Monte Mader

My family would have had a very different response.

Right.

Oh, they're like their response would have been, oh, well, she has to carry the term.

No questions asked.

Like, we're sorry.

We're sorry that this happened, but ultimately it's a gift from God and this is what she has to do.

His family, to their credit, especially her stepmother, was like, she gets to make every decision along the way.

We're going to support every decision she makes.

We are also going to like help the police.

We are going to press charges.

We are going to they handled it exactly the right way.

And it was that was also very different for me to see that they responded to her with such compassion and support versus demonization, because we see this culturally now outside of the church where, you know, the first question that a woman gets asked if she's been assaulted is, well, what were you wearing?

Were you drinking?

You know, where were you?

Why were you doing that?

And to see them that there was absolutely no response of that at all.

Because when I was growing up, purity culture obviously negatively impacts men and women, but it's often directed more heavily at women.

And both myself and any of my friends who have deconstructed or people I've met that deconstructed from similar groups have all said that pregnancy outside of marriage, no matter the cause,

was so shameful and so bad that all of us said we would rather tell our parents that we had accidentally killed someone than that we had gotten pregnant.

And that's a very common sentiment in women who have left this particular type of high control movement.