Sex Education and Male Responsibility | Birth Control Pt 2

Episode 84:  Sex Education and Male Responsibility | Birth Control Pt 2

Maggie: [00:00:00] Have you ever talked to someone who thinks we should push better sex education instead of educating on the reality of abortion? This happened to us. Come debrief with us.

Hello, my name's Maggie, your host and I'm here with Seth and Ethan and we are debriefing pro-life outreach. Who has the outreach highlight for today? 

Ethan: That would be me. So I was on Operation Overpass, one of our outreaches where we hang up banners during morning traffic. And there are thousands of people who see these images of babies who've been killed by abortion. And a gentleman who was with us, we were talking to him and you know, we asked him what he thought about abortion. He actually said that his girlfriend was pregnant.

Mm-hmm. And that her mom really wanted her to get an abortion. Oh, wow. Was encouraging her to get an abortion, but it was really encouraging because he was against getting the abortion and his girlfriend didn't want to get it either, and so they both wanted to have this baby together. , instead of getting an abortion [00:01:00] like his girlfriend's mom wanted them to.

So that was really cool t o hear, I mean, a very young guy. I think he was 19. , his girlfriend around the same age, and so, but they were, yeah, they wanted to save their baby and not. give it up to abortion. 

Seth: That's really cool. The sad part of that is I think that we, you know, we, we all, we recognize that when people choose an abortion, they're coming from a context, a worldview context. Yeah. But also a familial context, right? Mm-hmm. It's so tragic to think of a woman encouraging her daughter to abort her granddaughter. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I think that plays into this whole conversation we're having about this crazy, radical pro-abortion amendment in Ohio where there's going, were there are protections written into it for those who coerce girls into abortion. Yeah. Coercion is not always just like dragging someone to the Planned Parenthood facility. Right. It's manipulating them, trying to force them through all means possible. And so that makes it even cooler that he was standing strong.

Right. Perhaps part of it being the images he was seeing that we put up on, yeah. On the overpass. 

Ethan: So, but that was super encouraging. 

Seth: Yeah. If you're curious about overpass, we can drop in the show notes a video clip. People can see what that looks like too. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Maggie: Yeah. Well, [00:02:00] our clip today is gonna be basically our birth control part two.

The last episode that we released, when you're listening to this, would be part one of talking about birth control. And I mentioned in that episode that we should do a part two. So, 

Seth: So back by popular demand. Here we go again. 

Maggie: Yes. So honestly, I was just trying to find a clip that fit this.

I think we don't often. Uh, save our clips. When people mention birth control, 

Seth: It's uh, but almost too common, doesn't stand out as a unique idea. 

Maggie: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It's not like a big idea that. 

Seth: Did you guys assume that coming into this, you'd have a lot of conversations about birth control? Was that something you knew or was that a surprise to you when you started doing pro-life outreach?

Maggie: Neither. I mean, it's definitely not surprising to me. Yeah, 

Ethan: It wasn't surprising 'cause it's connected, but I didn't expect my conversations to lead into it as much as they ended up doing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because it's kind of like a working your way back. , of like, how do we deal with abortion from, like what, what do we work our way back to as far as how are we going to address this problem?

Mm-hmm. And for a lot of people, it kind of goes [00:03:00] back to, Birth control of like, oh, push that, uh,

Seth: Quick solution. Right. Got it. 

Ethan: Quick solution. So yeah, it ended up playing into conversations more than I thought it would, but I knew it would somehow be connected to the conversations I was having with people.

Maggie: Yeah, makes sense. It has even come up before, before I worked at Created Equal, it's come up with, a family member of mine. Mm-hmm. So, it definitely wasn't surprising and like I've heard it from even people close to me that it, I mean it does seem like on the surface, like a, a quick solution. Yeah. I understand it, in a sense, even though I don't agree. 

Seth: We can comprehend why people are saying what they say, even if we don't agree with the conclusion. 

Maggie: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Totally. All right, well, before we get into listening to the clip, I'll just go over a little bit what we covered in the last episode. , so basically we went over why we don't promote birth control like we were just talking about. We can understand why it's a something that people think we should do, buta basically, we don't wanna encourage a sinful, unhealthy lifestyle.

And there's a lot that goes into that. So listen to the last episode for more on that. But also [00:04:00] we just kind of went over a basic overview of why hormonal birth control is immoral to take, because it is a direct act that could potentially kill someone. And again, there's more about that in last episode.

So we will definitely put that in the show notes. But, um, yeah, let's listen to the clip now. 

Student: You know what I think would be a better solution? I think it's interesting because I feel like these conversations altogether put a lot of pressure on women and it holds a lot of responsibility on women's shoulders. 'Cause ultimately, you know, they're the ones who have to make the decision. They're the ones who have to carry for the nine months.

I feel like if people try to talk to men more about like, you know, obviously safe sex. Because I feel like, you know, you have sex ed classes in high school and whatever, but they don't do much. Mm-hmm. They're not properly instructing people the way they should. Yeah. So I feel like if part of your organization, organization is education, it should not only be education about, you know, abortion, it should be about education, about preventing it to begin with.

Because obviously people have practice safer sex, you know, just have general more education about how these things work. 

Seth: Oh [00:05:00] wow. That was, that was really powerful, Maggie, hearing - I honestly, listening to that, I'm sure, I think everyone could really hear her pretty well. There was not a lot of background noise.

Mm-hmm. I found myself saying, "I agree. I agree. I agree. But-" a lot, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I agree the problem's we're not talking to men or , talking about, properly framing sexuality. But I think we can disagree a lot with her upon what that looks like, so, mm-hmm. Yeah. Go ahead. 

Maggie: Yeah. And I do wanna say like, this is a girl that I talked to for a long time at ohio State University. And then I brought her over - THE Ohio State University. My apologies. But then I brought her over to Seth. And so the three of us were talking for a long time. Do you remember her? 

Seth: I do remember that conversation, yeah. 

Maggie: Yeah. And she really was a sweet girl. She was very sweet. She started out, when we first started talking, she seemed a little bit hostile, but I think she was just really hurting.

Mm-hmm. And, um,, she ended up getting really emotional during that conversation. 

Seth: She had quite a family history. Yeah. 

Maggie: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think her heart was in the right place. Like she, she wants the right thing for people. 

Seth: Well, I think that's important, just to pause right there. I mean, we know that everyone who is pro-abortion [00:06:00] or pro-choice, whatever word you wanna use is, has an ethical framework that is broken and wrong. That does not mean they're not always having good motivations or impulses, right? Mm-hmm. Like I think that even her, like she's trying to prevent babies from being made that will have hard lifestyles, whatever, or hard lives, whatever that may be. That doesn't mean her conclusion is right, but we can understand how they get there.

So I think that's important to say, like, we're not just talking about two-dimensional evil people. These are three, three dimensional people with real lives, ones you get to know in our conversations, so. 

Maggie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so one point that she brings up is that, basically that the pro-life message focuses a lot on women over men.

I think she was saying like that we personally focus a lot on women. I actually told her like, I don't agree with that because our organization reaches out to, both, 'cause we are just focused on public education. But it's true that, I mean, maybe the pro-life movement as a whole, focuses on women more than men, which makes sense because women carry the children who are at risk of being aborted.

But she had a good point that it takes both. , and so she, it was important to her [00:07:00] that we educate both men and women on safe sex. 

Seth: Well, I, I think that Maggie, I mean, she's, there's a reality here. She's, she's pointing to, right? I mean mm-hmm. So, women - This is shocking, trigger warning to all of our listeners out there. Right - women are the ones who get pregnant, right? Okay. Let's just be honest about this. Okay? So if we say it's wrong to kill your children and men in this culture are part of this culture where they are used to using, abusing women and walking away, who are the ones left with the babies? The women. Women, right?

So it is true that if you ban abortion, their point is it's going to affect the women more than men. We would disagree because it affects the men too, b y allowing them to leave their families, things like that. But, um, it's true that women are the ones who carry the children. My point to people on campus is just, you know, I don't know whether you believe in God or not, take it up with God or Darwin.

It's just reality that men don't carry children. Yeah. I mean, again, that's a disputed fact today, I suppose. But I mean, it's not our fault. We didn't design the, that It's women who do, who carry the children. Yeah. Yeah. That's not our fault. So it is true that women are the ones carrying them, but that doesn't mean we, [00:08:00] we are punishing them.

Right. I mean, Ethan, what do you think about this? How do you respond to this? 

Ethan: What idea, exactly? 

Seth: The, the idea that women are the ones, like by banning abortion, women are the ones who are being affected more than men. Cause that's something what she was saying in this clip, right? We're focusing more on women, banning abortion affects women more than men.

Mm-hmm. 

Ethan: Kind of putting women at a disadvantage. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's interesting. , It does affect women more than men. But I also, in my, in my mind, it's like saying, well, if we ban rape, that's going to affect men more than women because the men won't be able to rape as much as they would like to.

I'm like, well, hang on a minute. What are they doing? Rape is wrong, and I think in the same case, abortion is wrong. So while it might mean that people have to do things that are harder 'cause sometimes , oftentimes doing the right thing is the harder thing. , you know, we're protecting people because in an abortion you're killing another human being.

So yes, it is stopping women from doing something, but I, I think it's [00:09:00] stopping women from doing something that we should all agree is wrong for them to do in the first place. And so we need to work to provide them with other options. - you know, helping women if they need to give their children up for adoption, helping them with that.

I don't think it's discriminatory to say you shouldn't be able to kill your children. 

Seth: That's a good point. And I think that, I mean, men leave their families with born kids, right? Right. Yeah. There are protections for born children not to be killed by their mothers. Yeah. I don't think anyone says, well, that's putting a burden on women, that they can't kill their toddlers.

Right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. No one says that. 'Cause we recognize a toddler's a human too. Mm-hmm. 

Maggie: Yeah. Yeah. So she says we should focus on teaching people how to prevent it in the first place. 

Seth: Well, there's an easy solution there. Yes. So, and this is Bio 101. Yeah. But just. Don't have sex, you will not get pregnant.

It's really that simple. Yeah. Wow, yeah. There we go. Right. But they don't like that. Right. The abstinence - abstinence is frowned upon, looked down as this antiquated old thing that just doesn't work. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Maggie: Which is, kind of funny to me, but I think so many [00:10:00] people think contraception is just the solution to this because we can't count on people uhhuh not to have sex

Seth: 'Cause we're animals. We can't control our sexual desires. We're just gonna go. Yeah. Yeah. 

Maggie: Okay. That's so interesting you say that because I was reading an article earlier today in preparation for this, which I'm actually gonna be reading a few quotes from. Hopefully that's okay. They're kinda long. But, one thing that it said in the article was that the use of contraception has kind of, trained our culture to see humans as kind of animals.

Mm-hmm. And like not being able to control ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. So that's not related to one of the quotes I was gonna read, but it did say that in the article, so that's so interesting. 

Seth: But it just tracks right with everything we talk about on this podcast, that we don't see, we don't, babies don't have souls. Babies are not persons. They're just this conglomeration of cells. Mm-hmm. Human beings ourselves, we don't have souls either. We're all just these biochemical machines. This really does track with our culture, but the question is, do you want to live in a society where people control their urges or not?

I frankly want to live in the society where they do, or if they don't, the state punishes them for not controlling their urges. Right. Otherwise, men are raping women, women [00:11:00] raping men, parents beating children. Right. This is going, this would be spinning outta control. Yeah. We need to either control our own urges with self-control and if we can't the state or someone must stop us.

Ethan: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. People should not be allowed to be destructive towards one another. 

Maggie: Yeah. It's good and right, that we be held back from that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna read one of my first quotes that I have here. , from this article. 

Seth: Do we get to know who this is from or is it just like a secret?

Maggie: Oh, you know, I actually wrote it down on a sticky note and I didn't bring it in here with me. 

Seth: Look for it in the show notes I guess. Yeah. Shout out to whoever you are who wrote this article. 

Maggie: Yeah. Okay. Here's the quote. 

"To put this another way, we might say that contraception is the lynchpin in a cultural revolution that has abortion as one of its principle effects.

The overall result of this is that far from liberating a culture from the scourge of abortion, contraception engrains and entrenches this practice into a culture that accepts it."

So it's kind of long, but the point is where people think that contraception is the solution and will make abortion less common, it actually just cements it into[00:12:00] our culture as something that's acceptable.

Mm-hmm. , basically the idea that, like we were talking about in the last episode, if, if people have the idea that they're not gonna get pregnant, they're gonna be having sex more often, they're gonna get pregnant more often. Yeah. 'Cause it doesn't, contraception doesn't always work. And then they're gonna be having more abortions.

Seth: Well, I think this isn't exactly what she's talking about, Maggie, but I think that the issue is the culture has now so divided sex from procreation, from creating a baby.

Whereas we recognize that sex is, I mean our, we can look to our Catholic friends who use the word "procreative unitive." We would understand there's these, there's a unit unitive nature of sex where husband and wife are brought together and also babies are created. And we have so sharply divided them that we think that I can have sex for all the pleasure and not have any possibility of creating a baby.

And if I do create one by accident, I'm still in control. So I can just have an abortion anyway, right? So yes, it feeds that mindset: sex is about me, just like, I think, even in the church or whatever we have this, we have a lot of wrong views of these things where we think that marriage is, for me, for my spouse, no marriage is by God [00:13:00] for children, right, to protect them and to raise them. And sex is not for your personal pleasure. Now, God created it, it is pleasurable, but it's not for you to just go have whatever fun you wanna have. Right. It's for a certain context. Yeah. And this has allowed us to divorce it from the important context, divorce it, and make what we want it to be.

Just like we make our, we make God in our image. We make sex in our own image too. Everything's about what we want. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ethan: Well, I liked something interesting you just said, Seth, - the idea of, divorcing procreation from sex. I see that mentality a lot on outreach, especially talking to women who've gotten pregnant and have had abortions. A lot of them, their experience has been, they got pregnant and then their boyfriend who got them pregnant is kind of like, wait a second. I didn't sign up for this. Mm-hmm. Go take care of this problem and they, and if you don't take care of this problem, a k a abortion. I'm outta the picture.

I'm leaving. Yeah. And so contraception - now going back to what Maggie said from that quote, has sort [00:14:00] of opened up this entire can of worms where rather than helping to address the problem by decreasing abortions, it's helping to exacerbate the problem because you're giving men a license to do whatever they want and not have to take responsibility for their mistakes or actions .

They use contraception, but they still have the option of abortion as kind of a way out of this situation that they've put themselves in with creating another human being.

Seth: That's so important. And that's why I think, back to the clip we played, I totally agree with her when she said, talk to men. Yeah.

Right. Like I think that's super important here. Men are often forgotten from this conversation and he must be involved in it, right? So I think what you're saying is so right. Ethan, I remember, Jon van Maren, a friend of Created Equal, in The culture War book, he - I think it's in there - he talks about some guy saying, "got my girlfriend pregnant. Not sure what happened." And Jon's like, I wasn't there, but I know exactly how it happened. But we know how this works, right? Yeah. This is a simple procedure we understand. Right. Well, maybe. It's not simple in a sense of like how fertilization happens. It's a very complex one, but what you do is not that complex.

Right? Yeah. So we know how it happens, but we need to talk to men, but not about what this clip [00:15:00] said, was talk to men about how to do it safely. Mm-hmm. That whole phrase of safe sex needs to be unpacked quite a bit. But I think we need to talk to men about not safely, but responsibility, right? Yeah. 

You don't use someone for your pleasure. You don't go to have sex with someone where you're, when you're not in a context of marriage, where you are, not only is it ethical, moral before God. Mm-hmm. But the way God built up also has protections for the children that you do create. There's um, what's the word I'm looking for?

Like, it's a, you have a protection like context for them. Also for the woman. You're not gonna just leave her rights. Mm-hmm. 'Cause you're both vulnerable when you're engaging in this. So it is all created for a certain purpose, but I think that's, that whole phrase of safe sex has been totally lost. And I'd love to hear what you guys say about that.

But also one more thought. When people bring this up with me, which is so frequently and they say we need better sex ed. And I say, I agree. This is sex ed. Right now what you're seeing on our signs is sex education, right? Mm-hmm. You are seeing what happens if you make a baby and you kill that baby. Safe sex or sex ed as often used today as this like euphemism for teaching how to use condoms.

That's not sexual education. Sex education is what is sex for and what do you do when you create a baby? If you choose abortion, what is happens [00:16:00] to that baby? Mm-hmm. That is sex ed. That's what I wanna see in our schools. Showing them abortion diagrams and abortion pictures. Will that happen? No, but that's what I wanna see.

Yeah, 

Ethan: I think that would be good, uh, because it would be, It would be accurate, like you're saying, the sex education we currently have, and I mean, I. I hate that word. That's something that, you know, 

Seth: are we all public schooled here? 

Ethan: No, I'm homeschooled. 

Seth: Okay. What's the, okay. What'd you say? 

Maggie: You, I'm homeschooled too. I was.

Seth: Okay. But you saw, you know, you know what it looks like out there. Go ahead. 

Ethan: Yeah. And, and so I, I mean, I don't think it's the school's responsibility to teach this, but if they are Right. Going to, then they should be teaching from a biological standpoint, human reproduction. Just like we talk about how other animals reproduce.

And also, like you're also saying, What is abortion? What happens in an abortion? But nobody's talking about that. Yeah, they're just Right. No, you're like, you're saying they're just handing out condoms and kind of, you know, saying , "Be careful." Yep. It's [00:17:00] like ha handing a, uh, you know, a little kid, a lighter and saying, have fun, and be careful.

You know, this might burn you, but you know, you'll probably have a lot of fun while you use it. Why are we doing that? That doesn't make. Sense to me, you know? 

Seth: Right. No, we wouldn't do that. You wouldn't give it to them. And our culture had a having a massive debate about guns right now. Right? Yeah. We recognize there are weapons.

Your phone is a weapon, right? We're playing 'em in the hands of children. We don't, we shouldn't give children tools of destruction like guns or phones, right? Those are meant for adults to use. I recognize that. Or, , at least with an adult, be if you were near like your whatever family member who's firing a gutter.

So you're not alone with a gun, right? Yeah. That's a bad idea. , so why would we say. Here, take this condom. Mm-hmm. Go do this thing that's going to unite you with someone so close in ways you cannot even comprehend yet. Right? Mm-hmm. And possibly create a baby that then may be destroyed in ways you cannot comprehend and say, God bless you, have a good time.

That's just a terrible way to approach this whole thing. Yeah. So we're calling men who's responsibility, right? Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] And this bothers me a lot cause we are told that men are not responsible. And I say, I agree, but the solution is Maggie's a woman. What's the solution for men? What should we do? What do you think we should do for the lack of responsibility among young men today? 

Maggie: , I think they need to have a higher view of sex , and a higher view of children. Mm-hmm. , uh, I guess a higher view of humanity in general. I mean, yeah, . That's such a sacred act that that's, I mean, that's part of why it's supposed to be held for marriage.

And like you said earlier, , also, I, I do believe that marriage is meant to protect children that would come from mm-hmm. ,

I think just the key point, , from this would be that the solution is not contraception. , , it's not a healthy mindset that places the need for sex above a proper view of children. And, and that's, even if a couple is married, sex is good and children are good and pitting them against each other is not good. 

Not that. I think that using birth control is always wrong, but you should always be open to the possibility of children if you're gonna be having sex, which you should only be doing with your spouse.

 But just [00:19:00] to finish up, I'm gonna read one more of the quotes that I had, , that really relates a lot to one thing that Ethan was saying earlier. , and again, I'll share this article in the show notes, but , , this quote says, "the key point is that contraception uncouples in the mind of the. Individual who accepts it as normal behavior, the relationship of sexual intercourse to babies, and to lifelong commitment. In a word, it trivializes sex. Trivial sex in turn leads inevitably to unwanted pregnancies, which inexorably leads to abortion."

Seth: . Maggie, what I love about that quote. I think that it's important to recognize that we are always talking about how tools are used, right? It's not the forceps that are bad. It's forceps used to kill children that's the problem. It's not necessarily the bit of rubber that's a problem.

It's this is being used to divide sex from its . Context and, and used as a tool of. Rejecting children and hurting women. So our problem is with, I know our problem with other, with certain birth control methods is they may kill children by definition, but even other ones that don't, it's how they're used in contexts that are unhealthy, that that is a major problem.

Mm-hmm. That's our major concern here. The worldview behind it is always the [00:20:00] biggest problem. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Maggie: Yeah, exactly. So with that,

, we'll end this episode and make sure to follow us on Instagram at Debrief With Us and leave us a review and that'll be super helpful. Thank you for debriefing with us. 

Seth: . 

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