Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently spoke at a “White Dudes for Harris” campaign call over Zoom. During his commentary and championing of the current vice president, he spoke about abortion.

Speaking to almost 200,000 participants, the transportation secretary began by saying, “Yes, women’s freedom is Exhibit A after Donald Trump demolished the right to choose,” referencing the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Democrats are placing the abortion issue front and center in their campaign.

“Men are also more free in a country where we have a president who stands up for things like access to abortion,” Buttigieg said. “Men are more free when the leader of the free world and the leader of this country supports access to birth control.”

He was clearly referencing the fact that men could be more “free” with women and not be concerned with the consequences of fathering a child. Unfortunately, his words are demeaning to the role of fathers as well as aligned with the major misconception about the “right of abortion.” The divorce between the beauty of the sexual act and its purpose has created a culture that strictly seeks pleasure over everything else.

For someone to claim, regardless of being a politician or not, that abortion is better for men because they can be “more free” in their relations with women is degrading procreation, children, women and men. As the Church teaches, the marital act is the most powerful human act. It is the only natural act that produces new life and it is an act that binds man and woman so powerfully that they remain united even after the act is over.

Sex unites man and woman physically, but also spiritually and psychologically. This is the reason why so many young men and women are ashamed following a one-night stand. So, they go out of their way to avoid running into this person again. They are also bound, many times, because they conceive a child as a result of their embrace. That is what the sexual act does and that is why it ought to solely belong to marriage. So often, women are left to endure this reality alone because men shirk their responsibility.

It appears that Secretary Buttigieg believes that this is freedom.

The sexual act is so beautiful because it unites two people but also because it can result in another immortal human being. For families and for society, this means that we must respect both the marital embrace and the children that may come from it. Our society needs men to be more responsible and sacrificial towards women, not less. Every human person deserves to be loved by his or her parents, which means we need our fathers.

Studies have even found that “children who spend their entire childhood living with both biological parents have, on average, fewer achievement and behavioral problems in childhood than those who spend time in other family types.” Children are hurt by absentee fathers, but they are even more hurt by fathers who deny them their fundamental right to life.

Fathers who desert their children or seek to have them killed rather than care for them are not “more free.” They are rejecting their call to love. They are choosing a life of comfort rather than greatness, but ease never translates into holiness. Caring for children requires giving up some of your wants and desires to care for them. However, this does not strip us of our freedom, it liberates us from the slavery to selfishness.

For all men out there, respect the power and beauty of the sexual act by reserving it for marriage — the permanent union that allows women and children to be cared for as they deserve — and the union that gives men the true freedom to love as God loves his children: sacrificially and completely.