The Forgotten Grief Of Fathers

A lot of men can describe the exact second they heard the words “I’m pregnant” and what happened next, their mind racing through fear, responsibility, and what kind of man they’re going to be. But almost nobody asks the next question out loud: what happens to the father when an abortion happens, and he’s told to stay quiet? That silence can turn into years of shame, drifting, and numbness, even for men who look fine on the outside.  

We sit down with Greg Mayo, award-winning author of Almost Daddy: The Forgotten Story, to talk about men’s abortion grief, post-abortion trauma, and why the cultural conversation leaves fathers without language or support. Greg shares his own story of abortion loss, how unresolved pain can show up as addiction and escapism, and the moment he finally broke isolation by telling the truth in a church small group. We also dig into the surprising statistics, including the “one in five men” reality, and why so few men seek help from clergy or church leaders.  

Greg explains why he chose to write a novel instead of a memoir, and how story can disarm politics long enough for real empathy and spiritual healing to begin. We close with practical next steps, a challenge to raise the sails toward healing, and a call for men to lead, serve, and step into the fight with courage and compassion. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs words for what he’s carried, and leave a review so more men can find a path forward.

You can visit his website to learn more at:

https://gregmayoauthor.com/

Chapter Markers

• 0:00
• Welcome To The Inner Fight
• 0:36
• The Shock Of An Unexpected Pregnancy
• 2:06
• Greg Mayo And Almost Daddy
• 4:59
• Why Men’s Abortion Stories Stay Hidden
• 8:48
• Greg’s Story Of Loss And Hardening
• 14:15
• Why Fiction Can Tell The Truth
• 19:12
• The Numbers And The Church Silence
• 24:37
• Helping Men Name The Wound
• 27:39
• How To Reach Greg And Start Healing
• 30:03
• Get In The Fight As Men
• 32:03
• Closing Prayer And Sendoff

Visit www.thesavagepath.com for more on David, his book The Savage Path: A Memoir of Modern Masculinity, and the Savage Path Ministries Corp.

Transcript

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Welcome To The Inner Fight

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Wrestling with the Inner Man. Because the first fight we face each and every day is a fight with our own flesh. Do we listen to our selfish, sinful nature or to our divine nature guided by the Holy Spirit? Your host David Savage is a product of the West Texas Desert and energy industry. His desire is to inspire and help other men win spiritual warfare. We hope you're ready to rumble because wrestling with the inner man begins now.

The Shock Of An Unexpected Pregnancy

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Good afternoon, wrestlers. Hey, as men, the closest we get to participate in creation as image bearers of God is fathering a child. It is a gigantic moment in any man's life, regardless of age, when he learns that he has gotten a woman pregnant. It is a moment of overwhelming joy for married couples who might have been struggling to have children. Seems very common these days with fertility issues. It can be a moment of mixed feelings for a married couple who thought they were through having children, only to learn that they had been blessed again with the oops baby, perhaps a little later in life than they were expecting. And it can be downright terrifying to a young man, perhaps still a teenager himself, who became sexually active outside of marriage and never considered the outcome of a possible pregnancy. Back in 2000, there was a very popular song by a band named Third Eye Blind called Ten Days Late, with lyrics describing what goes on in a guy's mind when faced with an unexpected pregnancy. Here are a few of the lines from that song. Boy, your life got complicated. And then the last line, give me a minute to figure out my state. You know, so he's trying to just absorb this and the magnitude of it and how he's going to respond to it and what they'll

Greg Mayo And Almost Daddy

SPEAKER_02 2:06

do. But so that's just a setup to introduce my guest today. His name is Greg Mayo, and he's the award-winning author of Almost Daddy, the Forgotten Story, and its Compassion 12-step recovery guide for healing after abortion. His work centers on helping men find hope, healing, and a restored relationship with God. So, Greg, welcome to Wrestling with the Inner Man. Please give our audience more on your background and what made you to write such a sensitive book on an even more sensitive topic.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Hey, David, thanks for having me. Um thanks to all your wrestlers out there listening. I wrestled in high school, by the way. So I came from a background of storytelling. Uh newspapers, magazines, eventually books. Almost Daddy's my second novel. And and so 16 years ago, I walked through my own healing journey, which we'll talk about later from abortion loss, and I learned that the more I talked about it, others did too. Because it's something men don't talk about, even though they're deeply affected by it. And we can go over stats on that later if you want. But the thing is, David, everywhere I went for the past 14 years and everywhere I spoke, no matter how small the audience, I kept meeting men carrying similar wounds to mine and carrying them in complete silence. They had no resources, no language for it. And so I realized if I wrote a novel, if I if I took on this topic in a way that wasn't political, um, that wasn't trying to browbeat anybody, that was just sharing a story about one man's loss, pain, and redemption, then maybe I could reach more men and help more men find healing. Man, that's terrific.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Uh it is so politically charged, and it's in fact, I I've been estranged from my stepson because of his live-in girlfriend, and when Roe v. Wade got overturned, you know, they they just can't be around us because you know, uh, we have different political thoughts on that, and and that that's really a shame, but it is a very charged topic, and it it's such a unique way that you uh you chose to write it more as a novel. So, you know, the subtitle of your book is The Forgotten Story, man, and that's for sure the truth, or maybe you're trying to forget it. Uh when we've been preparing for the show, you were telling me that wherever you've spoken all over the country, you typically have two kinds of people that come up to you afterward. One says, I've never considered what it was like for the father in in an abortion scenario, and then the other is someone who said, Hey, you know, that's my story too, and I've never talked about it. So why is this perspective and those who have experienced it so buried?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Oh,

Why Men’s Abortion Stories Stay Hidden

SPEAKER_01 4:59

so that's a great question. And there's a few reasons for that. None of them are simple. But one of the big things I think I want to key on with you, David, is uh it's the cultural messaging. Uh the cultural conversation around abortion is incredibly polarizing. It people think when you start talking about the human side of the story, which people really don't want to hear, they think you're trying to make some kind of political point. And so because of that, men just bury the experience, really to avoid backlash or misunderstandings or being not invited to holiday dinners or whatever. But it's a cultural messaging. And if I challenge any of your listeners to think of movies where there's an unplanned pregnancy and the man is portrayed as what he's supposed to be. The leader, the one that says, Hey, you know what, this may not have been in our plans, but we're gonna figure this out. I'm gonna be here. You don't see that. And I could give you example after example of movies, TV shows where the man's either non-existent, doesn't have a voice, uh, or his only job is to support whatever I say in quotes she decides. And so that disconnect, and and I want to share a little anecdote about that that I think will illustrate it perfectly. About eight or nine years ago, I was the leader of a celebrate recovery. Uh it's a for your listeners that don't know, that's a toll-based uh recovery group that's that's faith-based, so it it's in churches and whatever. Well, anyway, as a leader, you're asked to share different celebrate recoveries. And so I was speaking at one in southern Indiana sharing my testimony about abortion loss and healing, and the same thing happened, David. Um, somebody came up to me afterwards, a guy and shared his story, and then an actual woman came up to me and said, Oh my gosh, I never thought about the man. And so we had those conversations. By then I was already used to having them. But here's the strange thing that happened. I I go out to my truck and there's a guy waiting for me by my truck, and he tells me, You know, I've been sober 22 years, and I said, Congratulations. He said, Well, hang on a minute, there's more. He said, When I was a junior in college, my girlfriend got pregnant and she had an abortion. He said, I started drinking three days later and didn't stop for eleven years. And he started tearing up at this point. And he said, Until I heard you tell your story tonight, I never made the connection between her abortion and my drinking. Remarkable. That's why it's the forgotten story, right? And me and this dude stood there and talked for two hours. Um guys have been so conditioned that it's almost become subliminal that you just don't get to say anything, you don't get to have a feeling. And it's yeah, I'm trying to change that, and a lot of other guys are too.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Yeah. Well, the uh actually I did a little background on that song Ten Days Late uh by Third Eye Blind, and and it wasn't the uh the songwriter, but he uh the guy who sang it, he said it was a friend of his, and and and and in that situation, you know, the rest of the lyrics talk about he's talking back to the ocean, he's sitting by the ocean trying to decide, and they were very young, and he goes, you know, we're gonna have it. And they just decided to have the baby, and they got together, and and then uh they had another one, and so he became the the songwriter became the godparent of uh this child, and that they have no regrets at all, and they were just so happy they had the baby. And so that was one where uh it worked out right, and the man did play the role that he wanted to, and I and you'd like you'd at least like to have the opportunity, you know, to to say that, or hey, I'm I'm willing to I've been close enough to you to be intimate, you know, so there could be some deep level of love. You just haven't been married yet, or but yeah, it's it's really, really a touchy subject. So

Greg’s Story Of Loss And Hardening

SPEAKER_02 8:48

well, why don't you share your personal story if you don't mind?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Okay, so briefly, and let me preface by saying uh abortion is the middle of the story, okay, uh, for the man and the woman. It's not the beginning, like they don't get to this unplanned pregnancy situation or abortion situation, and they were fine before that. So we don't have time to go into all those implications, but it's important to note. But I was 18, um, just about ready to graduate from high school when my girlfriend's mom came and picked me up, and the three of us went for a drive, and she told me, you know, my daughter's pregnant, I'm gonna take care of it. I was like, Well, what does that mean? Wait a minute, you know? And and she said she was gonna have an abortion. And I protested, and it didn't matter. And so back to that cultural thing, David, I fell back into the cultural narrative. I'm like, okay, I I let my voice be heard, and and her mom said it's gonna happen anyway, so I went with them to the clinic. Um I was there inside seven or eight seconds, they asked me to wait outside, and so I sat on the steps while my girlfriend had an abortion. Now, a couple important things to note about that. There were, I don't know, maybe the day before or that morning, there had been a protest, not like sidewalk advocates, sidewalk counselors, people praying. I'm not talking about that. There had been a protest. And I know that because the the poster board said that were left said stuff like burn in hell, baby killer, and a picture of a mangled fetus, you know, stuff like that. And so in that moment, I remember looking at that thinking, oh, okay, those are those Christians. Got it. Stay away from them. That's in that's important to my story. So I spent the next four years. Uh I I went to college, I flunked out. It turns out if you sign up for classes and don't go, they all give you Fs. Wonder where the hell it worked. But turns out it is. Yeah, it's kind of rude. And so I drifted uh for about four years. I moved all over the country and and all the things I was doing, David, and this is important to note, all of the acting out behaviors uh uh stemmed from that moment, that abortion, and those the pain, the the shame, the regret, the depression, the anxiety, all the stuff I didn't have a name for, didn't didn't know what to do with came out in acting out behaviors. Couldn't hold a job, couldn't stay in one place too long. Um at 22 I experienced abortion loss again. And this time it was via a phone call. I was in western Nebraska working construction because nothing says, you know, fun for a 22-year-old like Western Nebraska in construction. But um and I spent some time with somebody before I left and and so they called me. I'd been out there, I don't know, a couple, three months, whatever it was, and said, Hey, I'm pregnant, I just called to let you know I'm gonna have an abortion. I fought, I argued, um I offered to marry her, I I offered to raise a kid by myself, nothing was gonna change her mind. I told her to wait and I'd be there first thing in the morning, and she said, You won't make it. My appointment's the first thing, and it'll be done before you get here. And the last thing I said to her on the phone, I begged her, uh, please don't kill my baby. And she said, It's not a baby and it's not your choice. And so I tell people, David, it the first abortion hurt me, the second one hardened me. Now, there are some pedantic people that hear that story and go, Well, don't you understand how that happened? And I'm like, Don't you understand trauma response? You know? Um and so it was it wasn't until I was 39 and had been married for nine years and had three kids that I even got in touch with the need for abortion healing. Um I I like I said earlier, when you asked me why I wrote the book to begin with, it was to reach men like me who were suffering in silence and thought nobody else in the world had experienced what they experienced. That's that's the short version.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Yeah. You know, I uh I saw that movie Unplanned, and you know, that gave me a little bit more of a perspective uh of what a young woman goes through. Because I went to Texas AM University and that uh clinic that she went to was in Bryan, right there near near the Texas AM campus, you know, which is in college station in Bryan. And you know, and they had uh her taking like the uh the chemical pill on one of them. I think she'd maybe been through two or whatever, and they had like this perspective of the camera angle was like up high, like you're you know, really almost like God looking down on her, and she's writhing in pain. And it wasn't at all what you know they had uh described to her. That experience would be like, oh, you just take a pill and that's it, you know, and and uh and then all of that angst. And then, you know, I learned through our church that there's an organization here called Rachel's Retreat, where women who again have not never talked about it for years, you know, now they can go on this retreat and process it and kind of forgive themselves and kind of have closure. But there I I understood talking to a friend of ours who went to that that there were men on that retreat and that they offer that. I was surprised, but but uh so you know why why make it a novel instead of a biography since you did have you know this experience yourself.

Why Fiction Can Tell The Truth

SPEAKER_02 14:15

How did you make that writing choice?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Well, I made it a novel for a few reasons. Um first is that making it fiction gave me the freedom to tell a truer story. See, fiction may not be real, but it's often more true than than anything else, right? Interesting. Uh you look at how some of our greatest truths are communicated down through the ages, and it's true story. Like Christ himself used story all the time, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

And the other thing is by writing a novel, I could combine not only my own experiences, but the experiences of the countless men I had talked to and kind of amalgamize them into one relatable character who would make sense to a wider group of men, not just me. Um, another reason I went with fiction is because fiction allows the reader to step inside the story, to find himself and the characters and in the experiences and the feelings and the actions of places. It's more free for the reader instead of trying to figure out well who's this author and like what's trying to step inside my story. They're trying to step inside a broader story. And then the last thing I think that made it important to make it a novel, I wanted it the story itself of what a man experiences after abortion law to be lost, to be accessible, not only to men, but also to women, to pro-life people, to pro-choice people. Not to sound corny, David, but I wanted it to be an invitation to set aside the political discourse and and just walk in the steps of somebody else's journey for a while and somebody else's experience. And I'll tell you something. I and I've got incredible reviews on the book, and I I've been thankful for each and every one, but the one that actu that stays with me that touched me so deeply was from a young woman who openly explained herself as um a pro-choice leftist. And she wrote the most glowing review of my book and said, I never thought about the man, I never even had an inkling of an idea, was her expression, uh, that a man might feel anything after an abortion. And she said, I love the fact that your book's not politics, that it's about this guy's story, this guy that I rooted for, and by the end of the book, I I wished he had had more of a voice. Now you don't get that kind of reaction from somebody so diametrically opposed unless you do it through an honest story. And I and that's why it made sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

You know, I I love that because uh I think about a lot of the sales training I had in the third party story, you know, it's it's uh that's exactly what we're talking about. And I I think about uh in the Bible when Nathan had to confront the king, David, you know, about uh his infidelity, you know, with Bathsheba and then sending Uriah to be killed at the front lines. It's like, okay, I how do I confront the king here and then not get killed, you know, because he has that power. He goes, Well, what if there's this uh this shepherd, you know, and he's got a bunch of sheep, you know, and it's not like I just has one, you know, what would you do in that situation? He goes, Well, well, yeah, of course, you know, I would and then he then he well then that's you, you know, and I think it is a a terrific uh literary tool, tech sales technique, whatever you want to call it, to get people to hear or experience a story, you know, more objectively. And then so I I really want to tip my hat to you, you know, as a as a fellow author, I who you know, I was debating about how to write my book, and you know, I I made it more of a memoir. And then when I was talking to the publishers, they're like, nobody knows who you are. Why would anybody want to read David Savage's memoirs? Well, um, yeah, maybe maybe I didn't choose the right uh vehicle, but uh well let me read a little bit from uh some of the review, and uh this was on the Amazon page. It says the book takes us on a journey through the complexities of emotions and how unresolved issues can shape our lives. And that's really what we're talking about here. That's what we're wrestling with here. We're talking about wrestling. The prospect of dealing with the pain that comes from major negative experiences tends to chase us into the arms of escapism, and that's true of all things, negative experiences. We try to numb the pain or distract ourselves, but it's buried deep somewhere, choking us ever so gently. I love that expression, till we begin to gasp for breath. And I was wondering uh if you had an idea of the number of men in this situation, you know, or just some demographic background on abortions, or I don't know uh how to present it, but it's gotta be a lot of people.

The Numbers And The Church Silence

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, so let's talk about that for a second. One in five men in this country will lose a child to abortion by the time they're 45. 20 percent.

unknown 19:22

Right?

SPEAKER_01 19:22

That's a lot, yeah. The the number may be a little bit higher, but because of men who didn't know, you know, whatever. But but one in five, now it's important to understand, and it's really important for your listeners to understand, that's not just out there somewhere. That's at the ball game, at the pub, that's also in your church, that's in your men's group. Well, guys aren't talking about it, right. I'll tell you something else. A study that came out in 22 found that only seven percent and and the study was on men and the impact of abortion on men. So all the men in the study had been impacted by abortion. Only seven percent, David, said that they would go to a clergy member or church leader to find help. So people I I was speaking to a guy when I was doing a talk in Alabama and he was like, Well, there's nobody in our church. There's no men in our church, and I said, Yeah, there are. They're not talking about it. Well, why wouldn't they? Well, because of how you present the message. Or the most damaging thing the church does, in my opinion, is silence. You have men sitting in the pews every every Sunday, 20% of your congregation, suffering in shame and alone and feeling isolated. And we know that's the devil's favorite tool, right? Oh, yes. Isolation. Um In fact, when I was 39, I'd been going to church for nine years, been married for nine years, and I was doing a book study on a book that had nothing to do with abortion, didn't even say the word, with thirteen or fourteen other guys from my church. And at one point the Holy Spirit uh prodded me to tell my story. And I'll be honest, I argued with the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

I'm sure you know some people can really another wrestling match, yes. Right?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Um just like Jacob. And um and I said, No, no, I'm not telling the story to these people. I go to church with them, it's not gonna happen. And the Holy Spirit said, But it it is. And I finally did, and I was scared to death. But by the time I locked up the church and got my truck that night, three other guys had shared their story that they had never told anybody. See, that was the moment, David, when I stepped out of the isolation, right? Um when I stepped out of the the feeling that uh I was the only one, and and finally walked my way into healing. And so everything I've done since then, and that was sixteen years ago, not everything I've done, that's a little hyperbolic, but um much of what I've done has been directed at reaching other men who are like I was, alone.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Man, that's Truth. It's like who's going to trust first to share, you know, and risk being judged, you know, especially you know in a in a church group. And I do that here on on the podcast, and I'll even say today I had uh two situations back in my early, early 20s where I had uh a phone call like that says, Hey, I think I might be pregnant. And I was super sweating it. Um, we you know, we were basically we were just waiting it out, you know, to see. And then in in both of those cases, you know, it it wasn't, you know, she wasn't in fact pregnant, but man, a lot goes through a guy's mind when you've just graduated from college and have your whole career and plans and everything. You're like, I just wasn't thinking about getting married right now or being a father, and and boy, I remember how uh restless I was, but you know, I wanted to do the right thing too. And uh in one case, uh I think it was actually contrived and was manipulation, you know, to try to get you to commit more to the relationship, and that happens sometimes too. And then but you know, there's just a whole another topic about, you know, look, if you're gonna be sexually active, you know, you both have responsibility for whatever your you know prevention methods are gonna be if you're not intending to get pregnant. So uh but anyway, I just uh want to uh affirm you for doing that, and then you know, the fact that you got three guys there out of that group that night is pretty remarkable, and that's allows that greater healing. So what have you done uh, you know, in terms of how you so you you wrote the book in 2020, that's correct? And so you know, so the book tries to answer some pretty difficult questions, you know, from Amazon's website and it says, Could Ben, the main character, ever find peace? Was healing possible? Could he remember the man he was meant to become? Almost Daddy invites you to walk alongside Ben on his journey from loss to regret and hope, healing, and the restoration of his relationship with God. It is a story of heartbreak, resilience, and the quiet courage it takes to reclaim life when everything seems lost. So, Greg, you and I, you know, we have this shared passion to help others, uh, but especially rudderless young men. So your book published in 2020, you know, you've been speaking at conferences, and so how is your book in ministry uh helping uh the men who have experienced this?

Helping Men Name The Wound

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Yeah, so uh great question. I started speaking um six or seven years before the book came out, but it really amped up when the novel came out. And I think the biggest thing it's helping men do is get in touch with their own laws. Some of them have have buried it so deep they've forgotten it until they hear my story. Until they hear me speak. And I'll tell you something, David, I speak everywhere, I don't care where it is. Um I've speak I've I've spoken at um country club luncheons for you know these old country club people in down in Florida, and I've I've spoken to a social worker and school counselors out in LA. That was interesting. When I got the invitation, I was like, you know who you're inviting, right? Yeah, you know what I talk about. But but I I think that um the biggest thing is the awareness. And see, uh I wrote the 15-week study for men, um almost adding a men's guide to healing after abortion, but there are also other resources out there that I I've read myself that I find good, and I sometimes turn people on to. Why? Because my job is not to just promote my resource, my job is to help guys find their path to healing, whatever that may look like. And and so just by me talking about it, just by by me doing shows like this and others, um by me being in front of men and men's conferences and Iron Sharpens Iron and Noble Warriors and all these different men's conferences that aren't explicitly pro-life, every single one of them, David, guys come up to me after and share their story. It it's almost like men need permission and uh to share something like that, and they get permission by hearing another man share it. Um and so that's that's been the big thing with what it's doing. It's not quantifiable. You know, you were in sales, so was I. You know, we don't I don't have a measured metric for it, right? Um, which on my business head drives me insane. But I know that it's reaching people, I know that the story is helping people, I'm hearing other people talk about it. I did a podcast um uh a year and a half ago, and the host was post-abortive, and he shared that with me. And he shared that he read the novel first and underlined so many parts in it that related to him that he said I almost decided just to dye the whole novel blue. Um and that made me so happy, not only as a writer, and you understand you're an author too, but what made me happy about it was that I really did do the best story I think I could, and I think I did the story God wanted me to tell, and that it was connecting with men and helping them find their own pathway to peace and and God.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Man, that's fantastic.

How To Reach Greg And Start Healing

SPEAKER_02 27:39

So um let's just say I'm a listener out here and I'm like, wow, Greg Mayo, I I need to find out uh you know where he's talking next or where can I get this book. Why don't you share that uh where where people can find your information or where you might be speaking next, or if you have a website.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Uh yeah, so uh the website is Greg MayoAuthor.com or almost Eddie.com. Both you type in either one of them, they go to the same spot. Um my daughter-in-law is working to update my upcoming speaking list because I don't know how to, David. Yeah, I know. And thank God she's an IT person. But uh the book's available there, the books are available on Amazon too. Uh, but I would encourage anybody listening, uh if even if you just have questions, just reach out. There's a contact contact me button on the website. Uh go direct my email. We can set up a time to talk, we can do a zoom, whatever you're more comfortable with. But I would love to I would love to hear from you. And one thing I want to share, and and there's somebody listening right now, David, who's feeling this way, so I gotta share this because I hear it all the time. Men say, Well, you know, this abortion happened in my past and blah, blah, blah, but God forgave me. And I say, Absolutely right, that's what Christ does. Christ forgives and heals. What are you doing about healing? And they say, Oh, no, no, Jesus forgave me. And I would share a quote from St. Augustine who said, God will provide the wind, but it is man that must raise the sails. Meaning, a lot of guys still hide in their shame behind that phrase, Well, I don't need to walk out into healing. God forgave me. If that's you, if that's what you're thinking, um no. No. God has a healing path for you. It may not be my stuff, it may be some other stuff. I I again I've read every abortion book on for men out there, so uh maybe it's something else, but rest assured, brother, if you're listening to this, rest assured, two two absolute truths. Yes, Christ forgave you, but B, you have work to do. Put your tool belt on, slip on your boots, and let's go.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Yeah, that's awesome. I like that. God provides the wind, but we have to raise the sails. I love that. I love the imagery of that quote. Um, any other advice or comments you'd like to leave with the audience here?

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Uh

Get In The Fight As Men

SPEAKER_01 30:05

well, just uh, you know, with with the overarching theme of wrestling, um, which is what we're talking about uh on this podcast and all your episodes that I've listened to, and I think that's great, um this is absolutely something that as a culture, and as a culture and the subculture I'm in Christian Western culture, that we absolutely need to be wrestling with the fervency that Jacob wrestled with the angel or God, depending on who you read. And I say that because this is the absolute defining human rights issue of our time. We have lost over 65 million babies in the last 52 years in the United States, and since 1980, over 1.6 billion with a B have been lost to abortion in the world globally. Um this is an absolute spiritual battle. It's it's part of the overarching spiritual warfare that seems to be amping up. And so, whatever level, whatever way, even if you're not post-abortive, go volunteer at a PRC, a pregnancy resource center. You know, volunteer to talk to young men. If you're a godly man, you don't have to be post-abortive to help that man make the right decision. So, my my encouragement is just get in the fight. Because for the longest time, if you go to any pro-life event, what you see is 70, 80, 90 percent women. So, as men, I my encouragement is we have to get out there waist deep in the muck and the mud and get in this fight to protect lives and to help people heal who have already experienced loss or abortion.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

Well said. Because in the Bible, which is what I believe as a strong believing Christian, it is the male role to be the spiritual leader of the family, and that's really how we got into this spot, is that we've been kind of abdicating our responsibilities. So I would uh echo that encouragement, and then let me uh just go ahead and close this out with a prayer. Dear

Closing Prayer And Sendoff

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for Greg Mayo for this book and for the way he delicately handled it, and for even the unique way of the third party story and and telling it in a fictional way so that people can identify with that character without getting too polarized about the politics of the situation or whether they know Greg and were making a judgment on him as an individual. So we just asked that you would be with every listener out there, every man who's ever gotten that call, hey, I'm ten days late, and uh and to respond in a way that would be honoring to you. And Greg just said we want to call men up into a life that represents a more Christ-like life, and that is fathering children and taking up our role in the creation process, the miracle of a new life. And we just uh thank you for this episode in Christ's name.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Thanks for listening to Wrestling with the Inner Man with David Savage. We believe the winners in this ring courageously follow God's word, loves and protects God's women, excels at God's work, and betters God's world with his children. For information, reach out to David at David at the SavagePath.com. That's David at the Savagepath.com or visit his website, thesavagepath.com. Tune in next time as Wrestling with the Interman tackles more tough topics to train up a generation of better men.