Fertility Is Not A Disease

The sexual revolution has so altered the worldview of many that we now often treat fertility as a disease. It devastates lives, so there are prescriptions to keep its symptoms at bay and surgical procedures to cure it altogether. It seems fertility has its most devastating effects on women. Men only suffer from its effects tangentially through the pain it inflicts on women. Men can more easily sidestep virtue and walk away if the manifestation of the disease becomes too much to bear, but women do not have that luxury.

For women, fertility has ruined careers, holds the glass ceiling in place, and, before the technology was invented to end its tyrannical reign, it even kept women from fulfilling their purpose in life by forcing them to neglect their careers and devote time to nurturing their families. Thankfully, to the secular mind, science has overcome this atrocity. If the unthinkable happens, we can now have the life-ruining cancer removed at any neighborhood Planned Parenthood.

Sexual pleasure has become the god of our culture to which all other gods must bow. One of its contenders is reproduction itself. We must separate the pleasure of sex from reproduction and fertility, or there can be no sexual freedom. “My body, my choice” is the battle cry of a generation who, whether they realize it or not, are rebelling against their natural design. Nature, not the patriarchy, is what our culture hates most.

Let us not be naive; this treatment of sex and fertility is the end of a long line of pathologies that have plagued society for centuries. Absent fathers, the breakdown of the family unit, divorce, and pornography often stem from the same source. That source is the desire to have sexual pleasure without constraint. It is impossible to lay the ax to the root of the sexual revolution without also laying the ax to the root of these as well. This shared foundation is why many people are, rightfully, often charged with hypocrisy when they stand against abortion but have no problem with the casual sex culture.

This desire to have sexual pleasure without constraint has culture suppressing the truth of not only biblical revelation but also science. To justify the extermination of the child, we must classify the child in the womb as either not a human in its natural course of existence or not alive. It is impossible to deny either scientifically, yet logic and truth must be sacrificed on the altar of sexual autonomy.

Is it possible to use birth control in a way that does not lead to the conclusion described above? Yes, but we are reaching the bottom of the slippery slope that exists in a world where we hold the shackles of our created nature in contempt, and the technological abilities to sidestep those realities coexist. Let us also be clear that abortion is not birth control. That is like calling the slave trade human resource management. Birth control will only ever be used appropriately within the confines of marriage in a world that understands that a good God created us who knows what is best for us. A world where we realize that moral restraint is a path to human flourishing. What our society calls constraints, are God-given structures to show us the way to sexual fulfillment.

This post may raise more questions than it answers, but hopefully, framing it this way will help us pause and think through the state of our culture a little more deeply. Until we fall in line with the word of God, we will continue to rebel against our Creator’s good intentions for our lives. In our revolt, we curse our blessings and pursue our demise, but praise God, since we have all fallen short, for those who place their faith in Jesus, he will forgive their sins. He will wash them, and they will be whiter than snow. From that point, he will begin to conform us to his image, where we will glorify him and enjoy him forever.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! -Psalm 127:3-5

-D. Eaton