If you ever had any doubts that women got the short end of the stick when the sexual revolution came along, cast those doubts aside. News from the world of sports a few weeks ago revealed just how short that stick is.
Because on July 26, news leaked out that back in 2007, NBA player J.J. Redick had his former girlfriend, Vanessa Lopez, sign what the press is calling an “abortion contract.” In it, a pregnant Lopez agreed to undergo an abortion. In return, Redick agreed to “attempt” to “establish and maintain a social and/or dating relationship” with Lopez “for a period of one year.” If Redick decided things weren't working out, he would simply pay Lopez $25,000 and send her on her way.
And it gets worse. If Lopez refused to have an abortion, she agreed that Redick would have no further obligations to her. She also agreed to provide both proof that she’d been pregnant, and proof that she'd aborted her child. And I should add that Redick denies that he got Lopez pregnant.
Even given the cultural free-for-all in which we live today, I find this contract shocking. My colleague John Stonesteet calls it “the ultimate example of ‘BroChoice,’ a culture in which men want legalized abortion because they want sex without any strings attached, and especially without the risk of children.
Frankly, I can't understand why any woman would want to BE with a man that treats her like this. Why would anyone settle for so little in a relationship? Or stay with someone who makes it so abundantly clear that his only interest in her is sexual?
The sad aftermath of this grotesque contract is that Lopez did have an abortion. Predictably, Redick’s and Lopez’s relationship disintegrated almost at once. And a fresh round of stories report that when Lopez arrived at a Florida abortion clinic, she told the staff that she felt “forced” into the abortion — that she was confused, scared and sad. One Florida therapist says Lopez suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The couple's abortion contract and its aftermath are sobering reminders of the fact that, throughout history, women have paid a disproportionate burden of the consequences of sex — because they are, of course, the ones who get pregnant. This burden was balanced out somewhat by the fact that a pregnant woman, once upon a time, could name the father, and a sympathetic culture put pressure on these men to take responsibility for their actions by marrying the mother, or at least taking care of their children financially.
Well, not anymore. The sexual revolution deeply unbalanced the burdens of unmarried sex. It brought us both birth control pills and abortion on demand, along with a culture that essentially says that having a child today is, in a sense, a voluntary act. Since a woman could have used birth control, and has the right to a legal abortion, the reasoning goes, she alone is responsible for her decision to give birth.
And in case a woman doesn't get it that she's on her own now — that she's little more than a reusable sex object — abortion contracts will spell it out for her.
How tragic. And how sad. As theologian Cornelius Plantinga would say, this is not the way things are supposed to be. But it's the way we can expect things to be as our culture spins further and further away from biblical truth and a biblical worldview.
Which is why I intend to keep telling tell my own precious teenage daughter how great is her value, both in God's eyes, and in mine — and worthy of great respect from the opposite sex. And that she should never, ever allow any man to treat her otherwise.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Publication date: September 4, 2013
