Well, it seems almost too good to be true, but it looks like the Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe V. Wade at long last. Predictably, feminists are shrieking about how the possibility of losing access to their blood sacrament is an assault on the dignity of all women. Given that, now seems like as good a time as any to remind people that feminism and abortion constitute the real attack on women’s dignity.
We’ll start by looking at how feminism undermines women’s value and dignity by claiming that women are just like men, in terms of abilities, desires, roles, and purpose. The central contention of feminism, since the 60’s, has been that women are fundamentally the same as men, and thus should occupy the same roles in society as men. They rely on two premises to push this belief, one stated and one unstated.
The stated premise is that women are the same as men on a fundamental level. This is what they mean when they talk about women’s equality. They don’t mean that women are created in the image of God, and thus have equal dignity with men; rather, they mean that women are capable of all the same things as men, to the same degree as men, and thus have dignity equal to men, because they are equivalent to men. This extends beyond just physical and mental ability, to where men and women derive satisfaction. According to feminism, men and women derive satisfaction from the same source, the acquisition of money, power and status. This leads us to the unstated premise of feminism.
The unstated premise of feminism is that money, power, and status are the only things of value. How do we know they believe this, if they don’t say it? Through their actions. Feminists constantly push the myth of the gender pay gap, which they blame on sexism, of course. They continue to propagate this myth because they can use it as a lever to get more money without a corresponding increase in productivity. This is why, as John MacArthur has noted, feminists are concerned with having more women CEOs and politicians, but not more women sanitation workers or fast food employees. CEOs and politicians get money, status, and power that you’re not going to get driving a trash truck or working at McDonald’s, much less as a stay at home mom.
This is why abortion and feminism are two sides of the same coin. If feminists can’t kill their children, they will be forced to reckon with the fact that they are not, by their definition, the equals of men, because men don’t have babies. Because feminism devalues childbearing (babies don’t generate money, status or power, after all), they are being ‘forced’ (in their eyes) to be inferior to men. Thus, in order to be equal to men, they must be able to murder their children. Otherwise, they are being made inferior to men, because having children holds back a woman’s career, even in fields where women can compete with men.
The tragic irony of this position is that, by devaluing motherhood, feminists are attacking the dignity of women more harshly than any male chauvinist ever could. The fact is that men are bigger, stronger, faster, and more assertive than women, just to name a few areas where men are objectively better than women. This is how God designed us. It’s why more men are high-powered executives, world leaders, entrepreneurs, and soldiers; those are areas that play to mens’ strengths. Women, on the other hand, are more empathetic, agreeable, nurturing, and can have babies, and are better at these things than men. This is because God designed men and women to fulfill different roles. Men were designed by God to lead, provide and protect. Women were designed by God to bear and nurture children and tend to the home. The Bible nowhere presents one as being objectively better than the other. We can see this in 1 Timothy 2:15 where Paul, after forbidding women from being leaders in the church explicitly because they’re women, says this:
But women will be preserved through childbirth—if they continue in faith, love, and sanctity, with moderation.
Paul says that women are preserved, but from what? Quite simply, women are preserved from being some kind of second-class human by bearing children. What the Holy Spirit, God Himself, is saying here through Paul is that motherhood is just as dignified and valuable as leading His church. If this sounds demeaning to our modern ears it is because, quite frankly, we’ve listened to the unspoken premise of feminism and let it influence us more than the word of God. God says that godly mothers have just as much dignity as any godly man. Feminists deny this, and say that only the things that God designed men for are valuable.
Abortion is a direct attack on the dignity and worth of women because it says the thing God created women for, being mothers, is a worthless inconvenience and a burden, to be gotten rid of by any means necessary. The central tenet of the pro-abortion movement is that, for women to have value, they must be just like men, since men ‘don’t have to’ (i.e. can’t) get pregnant. This makes their worth and dignity directly dependent on their ability to not have children. In other words, women only have dignity and value as long as they can live like they’re not women. Feminism, ironically, makes men the standard for what women should be.
Contrast that with the biblical worldview, in which women were specifically created by God for a unique and important role that only they can fulfill. In this worldview, a woman’s dignity is dependent on being godly, not making money, and is only enhanced by having children. Her worth, of course, doesn’t change since it’s derived from her being made in the image of God. In the biblical worldview, the Bible sets the standard for women and dignifies nurturing, childbearing, and all the stuff that women are good at that men don’t do very well.
Feminists’ ardent devotion to abortion is proof that, in the words of Paul Washer “The people who hate women more than anyone else on this planet are feminists.” There is no greater assault on the dignity of women than abortion, the blood sacrament of feminism. It tells women that they only have worth if they can do what men do, and that their special gift from God, the ability to bear children made in His image, is actually a curse. This isn’t just blasphemy against God, it is a direct denial of the dignity of women. The end of Roe will be a step in the right direction, but we have a long way to go if we want to see women truly respected in our society.
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