culdesachero

I did the deed. I had accomplices; but, I am certainly a guilty party, 100% culpable.

I faced no prison for the act. It wasn’t a crime, according to the laws of the land; however, I live with the guilt every waking breath. I hear the evidence read out regularly, unannounced with the slightest provocation. Any triggered memory from my subconscious reminds me that I stand convicted without sentence. I walk a free man but pursued by a past that won’t be hidden.

Tragedy affects us many ways. Tragedy of our own creation is especially troublesome to the human spirit. A blight on the soul so ugly that most seek to avoid all conscious acknowledgement. Acknowledgement seems easier to avoid when one never meets his victim’s eyes. No screams were ever heard from my victim’s lips.

Cowards recoil and hide from their own guilt. I face them head on. I am no longer a coward, but it’s too late. My cowardly deed is done.

I am a murderer!

I am also a victim of a mentality that was learned from a young age. I take full ownership of my state of mind which led to my actions, as everyone should. I was seduced by a moral sleight-of-hand trick before I understood the world or had a firm grasp of morality.

My moral code with regards to sex at the time was juvenile. I had absorbed the idea from feminism that women were just like men and the only reason the were less sexually aggressive was social shaming. Early and frequent exposure to porn, gave me the idea that sex was just another activity people did for pleasure. The more sex you could have, the happier you would be.

Combining these two ideas, left me with an ethos that basically stated, sexuality was repressed by society, women needed to be liberated in order to fully enjoy sex like men did. I was here to liberate women and convince them that they were just like men by having sex with them.

Naturally, treating women like men didn’t work so well in actually getting women to like me. But, I persevered and found myself in a life-changing situation with one, seemingly easy, escape. The life was taken before it was aware of itself (at least as far as we could tell), a crime in the moral sense but not legally.

Abortion is justified in the minds of pro-choice supporters because a woman should not be forced to carry a baby to term inside her own body. Like an observer on the shore is under no obligation to put herself at risk to save the boater heading for a waterfall, a mother can’t be forced to carry her child to term. But what if the observer puts an unconscious person into a boat unbeknownst? Can the “observer” just watch as the boat flows down the river towards certain doom? Moreover, can the “observer” push the boat out into the water where the passenger will die before ever gaining consciousness?

Two people caused this life to be conceived. Two people wrestle with the moral responsibility for the life they created. Two people committed this crime. No moral sleight-of-hand can allow you to pretend the actions leading to the situation never occurred.

For years, I lived with the crime, not understanding or feeling any sense of remorse, other than the hurt feelings and physical pain I caused to my partner in crime. My guilt did not truly occur to me until I sat in my living room looking at a newborn baby boy sleeping on the floor. It really hit me that I had done something wonderful and at the same time, I realized that I had done something horrible when I was much younger.

That was the just first event that began my journey from 100% pro-choice to 100% pro-life. It wasn’t enough, however. 3 other moments helped. A religious friend mentioned the phrase “Abortion should not be birth-control.” It struck me that this is what I had done. Later, as I was learning to be libertarian, I heard someone give a libertarian position for pro-life. The fetus was a person and deserved protection from harm – even from the mother while in utero.

I mulled this over for a long time until someone named Greg Swann solidified my position by pointing out that abortion is harmful to the mother and the father – self-harm. I suddenly saw the line of causation from my early education and mindset to my careless attitude to the event I now recognized as a tragedy. All of that was harmful. All of it was degrading to myself and my sexual partners. I had recognized it as wrong the whole time but I did not want to acknowledge it.

My sexual ethos that led up to my crime was informed by feminist educators starting in grade 5, movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, television and politics, especially feminist politics, and porn. The earliest change actually occurred prior to meeting my living children’s mother. I reflected on my actions and realized that sex was more than the simple pleasurable pursuit I had considered it. I decided that my sex shouldn’t be shared with anyone with whom I wouldn’t raise a child. It was a change in course toward moral accountability for my actions. This was shortly before I met my future wife.

I think the change in attitude made an improvement within myself that the woman I was to marry noticed. It wasn’t that simple, however. I was was still sick from the years of porn, promiscuity and debasement but, so were most men my age.

So here I am. Married, father of two boys to whom I preach a philosophy of responsibility for one’s actions, especially actions that could result in creation of new life.

It’s hard to stand against the headwind of a culture still obsessed with radical sexual permissiveness and sinking lower into the moral morass from which I had clawed myself out. Conversations with co-workers sometimes veer into subjects I find disheartening such as stories about their teenagers’ sexual activities and how to deal with the consequences. I politely excuse myself from such conversations.

My children are asked to declare their pronouns at school and forced to comply with classmates’ demands to be called different genders while I try to teach my sons what manhood means and how to treat women with respect of the most incredible power inherent in their bodies. Sex-ed teachers talk about their personal favorite types of sex.

Culture on movies, TV, internet and music tells them that the only risks from sex is pregnancy and disease.

I have instilled an understanding in my children that emotional risk is just as important and people shouldn’t take sex lightly to remain mentally and emotionally healthy.

My parents tried to instill their values into me but the school and the culture had managed to instill the post-modern anti-human values of feminism first. Once a set of values become part of your identity, words alone will not convince you to change. It took many, many years and reckoning with my emotions as my experience widened along with hearing different opinions to come around to my position.

I feel the weight of the tragedy I caused every day. I am a better person now but I can never be the person who did not commit this crime.