Roe v. Wade and Biblical Patriarchy
by Phil Lancaster, January 21, 2003
The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in America is about death, but it is not only about the death of the forty million unborn children who have been sacrificed on the altar of expediency. Morally sensitive ears can indeed hear the rising cry of these image-bearers of God as they call out for justice in response to the shedding of innocent blood. But beyond the chorus of personal victims can be heard another sound: the rumbling and crashing of a civilization in collapse. Roe v. Wade was both a manifestation of that disintegration and a powerful catalyst of its acceleration. It is a sign of the death of Christian culture. And this death is no more evident than in that foundational institution of society, the family.
As an observer of the Christian home, and of husbands and fathers in particular, I see a number of deadly effects of Roe v. Wade on men and their families. In the last decade we have resurrected the term “patriarchy” to identify God’s pattern for the home and broader society in the face of feminist assaults against that pattern. A culture characterized by biblical patriarchy is one in which godly men lead, provide for, and protect their families and communities with the aims of implementing the rule of the Lord Jesus in every area of life and of raising up the foundation of many godly generations. Roe v. Wade has undermined biblical patriarchy by (1) its assault on future generations; (2) its destruction of family order; and (3) its effects upon the personal character of both men and women. Let’s look at these in turn.
First, Roe v. Wade constitutes both a direct and an indirect assault upon future generations. The most obvious effect of legalizing abortion is the eradication of about one-third of the generation under thirty years old.
God’s purpose for mankind from the beginning was to be “fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Our Creator wants the earth filled with those who will take dominion over every natural and personal resource to His glory. Sin has not changed that purpose, but it has made the redemption of Christ necessary for its fulfillment. The “Dominion Mandate” is now implemented through carrying out the “Great Commission” of our Lord to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). God wants His kingdom to come on earth through the multiplication of disciples of Jesus, and there is no more effective means to this end than the geometric multiplication of godly seed within a Christian family over many generations.
Since Cain murdered Abel, one of the chief strategies of Satan in his aim of thwarting the plan of God for the earth has been the destruction of the godly seed. Nowhere has his wicked scheme been more effective than in post-Roe America.
But surely, you say, it is not Christians who are aborting their offspring. Shouldn’t the ratio of Christians to unbelievers be increasing as the pagans kill off their unborn? While it is no doubt true that those who profess Christ resort to abortion less frequently than others (though, sadly, many church members do have abortions), the abortion mentality has indeed had the effect of cutting off the godly seed as well. That is because abortion is simply the ultimate form of birth control, and Christians practice birth control with nearly the same determination as the pagans. The birth control ethic lies behind the practice of abortion: abortion is simply the method of choice when other efforts fail to prevent the conception of a child.
Christians have come to share the anti-life mindset of the surrounding culture. Whether they use abortifacient methods like the pill or the IUD or take more benign measures, the followers of Christ are vigorously seeking to prevent the conception and birth of their offspring and are limiting the size of their families to barely replacement levels. (The home-schooling subculture is an exception to this pattern.) Instead of being renewed in their minds by the scriptural perspective that children are a blessing, most Christians have conformed to the Satanic pattern of this world and anxiously try to prevent the arrival of more children who would, by God’s grace, become disciples of Jesus and take dominion over the earth to God’s glory.
Second, Roe v. Wade has had a destructive effect upon family order and relationships. God has appointed the husband/father as the leader of his family, but Roe has emasculated the man by preventing the exercise of his authority. The law of the land directs that a man has no voice when it comes to his wife or daughter getting an abortion. Although he has a direct and God-given interest as the father or grandfather of the child, he is forbidden from preventing, or indeed even knowing about, the decision of a family member to have that child killed. While there are many other legal measures that neutralize the leadership role of a husband and father, none strike more blatantly at his authority than the abortion laws.
A man is now legally prevented from carrying out his role of protector within the home. He cannot guard the life of his offspring, nor can he protect his wife or daughter from the very real physical and emotional dangers associated with abortion. Roe and subsequent judicial decisions and legislation have tied a man’s hands, forcing him to look on helplessly while wicked men violate his wife or daughter, assault their bodies, and destroy his children.
Beyond the obvious ways in which abortion laws neuter men, they also have a corrosive effect on the general fabric of family ties. When men are legally prevented from leading and protecting their own families, it sends a message to women and children: this man is impotent and irrelevant; he is not worthy of your respect. Men come to feel that impotence, and their natural tendency to abdicate their roles is reinforced. Husbands and wives are alienated as the wife can resort to an outside authority who will overrule the husband; and it’s the same for the children with their father.
Even though a family may never be directly involved with an abortion decision, the law of the land serves as an effective teacher of morals. The bonds of authority and love between husbands and wives and between fathers and children are weakened as the anti-patriarchal worldview settles upon the minds and hearts even of those who strongly oppose abortion. And the longer the tyrannical state maintains its stranglehold on men, the more inevitable and acceptable this emasculation seems and the less important family ties become.
Third, Roe v. Wade has had the effect of eroding the personal character of both men and women. While it is obvious that the personal morality of American citizens was in serious decline prior to Roe, and this in part is an explanation for how such a monstrous ruling could be tolerated, it is also obvious that the aftermath of the decision is the further erosion of the character of the American people.
Women have found legal protection for selfish ambition. When a mother finds a pregnancy inconvenient, instead of having to marshal the inner resources to cope with a difficult situation, she now has legal encouragement to take the easy way out and kill her baby. The gentler gender has thus learned how to be hardened, putting perceived self-interest ahead of even the most fundamental welfare of her offspring. Her natural instinct to nurture life has been deadened as she has become an accomplice to death.
Men, likewise, have become parties to death as they are the primary craftsmen of the laws and judgments that have allowed abortion to proliferate. The natural consequences of the loose sexual standards of the average man can be overcome through a “procedure” that eliminates the “unwanted pregnancy” of his girlfriend. A self-centered will is the very definition of sin and has always brought about death, and this is no more visible than in the bloody culture of abortion.
One of the most devastating accompaniments of the legal assault on the family is the moral passivity of American men. Christian men in particular bear a huge measure of guilt for failing to stand up and say a loud “No” to Roe and the legal apparatus of death. And as the decades have passed, this passivity has only become more firmly entrenched in their character.
God made men for leadership, for action, for the defense of His holy standards in the world. When men cease to be men, a civilization dies. Ours is dying because Christian men stand passive in the face of God’s enemies and their agenda to destroy life and wreck the family.
Malachi 4:5-6 contains a sober warning:
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse
The death of forty million unborn children is just the most vivid manifestation of God’s curse on a dying nation. That curse will not and cannot be removed unless Christian men turn their hearts to their children and all future generations - until they become active in the defense of life, active in the leadership of their own homes, active in restoring God’s order first in their own hearts and then in everything else they touch.
In a godly patriarchal society, Roe v. Wade could never have happened. This curse will only be undone when, as a nation, we get back to biblical patriarchy.