Decent Men Should Care About the Republican War on Women

by | Mar 10, 2024 | Opinions & Commentary

Photo: Layna Bowers, iStockphoto

Decent Men Should Care About the Republican War on Women

by | Mar 10, 2024 | Opinions & Commentary

Photo: Layna Bowers, iStockphoto

Men of faith, morality, and conscience should be among the fierce flood of opposition to the twisted theology that declares embryos to be full human beings meriting a voice—but women not to be.

Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

They’re no longer saying the quiet part quietly. It’s all out in the open now.

The extreme Christian Right (which is now essentially the de facto Republican Party) has declared a full-on legislative war on women—and decent men here cannot allow it.

We should have seen this coming. As they were preparing to commandeer and weaponize the Supreme Court, they assured us that Roe Vs Wade was settled and established law, but we soon discovered that was simply them repeatedly bearing false witness in order to secure the power to steal autonomy from tens of millions of women, which they have now done.

With their subsequent violent assaults on birth control access and IVF treatments, and by placing travel restrictions on pregnant women seeking abortion in other states and advancing legislation allowing men to marry young girls, Republican Evangelicals are now unapologetically pursuing a theocratic order that would leave women voiceless and powerless.

Republican Congressional and Gubernatorial candidates are promising to outlaw abortion for any reason, including sexual assault and the health of the mother. It is not something hidden and unspoken, it is their explicit and public platform because they feel emboldened now, partly because of the lack of resistance they have faced.

This should be a non-partisan, interfaith emergency.

It should also be one that transcends gender.

At some point, politics has to go out the window and humanity needs to be called upon.

At some point, the party you’ve always voted with and the church you’ve always called home should matter less to you than the lives and wills and liberties of sentient flesh and blood human beings whose elemental freedoms are in the balance.

Of course women are alarmed, and of course millions of them are furious and of course they’re preparing to defend themselves in family gatherings and at church meetings and rallies and at state houses and at the polls—but they damn sure shouldn’t be fighting alone.

Men of character in this country should be enlisting in this brutal battle alongside them, party and church and social circles be damned. It is not enough to feel uneasy or to be internally sickened, we need to make our presence felt; to make the politicians and the preachers and our own families and friends feel the collective weight of our fury as well.

The open misogyny driving this movement needs to be met by the resistance of men who refuse to consent to being dragged back into the Dark Ages, not only because it threatens the freedoms and denies the full humanity of women, but because it is distorts what it means to be a man with empathy and gentleness. We should abhor the message it sends to young men who are being polluted and indoctrinated into believing that woman should not be the directors of their stories, that their bodies are not their own, that their consent is irrelevant.

As the father of a teenage daughter, the fact that in her lifetime we have allowed predatory politicians and brimstone-breathing preachers to dictate what happens to her body is something I can’t fathom and grieve fully. I really hope I’m not alone.

I hope the men of this country: fathers, grandfathers, spouses, partners, favorite uncles, lifelong friends, and those who simply believe that women are not less-than, need to be the most vociferous and passionate in pushing back against the punitive, draconian laws being steamrolled through right now and those planned should Donald Trump (a court-determined rapist and serial predator) prevail in November.

I see a common narrative on social media and in the news, predicting that the women of this country are going to pour into the polls later this year to unequivocally reject Republican efforts to subjugate them, and while I hope this is true, they shouldn’t have to do this alone.

Men of faith, morality, and conscience should be among the fierce flood of opposition to the twisted theology that declares embryos to be full human beings meriting a voice—but women not to be.

This is a gut check for men of every faith tradition and political affiliation.

We cannot be found silent or ambiguous right now.

We need to speak and act with a clarity and volume that leaves no doubt as to where we stand.

I stand with women in this war.

Men, where will you stand?

John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.

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