abortion is not just illegal but unthinkable, we have to go back several steps and talk to them about where this all starts, which is the absence of chastity. If we don’t start talking bluntly about the sexually permissive attitudes they have, thanks to the hedonistic culture they’ve grown up in, we’ll never get ahead of the holes.

If we can Say No to Drugs, then we can Say No to Sex outside marriage. It’s that simple. No, not easy. But simple.

The First Message

The first message needs to be one about chastity, self-control, and genuine respect for others. We need to make sex sacred again.

This is not a message of shame, or even a message of “No!”  It’s the message of genuine freedom, and “Yes” to an abundant, happy life.

In a nutshell:

Sex is not a recreational pastime. Sex is meant for marriage because sex makes babies, because it’s supposed to make babies because that’s God’s plan.

You may have to completely retrain your brain, and learn new patterns of behavior. It’s not impossible.

Make choices that will preserve your future and your freedom in the way God intended. Doing things in the right order makes all the difference in the world. Lay a strong foundation before you build a house.

Contraception is not the answer either. Contraception fails, and it does nothing to teach you the lessons of chastity or self-control. It does not teach you to value human life. It teaches you to take what you want, to get the pleasure you think you deserve with the expectation of no consequences or obligations.

There are always consequences.

Yes, we have our work cut out for us. We have to be heard over the roar of every other voices out there screaming, “Sex! Sex! Sex!” all day long to our kids. Everyone else is telling them their bodies rule their minds, and their feelings are paramount. We have to be tougher and more direct.

Self-control and chastity are superhero powers. But in our culture, most people think they are Heinz Doofenshmirtz, the evil scientist from Phineas and Ferb.

We have to make our young people see that their freedom and their prosperity lies in placing their bodies and their desires under the direction of their brains, not the other way around. They can be chaste. They can say no to sex outside of marriage. They won’t shrivel up and die. They won’t become deformed or socially disabled.

Even though their parents didn’t do it that way, still aren’t doing it that way, they can choose differently. And they will never, never regret choosing chastity and self-control. Those choices will only bear good fruit in their lives.

It’s a shocking idea, but let’s say it anyway: Your actions have consequences. That is good news. It means you can choose well, and greatly improve your prospects for the future.

Chastity must become the first part of the pro-life message, precisely because we value the sanctity of human life, and because we have great respect for legitimate choice.

That doesn’t mean we don’t also know full well that people are human, and people make mistakes. People don’t always choose well. Sometimes things happen beyond a woman’s control, through no fault of her own. In all those times, we will be there with love, mercy, friendship, and as much support as we can possibly provide.

It’s not about shaming or judging anyone, and it’s certainly not doom and gloom. Quite the contrary. We’re all about hope, and we know that God delights in giving and redeeming life!

But for heaven’s sake, let’s acknowledge out loud that we’re not always helpless victims of circumstances we had no part in creating. Some frank talk about real choices is long overdue. Connect the dots backwards and start at the beginning. As Maria Von Trapp said, it’s a very good place to start.

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