With the passing of Charlie Kirk, we have lost a voice that resonated with young men and summoned them to be good men, even godly men, and to know that a good portion of that manhood is expressed in getting married, having babies and proudly serving as the point man for their family.
I got married at 22 in large part because when I was 17, restless, aimless, hormone-pumped, I was challenged by a Charlie-like voice in the 70s, named Josh McDowell. He had the nerve to go to college campuses across America and to talk about “Maximum Sex.” Smack in the middle of the sexual revolution, he challenged young men like me to find our greatest happiness in yielding our lives over to the living Christ and follow his design for sexuality: wait till marriage and be faithful in marriage! This is the path I took. After 48 years and counting, I have no regrets. It’s the best thing I have ever done for one woman in particular, my wife, and the best respect given to all others.
What then is the worst thing a man can do to a woman? Clare Bremner, writing in The Times, UK’s paper of record, is spot on when she says, “In my long experience, typically 75 per cent of the women who summon up the courage and bravery to make a call for help regarding an abortion were pressured or bullied into having one, in almost all cases by the man involved… It must be among the worst things a man can do to a woman.”
Forcing, coercing or abandoning the woman with whom you were intimate and who is now carrying your child is the worst form of moral injury a man can inflict on a woman. It’s a soul-stabbing moment of discovery. As a friend wrote, “My boyfriend was furious when he discovered I was pregnant. He immediately demanded that I have an abortion… Afterward, the mere presence of my boyfriend caused deep hurt and pain.”
In previous generations, such men would be shamed publicly by other men. They would be avoided by every woman in town! Times change, but human nature does not.
Mature manhood seeks its own happiness in the happiness and well-being of others. A mature man even finds personal fulfillment in sacrificing his own needs and wants when it advances the well-being and happiness of others. This is what love prompts and how it reveals itself. Immature manhood’s defining quality is that it seeks its own happiness at theexpense of others. It’s self-seeking, no matter what hurt or harm it brings.
Real men carry within themselves a sense of responsibility to provide and protect women in ways that are welcomed and expected, as defined by the closeness of the relationship. A man filled with manliness makes women feel safe, starting with his wife, and extending naturally to his children.
Immature men make women feel threatened, and rightly so. Men who refuse to grow up, with no definition of what it means to be a man and no cultural norms to enforce it, are, and always will be, a danger to women.
We cannot strip men of their role as providers and protectors without turning them into predators. Every young man, without exception, becomes a protector or a predator in relation to women. These are the only two choices. Without men calling men to be men, men default to being predators.
Such men will always love legal abortion and eschew marriage. It allows them to be predatory in their approach to women and clean up the mess. Every man knows this is true. It is a shockingly bitter moment of discovery for far too many women. Anxiously ambivalent about abortion or having a baby, she discovers she is sleeping with a man with no stuffing!
In Indiana, pressuring a girlfriend into abortion is considered a Level 6 felony with prison sentences of six months to 2 1/2 years. This is sad, but necessary protection until men once again return to their God-given calling. Charlie answered this call. So did I. And nothing can be better for young women today than young men who answer this call. As Martin Luther once said about men, marriage and family: “Let’s get to it right merrily!”
John Ensor has been a leader in the pro-life movement for over 35 years as a speaker, author, mentor and co-laborer. John serves as the President of PassionLife, where he concentrates on training communities of churches in countries with high abortion rates to set up pregnancy crisis intervention services. He has been recognized in the “Legacy of Life”book as one of the fifty greatest pro-life leaders of the last 50 years.
