CompassCare is concerned about marriage. The Bible begins and ends with it. That is sermon enough. Historically, marriage is the first of all human institutions and of foremost importance to any thriving society. If CompassCare’s mission is to ‘erase the need for abortion,’ why does marriage matter? Because healthy societies, like electric lights, are only as vibrant as their power source. In the case of society, it is the family that generates the health needed to power the next generation.
The left-leaning Child Trends research institute notes: “…research clearly demonstrates that … the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.” After 40 years of sociological mountain climbing, scientific consensus reaches the summit and finds the Bible and the Church waiting for them at the top. No one is surprised that children are at a much greater risk of poor outcomes when raised in single parent homes, or where the parents are divorced, or even where the parents are divorced and remarried. The cycle goes like this: Decreased marriage rates and increased divorce undermine childrens’ well-being, increasing their risky behaviors and relationship problems as they become adults, further destabilizing marriage and society.
While surveying the debris field that is the American family, the Pew Research Foundation found in 2008 that births to unwed mothers had soared to an average of 41%! Additionally, as of 2012, over 30% of children live with just one parent or with neither parent. Broken families mean broken children. Broken children equate to a broken future. This cycle reveals that a greater share of society’s future citizen will be at greater risk for promiscuous behavior, relationship problems, nonmarital pregnancy, etc. It is no wonder that marriage rates have eroded by 25% since 1970 and the number of abortions increased 5.7x. Unmarried women are almost 5x more likely to have an abortion than married women (according to a data brief from the CDC).
The behaviors that result in nonmarital pregnancy are often due to a lifestyle of poor outcomes impacted by a less than stable family. That won’t magically change when she has an abortion like proponents of ‘reproductive freedom’ promise. If anything, the abortion serves to reinforce her unhealthy lifestyle. As George Orwell observed, it’s like a man taking a drink because he feels like a failure and fails all the more completely because he drinks. So choosing to have the baby may not give her an apartment in Shangri La, but neither will having the abortion.
Despite the acrid social climate caused by an unhealthy marriage culture, society continues to pick at the fraying edges of the marriage fabric. 100 scholars submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court before it unraveled by legalizing the fiction of Same-Sex Marriage (SSM). The scholars pointed out that heterosexual marriage rates decline in every nation and state that legalize SSM without exception by up to 36% within just nine years (Spain). Based on the results of America’s unhealthy marriage culture to date, we can just about guess the darkness into which we sail. Jesus noted, “Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16:3).
In the coming storm you can count on CompassCare to continue pulling people off the train cars grinding to America’s Auschwitz. But to truly erase the need for abortion, we must recapture the runaway marriage train. And that requires the whole of us pulling together to educate our family, friends, and neighbors on what marriage actually is. It means that those of us who are married model healthy marriages to our children and to young married couples. We must reduce the barriers to marriage erected in the name of careerism. We must resist the damaging notion that the purpose of marriage is for the emotional well-being of adults. We must return to the natural definition of marriage as a comprehensive union between one man and one woman that is exclusive, permanent, and oriented to generating new life. Once we recapture a healthy marriage culture, abortion will be in the rear view mirror.
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