October 23, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Among the many dimensions to the pro-life movement explored on this week's episode of The Van Maren Show was the question of why more men aren’t involved in pro-life activism. Jonathan Van Maren believes one of the overlooked factors is men’s struggle with pornography.

“One of the things keeping a lot of men out of the pro-life movement is the fact that Internet pornography has become so ubiquitous,” Van Maren said. “The rates of men that have gotten hooked on this digital toxin is approaching the rate of 80 percent. And I've talked to a lot of guys who I knew were like very convicted about the pro-life movement, they really wanted to get involved, and they wouldn't show up for stuff.”

He recalled these men admitting to being porn viewers, which left them conflicted with the knowledge “they're contributing to the victimization of women and children by using the products ... and so a lot of guys are looking at what the pro-life movement does, which is protecting and defending women and children, looking at themselves and the things that they might struggle with. And they're saying, yeah, I'm just going to sort of sit this one out because obviously the pro-life movement doesn't want somebody, somebody like me.”

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“If you're not quitting porn for all the million amazing reasons to quit porn, then quit porn for the babies,” Van Maren responded to them. “You get somebody who knows how to how to tear down vice and build up virtue is exactly the sort of movement we need. We're a movement full of people who have had abortions, former abortion doctors, abortion clinic workers. We’re people from every imaginable background united behind the idea that we need to protect and defend women and children.”

Jason Jones, who is president and founder of Human Rights Education Organization and Movie to Movement as well as producer of the pro-life movie Bella, agreed and expanded the observation to any suffering from all sorts of vices.

“I would say the gift of your porn addiction, the gift, the gift of your opioid addiction, the gift of your depression ... is empathy and humility,” Jones said. “When you struggle with something and you come out of it? You can understand other people. You can have empathy and charity for other people.

“So you need to hold yourself to the same standard you hold other people,” Jones continued. “But that means the same standard. It doesn't mean a lower standard or a higher standard means the same standard. And so when you can forgive and understand why other people could be trapped in pornography because of depression, loneliness, all the things that lead people into this or opioid addiction, whatever it is, then you can have the same understanding for yourself.”

Jones added that, as a former atheist raised “with all of those habits and inclinations,” he now thanks God “because that gives me empathy, thoughtfulness and the knowledge of that, that there are all these people with little specks in their eye. And if I am to help them, I can't be walking around with the plank in my eye.”

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