Why does this woman want you to pay for her to have it all?

The revolt against consequence, nature and God

I don’t see why I should have to get fat if I eat fatty foods. I don’t see why I should have to get pregnant if I have sex. I don’t see why I should have to be rejected from Cambridge if I didn’t earn top grades. I don’t see why I can’t get married if I’m gay. I don’t see why I can’t be a pilot if I’m blind…

OK, that last one is a stretch, but the sentiment is the same.

In other words: I don’t like the natural consequences, so they must somehow be frustrated artificially.

And this is what we have done.

Unlike wise parents, who recognise that an infant cannot have whatever he wants — either because it is impossible or because constantly relenting will stunt his flourishing — we have become the parents who give in to every whinge, every tear and every complaint simply to pacify the child. We will even invent things to shield him from the consequences of his choices.

What kind of person does that child become?

We all know.

Roald Dahl knew when he sketched out his most memorable child characters, and the result was ugly. We used to recognise ugliness for what it was. Now we pretend it is beautiful.

But it isn’t.

We have become a society of weak cry-babies, throwing tantrums whenever we don’t get what we want. The infants are in charge. Professors who are idiots. Models who are fat and unattractive. Britons who can’t speak English. Boys who are girls.

The infant does not like authority. “It’s not fair!” So every authority must be smashed down, leaving the few remaining adults to live among the ruins.

This revolution has been a long time in the making: a revolution first against God, then against authority, against reason, against one another and, ultimately, against ourselves.

Because that’s how it goes.

Mess with God and with what God has given us, and watch the whole thing unravel. It’s not as though Scripture isn’t absolutely clear on this point. No matter how clever we think we are with our contraceptive pill, our anti-fat injections and our AI, we remain silly babies mucking it all up.

I blame the Protestants (naturally).

In a recent The Rest Is History podcast, Tom Holland commented astutely on über-Prot Martin Luther, saying that he had:

“…a scorn for superstition, overthrowing of idols….some of the things that people prior to Luther had regarded as being profoundly holy, Luther comes to condemn, and this has an impact, not just on Protestants, but on everyone. Before the ‘Reformation’ there was just ‘the Church’. It has become known as the Catholic Church merely by the process of having to define itself against Protestantism. One of the logical end points of Protestantism is atheism, because if you begin by overthrowing superstition you could end up banishing God. Luther has a massive emphasis on Sola Scriptura…all the other panoply of [Catholic] doctrine and tradition is irrelevant…but you could end up following that logic to get rid of the Bible itself, and I think that’s where we are, a progressive morality is a kind of post-believing Protestantism. So secularists and humanists have a very evangelical tone, they are into overthrowing idols and that evangelical quality of Protestantism remains vivid and such a profound moral influence in the 21st Century — that moral progressivism, which is basically a kind of Godless Protestantism, is converting countries that were previously defined by their Catholicism. Think of Ireland. In my lifetime it has gone from being a Catholic country to being a country where the ruling ideology is a Godless Protestantism, and the irony of that is intense.”

And all of this brings me to the inevitable news of the day.

A woman who has chosen to live like a man is whinging because she cannot have the things peculiar to a woman. Well… she can, of course. But she doesn’t want to have to choose. She wants it all, because she is a big, manly baby.

Meg Jones, captain of the England women’s rugby union team, the Red Roses, is in a same-sex relationship with England 7s and Leicester Tigers teammate Celia Quansah and is calling for players to have access to fertility support and egg freezing.

Obviously, it is not enough to be disordered; the cost of the disorder has to be paid by others. Because that’s what love and kindness look like in an upside-down world.

Speaking to BBC Sport, Jones said: “Why should my opportunity to have a family be taken away from me because I want to pursue my career?”

Let’s overlook, for now, the fact that the question is loaded with false assumptions. It seems to me that she isn’t really looking for an answer.

Jones has spoken openly about her plans for motherhood and has already begun exploring fertility options with her fiancée. The couple recently attended a fertility clinic to assess their egg reserves and had considered freezing their eggs. Following medical advice, however, Jones said they decided there was no immediate need to do so and that they were likely to wait until after their wedding before attempting to conceive. (Spoiler alert: they won’t be able to.)

Jones has argued that fertility provision should become a more established part of the support offered to professional female athletes, particularly because sporting careers can coincide with some of the most important years for women considering motherhood.

The Red Roses already benefit from a maternity policy regarded as among the strongest in international women’s sport.

When approached about providing fertility packages for England players, a Rugby Football Union spokesperson said:

“We work hard to support players in the decisions they make around fertility and family planning and are proud to have been at the forefront of industry-leading support in this area. We already have comprehensive maternity and parental policies in place and are always open to exploring how that support can evolve.”

In August, Chelsea Women unveiled a partnership with a fertility company to provide workshops, treatments, counselling and assessments for their players. The Observer reported that the fund established by Chelsea would cover the cost of egg freezing for the whole squad.

Give the infants what they want!

Pass the cost on to others!

I have been married to a rugby player for 20 years. He is a big brute, and it is clear that men and women have different physiques for a reason. Men are generally stronger, faster and able to jump higher than women. Their physical characteristics equip them particularly well for protection and combat. Men are warriors. Rugby is good for men precisely because it channels these combatant tendencies and can cultivate the strong masculine traits needed to safeguard families, homes and communities.

Women’s bodies, meanwhile, are uniquely ordered towards pregnancy, childbirth and the nourishment of children.

Women can, of course, play rugby if they want to. But choices have costs.

And this is the point.

Increasingly, we seem unwilling to accept that anything should have a cost at all. Every door must remain open. Every choice must be reversible. Every natural limitation must be technologically overcome. And, increasingly, somebody else must pay for it.

Elite sport places enormous demands on the female body. Those demands can collide with fertility, pregnancy and motherhood. But rather than asking whether there is something significant in that collision — whether our bodies might be telling us something about the limits we are so determined to overcome — the modern instinct is simply to demand another technological intervention.

There are currently no mothers among the players in the core England women’s football team, despite the fact that the players are at peak fertility. Set that against collapsing birth rates across much of the West and the picture becomes more significant.

The mess is always harder to clean up than it was to make. But it can be cleaned up only if we are prepared to restore what was lost and go cap in hand to God.

He will have us back because He is infinitely merciful. But the humility has to come first. And humility begins with something the infant finds almost impossible to say:

Your will be done, not mine.