Abortion

Prior to the 1960s, most young people lived with their families and were always chaperoned when single boys and girls were together. This reduced the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies, but the system was not perfect. Some girls were pressured into getting married, or giving the baby up for adoption, and few chose to have an abortion.

Towards the end of the 1950s, dramatic social change occurred.

• The restraints of so-called traditional morality were thrown off. Young people were free to meet together unsupervised.

• Boys could afford to buy and run cars, so it was easy for a young couple to get away on their own.

• Many young people moved away from home and began living together in flats.

• Advanced methods of contraception, such as the pill, were cheaper and easy to obtain.

• Music, television and film portrayed and encouraged casual sex.

These social changes created unprecedented sexual freedom.

A sexual revolution followed. It gave young men and women much greater freedom to engage in sexual activities.

Most young people welcomed the change. However, if things went wrong, it was the girls who were left holding the baby, sometimes literally. It is well-documented that single mothers have lower living standards than other young women, and their children suffer, too.

The sexual revolution was a two-sided revolution. Men gained the sexual benefits, with very few costs. Women gained freedom too, but if things went wrong, they had to carry the can.

To deal with these problems, abortion laws were relaxed, and abortion became the standard way to deal with the problem.

However, this was putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It dealt with the unwanted problems, but it did not deal with the real problem, which was the new social freedom and the casual sexual practices that went with it.

Now in American, there is huge pressure to tighten the abortion laws again, but again that does not deal with the underlying problem caused by the social and sexual revolution. It is an attempt at using law to deal with a social and moral problem.

Some of the greatest pressure to change the law comes from Christians. They say that they live under grace, not under the law. They agree that laws cannot change human hearts. Yet here again, they are demanding changes in the law to solve a social problem, which they know the law cannot do. History shows that salvation by law does not work, especially when the culture is still going the other way (Casual sex is still the norm on popular television shows and films and Christians watch them without realising what they are absorbing).

Rather than using law, which is a very blunt instrument, they should be wondering why society changed so much at a time when the church was supposedly strong. They should be thinking about different ways of living in society that would keep young people, and particularly young woman safe. That would require radical change in the way we live. I suspect that most men are not willing to pay that price. It is easier to change the law and keep the benefits of the sexual revolution.

Abortion has become a hot-button issue for Christians, but they do not seem to care so much about divorce, which has become rampant in the church, even amongst pastors. The prevalence of divorce in the church shows that that sexual revolution is deeply entrenched amongst Christians, despite their horror at abortion. Divorce and abortion are both symptoms of the sexual revolution. Both are covered by the Ten Commandments, but Christian attitudes to the two issues are very different, which is a bit hypocritical. It seems to be easier to point to the sins of the world.