On Thursday CBN News highlighted how pro-lifers in Arkansas are helping women who face unplanned pregnancies.
Family Council’s Charisse Dean sat down with CBN’s Paul Petitte to talk about how the State of Arkansas provides grant funding to pro-life pregnancy help organizations.
CBN also interviewed leaders from pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations.
You can watch the news segment below.
News outlets report that most of the San Jose State University (SJSU) women’s volleyball team has entered the transfer portal following the school’s controversial decision to let a biological male play volleyball as a female.
This year SJSU won eight games by forfeit after other college volleyball teams refused to play against the school out of concern for fairness and for players’ safety on the court.
SJSU volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose filed a Title IX complaint alleging the university had shown the transgender player favoritism at the expense of the female athletes on the volleyball team. The school suspended Coach Batie-Smoose indefinitely shortly afterward.
Writing at The Washington Stand, Sarah Holliday notes,
The women on SJSU’s team expressed their outrage publicly. Team captain Brook Slusser told OutKick that “everyone on the team appreciated [what Batie-Smoose did], and a lot of the girls in the locker room said how happy they were that she finally was able to speak out [on a situation] that we all knew needed to be talked about.” She added, “Melissa was that person that we felt like as long as she was there, we had someone that would stand up for us. And now there’s no one there that will. … We aren’t happy, and we don’t feel safe anymore.”
In the weeks that followed, the fight turned into a legal battle. By mid-November, a dozen concerned women filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West for what they called “violations of Title IX and of their First Amendment rights.” In particular, the players and coaches took aim at the conference’s “Transgender Participation Policy” which they claimed was designed to “chill and suppress the free speech rights of women athletes.” As Macy Petty, the legislative strategist at Concerned Women for America (CWA), previously told TWS, “The dominos are falling, and they must answer for their actions.”
We have written time and again about how women’s athletics is at risk of being erased in America.
For example, female cyclists, swimmers, powerlifters, sprinters, and others have seen their sports radically changed by men who identify and compete as women.
Letting men compete in women’s sports is unfair, and in some cases it can even be dangerous.
Fortunately, educators, policymakers, and athletic organizations are taking steps to protect women’s sports.
In 2023 the North American Grappling Association clarified its competition policy, saying biological males must compete against other men, regardless of their gender identity.
Last year the professional golf league NXXT Golf announced that only biological females would be eligible to participate in the NXXT Women’s Pro Tour.
And the NAIA college athletics association recently adopted a policy that should prevent male athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Many states — including Arkansas — have enacted laws that preserve fairness in women’s sports.
In 2021 Arkansas passed Act 461 by Sen. Missy Irvin (R — Mountain View) and Rep. Sonia Barker (R — Smackover) preventing male student athletes from competing against girls in women’s athletics at school. This good law protects fairness in women’s sports in Arkansas.
It’s worth point out that public opinion is shifting on this issue, with more Americans agreeing that athletes ought to compete according to their biological sex rather than their gender identity.
Letting men compete in women’s sports reverses 50 years of advancements for women. In light of that, it really should not come as a shock that SJSU’s female athletes are ready to transfer to other schools.
It is essential for educators, coaches, athletes, policymakers, athletic associations, and others to stand up for fairness in women’s sports. That is something Family Council is committed to doing.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
With more millennials choosing no kids, would-be grandparents mourn the end of their family line.
People often joke that if they’d known becoming a grandparent was so much fun, they would have done it before having kids. Having grandchildren is widely considered one of life’s great joys, one which, historically, most adults experienced. Today, however, a growing number of people will never have this experience.
Grandparents in America are becoming rarer. In 2014, 60% of people over 50 had at least one grandchild. By 2021, that had fallen to just over half. The historic decline in birth rates means that many who devoted their early lives to raising families will spend their later years watching those families end. The main reason for this is that many millennials, the generation now entering middle age, have chosen not to have kids.
Writing at The New York Times recently, Catherine Pearson gave voice to “the unspoken grief of never becoming a grandparent.” People she interviewed confessed “a deep sense of longing and loss when their children opt out of parenthood, even if they understand at an intellectual level that their children do not ‘owe’ them a family legacy.”
Parents of children who don’t want children find themselves in a difficult spot, especially those who have bought into the expressive individualist idea that children are a choice, and the only reason to have them is to enhance personal happiness. If their children don’t want children, these parents are supposed to be okay with that decision. Apparently, many aren’t.
For example, one would-be grandmother assured Pearson, “This decision was right for my kids,” before adding sadly, “I’m not going to have grandchildren. So that part of my life is just over.” Others who face silent golden years when they expected the patter of little feet are still hoping to convince their adult children to reconsider. One mother said she gently reminds her intentionally childfree daughter that she might not always feel this way—that the woman her daughter will be in ten years “will not recognize the person she is today.”
According to Pearson, she received a largely hostile social media reaction to her article, mostly from millennials. Their “how dare you feel entitled to grandchildren?” reaction puts a “silencing effect” on the whole conversation. In generations past, hopeful grandmas and grandpas would encourage families, but they now simply keep quiet as their children remain unmarried into their thirties, often citing climate change, racism, and school shootings as their reasons to be childless. One 69-year-old mom said her daughter has “made it perfectly clear … that this subject is not to be discussed.”
It’s difficult to imagine a more practical “ideas have consequences” moment than this. The inability of so many to articulate why not having grandkids is a tragedy and to be honest about their grief reveals much about our values. We’ve lost even the language to say what people for most of history took for granted. It is good and normal to want to see your descendants, and it hurts when that hope is dashed.
This moment also illustrates how ideas and their consequences are intergenerational. The view that children are unnecessary burdens or optional accessories did not start with millennials, but it has reached its logical conclusion in that generation. The rapid disappearance and replacement of once-common family relationships, including siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents has made the world lonelier for young and old alike.
Christians should “mourn with those who mourn,” which is what Pearson’s article attempted. The pain of never becoming a grandparent should be acknowledged and legitimized, and parents should not be bullied into unconditionally affirming every choice their grown children make. Kids aren’t products, so no one is “owed” grandkids, and not everyone will or should get married, but some choices are better for society than others. The record number of people in our world choosing to remain barren points to a deep societal sickness.
Christians should also witness to a countercultural way of life, including a positive perspective on children. At least, we can make sure they know they’re not burdens or accessories, that they bring joy, and that we hope—Lord willing—the same joy may one day find them.
None of this by itself will turn our demographic future around. But until it’s once again okay to look forward to seeing our children’s children, there won’t be much of a demographic future in the first place.
Copyright 2024 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.
