With less than three months remaining until the election, Vice President and Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris is working hard to garner the support of white voters. In the past month, Harris’s campaign has hosted Celebrity-studded virtual rallies aimed at this demographic. In her “White Women for Harris” rally on Zoom, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and actress Connie Britton called on all “Karens for Kamala” to use their “privilege” to help everyone. Shannon Watts, who helped organize the call, said that the rally was vital because white women “in recent presidential elections have voted in a way that upholds White supremacy … [and] upholds the patriarchy.”

Also worried that progressives have been “ceding white men to the MAGA right for far too long,” organizers of the “White Dudes for Harris” online rally encouraged participants to steer the country away from President Trump’s “dangerous, dark path” for the country. Star Wars actor Mark Hamill made an appearance, saying, “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.” 

However, the Harris campaign’s unprecedented commitment to advance abortion undermines the rhetoric employed in these rallies about advancing women’s rights, using one’s privilege to help others, and working to end the “patriarchy.” For example, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg explained to the “White Dudes for Harris” rally participants that they should vote for Harris because “men are also more free in a country where we have a president who stands up for things like access to abortion.” Intentional or not, Buttigieg’s comment echoed concerns expressed decades ago by first-wave feminists who opposed abortion.  

Abortion, to borrow progressive terminology, is a “tool of the patriarchy.” Far from advancing women’s rights, abortion enables self-centered men to pursue what they want without consequence. Though sold as a necessary “choice” for women, many report choosing abortion because they were pressured to do so. Thus, abortion harms women and ends the lives of countless preborn humans.  

Whether chemical or surgical, abortion severs the natural link between intercourse and procreation. Legalizing abortion allowed men to “freely” engage in intercourse without the obligation to and responsibility for any children that result. The more abortion is normalized, the more that men are “freed” from any expectation to care for the women they get pregnant or the children they beget.  

Buttigieg simply said out loud what has long been assumed within the ideologies of the sexual revolution and third-wave feminism. Sexual liberation is, in fact, not liberation at all, at least not for women and the unborn. Though sold as an aspect of women’s health and a means to ensure women’s rights and freedom, the reality is far different. As theologian Frederica Mathewes-Green said in a segment from Focus on the Family’s Family Project, “Women were promised autonomy, and what they got was abandonment.”  

The early feminists issued this warning about abortion. Scholar and author Erika Bachiochi has noted that “first-wave” feminists understood how “the burdens and privileges of reproduction and early caregiving [fall] disproportionately on women.” Men, therefore, needed to embrace their roles as husbands and fathers. Because of the unique differences between men and women, especially in childbearing, the state needed to uphold these responsibilities and obligations. Because abortion undermines these responsibilities and obligations, most feminists of the “first-wave” opposed it. 

Buttigieg is right that abortion makes men “free,” but not in a good or life-giving way. This is freedom from obligation, consequence, and responsibility, a freedom that enables the worst vices of “patriarchy” and “toxic masculinity.” The “freedom” afforded by abortion is a license that empowers men to live for themselves without regard for others, and therefore is a license that leads to pain, abandonment, and death. 

True freedom is freedom for, not freedom from. Freedom for recognizes the inherent, God-given place of sex within a marriage oriented for the good of others, especially the children that may result. This is true freedom for all parties involved. 

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Hayden. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. And check out this What Would You Say? video on how to make a pro-choice argument in 60 seconds.