Planned Parenthood & Fatherless America

First off, we should be incredibly grateful for the momentum that is building against the Planned Parenthood witchdoctors. The dam is beginning to crack, and though we can expect enormous resistance and pushback from the devotees, this is not a sign that we are losing, it’s a sign that we are truly a threat. When the Brit Humes and Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritts begin to demand that the truth be told, we are getting somewhere. When the New York Times completely ignores the story and then finally begrudgingly admits that extremists are trying to discredit Planned Parenthood, even honest liberals and pro-choice progressives need to sit up and smell the stench. It is understandable that human beings can draw different conclusions from the same facts, but our basic humanity and ability to converse publicly rests on the assumption that we will at least attempt to look at the same facts. Of course the world is much messier than that. Objectivity is something we strive for not something that floats down out of heaven. But in order to strive for objectivity, we have to be willing for the truth to be told, to actually listen to the other voices in the room, and to evaluate what we hear honestly. What the first couple of videos have illustrated is not merely that the abortion industry is corrupt and bloody, but also that the biggest supporters of a “woman’s right to choose” are insisting this is a fundamental “right” like a blind man insisting that yesterday’s sunset was much better than today’s.

But it’s in that spirit of listening to all of the voices in the room, telling the truth clearly, and analyzing all of the data that all conservatives and pro-lifers in particular need to face up to the fact that the reason Planned Parenthood exists is because there is an enormous demand. Jonathan Merritt writes in an otherwise scathing review of the New York Times article on the Planned Parenthood videos:

The only fully forthcoming part of the article was when they assert that Planned Parenthood clinics provide many critical healthcare services such as pap smears, cancer screening, and contraception for millions of women each year. They are correct. Conservatives who cast Planned Parenthood as a morally bankrupt organization that contributes nothing of value to society are spinning a partial tale. In fact, many of Planned Parenthood’s services are indispensible to women’s reproductive health. Some, like contraception, actually prevent unplanned pregnancy and help decrease abortion rates.

I disagree with Merritt’s attempt to salvage any moral credibility for Planned Parenthood. Defending a semblance of “value to society” for these people is like saying: Well at least Hitler greatly improved the German economy. Yeah, good luck with that.

But to the extent that Merritt is demonstrating the real demand for what Planned Parenthood offers, he’s correct. And the demand is for any number of reasons: real crisis, ignorance, propaganda, health needs, partisan blindness, moral bankruptcy, etc.

But the point that I want to make here is that fundamentally all of these reasons for the existence of Planned Parenthood fall under the heading of Fatherless America. We have no fathers. We are functionally a fatherless nation. And I mean this all along the biological spectrum. In the first place, and most damning, is the fact that we are a nation of men who want to have sex and not take responsibility for the results or potential results of our actions. This is illustrated by the fact that the sex industry is the largest and most profitable industry in the world. One source indicates that there are over 68 million searches for pornography in the United States every. single. day. That’s 25% of all internet searches every day. 13,000 pornographic videos are produced every year, making some $13 billion dollars in profit, which beats Hollywood by over 4 billion dollars. The sex industry makes more money than the NFL, the NBA, and the MLB combined. 

American men want sex with no strings attached. American men want to use women as objects and not honor them as the kinds of human beings that have been designed to be cherished and protected and loved by fathers, husbands, and brothers. American men want sex without any ongoing responsibility to care about any possible pregnancies that may result from their lust.

Another way to put this is that there is no biological possibility of a “fatherless child.” That’s an oxymoron, an irrational phrase. To beget a child is quite literally to “father” a child. So what we are talking about when we speak of “fatherless children” is in most cases men who have refused to accept that responsibility. And they refused to accept that responsibility first of all when they failed to marry the mother of their child before sleeping with her. Every time a man sleeps with a woman who he is not married to, he is saying that he would be OK with creating a human being who would come into the world and grow up without a father present. And when an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, the biological father of that child has no immediate legal right to be present as a father.

This is why the Bible insists that sex happen within the marriage covenant. It’s not because the Bible is embarrassed about sex. It’s not because Christians are prudes and are afraid of talking about sex. It’s because we hate the thought of children growing up without fathers. It’s because God hates the thought of children growing up without fathers. And this is fundamentally because it presents a distorted picture of who God is. God is our Father. We believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth… To insist that marriage be between one man and one woman, that a child be brought into the world with a father is to insist that we tell the truth about the world, about the universe, about God — that we have a Father in Heaven who cares for us, who loves us, who remembers us, who feeds us, who clothes us, who gave His only begotten Son for us.

But this fatherlessness also extends to the failure of men to keep their marriage vows and to be present and faithful to the children the Lord gives them. Even fathers who are divorced from the mothers of their children are still fathers and still responsible to love and clothe and feed their children. Fathers that are distant, fathers that are harsh, fathers that are angry, fathers that are stingy or capricious or unstable or unpredictable — these failures are what make Planned Parenthood viable and seem necessary.

If we demand that congress defund Planned Parenthood (as we should), we cannot expect God to hear our prayers and give us success in this if we do not simultaneously with all of the same vigor and disgust defund fatherlessness in every form in our land. How can you demand that Planned Parenthood be defunded while you search for porn on your computer? How can you demand that Planned Parenthood stop selling the body parts of human beings, while you are ogling the body parts of other human beings for sale. Don’t you see how it’s all connected? Don’t you see how it’s all related? How can you sleep with a woman who is not your wife? How can you move in with your girlfriend? How can you treat the possibility of bringing a fatherless child into the world casually and feel disgust about aborted baby livers and hearts and lungs? That disgust needs to spread into the American soul. We need to feel that disgust at the thought of a woman stripped bare on a screen. We need to feel that disgust at the thought of our children ignored and neglected. It makes you mad to think of a baby being crushed with forceps to harvest its brain for cash, but it should also make you mad to think of a child crushed by the absence of her dad. Because fundamentally, it’s the same thing.

We do need to get mad. We need to get a lot more mad. We have done this to ourselves. We have hired Planned Parenthood. The men of America have funded this baby butchering machine. And it will not be defunded until we crush our idols of lust and selfishness and greed. As long as we sip wine over lunch and discuss our causal sex lives and wink at the latest swimsuit calendars, we’re looking in the mirror and the liberals have a really good point.

We are funding Planned Parenthood.

We are propping it up with all our idols. We could crush Planned Parenthood tomorrow without a single vote in the House or Senate and Obama’s promised veto would mean absolutely nothing — if the men of America crushed the idols in their hearts today. We are holding this monster up. We are letting it live. Defund it now. Kill it now. Be a man. Marry the mother of your children. Kill the porn. Stop lying. Get a job. Pay your bills. Be present. Love your little ones. Keep your word. Repent and follow Jesus with all of your heart.

Dr. Mary Gatter is a sick human being, but it turns out that she’s not the only one that wants a Lamborghini.

So let’s do this. Let’s defund Planned Parenthood.