By the time I was a teenager in the 2000s, the notion of waiting until marriage to have sex was considered outdated. Few of my peers practiced it, and the societal expectation was quite the opposite. I remember the tension I felt between what I believed and what everyone around me was doing, including some of my friends from church. Having been bullied in my early teens, I longed to fit in and be accepted. But to be a “cool” girl came with a cost.
In today’s sexual culture, young women who aren’t sexually active face immense cultural pressure to engage in casual sexual activity for fear of shame, judgment, or social exclusion. Casual sex is now the norm, and young women are fixated on “normal” and social inclusion. As a result, many feel somewhat coerced into the post-sexual revolution paradigm that requires forfeiting one’s virginity in pursuit of acceptance.
The sexual revolution promised liberation. Women were told they could claim freedom, equality, and their place in the world on their own terms. With the arrival of reliable birth control and legalized abortion, women were promised intimacy without consequence, careers without disruption, and lives free of the “constraints” of biology or tradition.
But half a century later, the cracks in that promise are impossible to ignore. Far from empowering women, the sexual revolution has normalized a culture where women are expected to meet men’s desires while suppressing their own need for commitment, security and dignity. And when birth control fails, abortion becomes the hidden cost of keeping up the illusion that sex can be consequence-free.
How the sexual revolution changed the sexual ‘marketplace’
When the Pill first arrived in the 1960s, it was hailed as the great equalizer, finally allowing women to separate sex from motherhood. But what few anticipated was how radically it would reshape the “sexual marketplace.” By making casual sex seem consequence-free, it shifted expectations and pressured women to conform to a new sexual norm. Today, the pressure to engage in premarital sex is stronger than ever.
Author Louise Perry writes in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, “The pill offers this illusion of sex being a meaningless leisure activity. But just because you’re taking a contraceptive pill does not mean that you’re not emotionally affected by sex.”[1]
What was once a deeply intimate act tied to commitment and trust has been reduced to a transactional encounter that too often leaves women feeling used, discarded and alone.
And in this new sexual economy, it is men, not women, who have benefited most. Freed from the expectation of marriage before sex, men gained access to intimacy without obligation. Women, meanwhile, bore the physical risks of contraception and abortion, along with the emotional weight of being told to embrace detachment and suppress their own longing for love and commitment.
Mounting research reveals that this “liberation” has been incredibly harmful. A study of nearly 500 first-year college women found that casual sex correlated with clinically significant depression.[2] Another study in 2022 showed that women are significantly more likely than men to experience regret, anxiety, depression and social stigma after casual sex.[3]
This is not liberation. As Perry observes, “The evidence doesn’t reveal a generation of women reveling in sexual liberation — instead, a lot of women seem to be having unpleasant, crappy sex out of a sense of obligation.”
Abortion: The ‘safety net’ of the revolution
If the pill rewrote the rules of sex, abortion became the safety net that made the new sexual marketplace possible. The pill resulted in so much more casual sex that the result was actually an increase in the number of abortions.
Once casual sex was normalized, society needed a way to erase its consequences to preserve the illusion that sex could be free of cost or commitment. In this way, abortion became the necessary safety net for lacking or failed birth control. The CDC reports that nearly nine in 10 abortions are sought by women in uncommitted relationships.[4]
But the so-called solution has been devastating. Countless women carry the physical and emotional scars of abortions they were told would make life better. Instead of feeling empowered, many describe feeling isolated and coerced, their grief hidden beneath a cultural script that calls abortion liberation.
Men, however, gained sexual access without responsibility. As author Louise Perry notes, “Modern feminists who have only ever known a world with the Pill can easily forget that, in an era without contraception, a prohibition on sex before marriage served female, not male, interests.” The absence of such boundaries has not resulted in freedom but instead has left women lonely and deeply unhappy.
Far from securing equality, the tools of the sexual revolution have entrenched inequality. Women are left to carry the weight of “choice” alone.
Abortion is not liberation
Since the sexual revolution, sex has been increasingly separated from reproduction. For many, pregnancy is no longer seen as a natural outcome of sex but as a disruption to freedom and identity.
Vitae Foundation’s decades of research confirm this reality: most women choose abortion because it feels like the only way to preserve freedom and identity.
In one study, women described abortion as “the least of three evils,” believing it less devastating than either adoption or parenting. Motherhood was seen as the “death of self.” Adoption was viewed as a double loss: the loss of self and the loss of the child. Abortion seemed the only way to erase evidence of a mistake.[5]
And so, in a culture that teaches women their worth lies in pursuing a vision of freedom where motherhood is optional, abortion feels like the only way to survive.
Modern women, now offered the same “choices” as men in education, careers and independence, are often unprepared for motherhood because it is no longer seen as inevitable or even desirable. With birth control and abortion readily available, many never seriously consider when or if they will have children. When an unexpected pregnancy occurs, it comes as a profound shock. For women who cannot reconcile motherhood with their identity or life plans, abortion appears to be the only option to preserve their present and protect their future.
Yet Vitae’s research reveals that this so-called solution brings its own kind of death: a slow erosion of self, marked by guilt, regret and unacknowledged grief. Far from freeing women, abortion often traps them in cycles of trauma, secrecy and shame.
A new vision of liberation
If the sexual revolution taught women anything, it was this: you are on your own. Pregnancy became the woman’s problem, and abortion sold as the solution. But what our culture has never admitted, and what Vitae Foundation’s research confirms, is that this isn’t liberation. It is abandonment packaged as empowerment.
Instead of reordering society around the dignity and design of womanhood, the culture increasingly demanded that women function like men: fertility-free and emotionally detached from sex.
In Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington summarizes the idea well when she says, “By trying to make women ‘equal’ through sameness, we’ve medicalized fertility, industrialized childcare, and treated motherhood as a handicap.”[6]
In the wake of this “sexual liberation,” women are the ones facing the consequences. This reveals a crisis of abandonment: a culture where mothers are devalued and women are only handed “choice” as their key to freedom.
True liberation begins when mothers are valued and supported in our culture. It begins when women are not forced to choose from three devastating options. It begins when we treat motherhood as a noble and worthwhile endeavor.
From betrayal to renewal
The sexual revolution promised women the world: freedom, equality and control. But what it delivered was a cruel bait-and-switch. It erased the cultural safeguards that once protected women, normalized male detachment from commitment, and told women they must carry the burden of “choice” alone. But as the research makes clear, this isn’t freedom. It’s bondage.
The path forward is not easy, but it is clear. We must push for a culture in which women don’t feel like casual sex is the admission price for finding love and commitment, only to be left with costly consequences.
As a young woman, I once believed the false promises of the sexual revolution, and I can say from experience that its version of liberation is empty. True freedom is not found in erasing consequences but in reclaiming dignity, commitment and life.
Motherhood is difficult, but I will never regret sacrificing my personal freedom for my daughter. For her sake, and for the sake of all daughters, we must build a culture that honors women’s interests, celebrates motherhood and offers true support.
[1] Perry, L. (2022). The case against the sexual revolution: A new guide to sex in the 21st century. Polity Press
[2] Fielder, R. L., Walsh, J. L., Carey, K. B., & Carey, M. P. (2014). Sexual hookups and adverse health outcomes: a longitudinal study of first-year college women. Journal of sex research, 51(2), 131–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2013.848255
[3] McKeen, B. E., Anderson, R. C., & Mitchell, D. A. (2022). Was it Good for You? Gender Differences in Motives and Emotional Outcomes Following Casual Sex. Sexuality & culture, 26(4), 1339–1359. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-022-09946-w
[4] Kortsmit, K., Nguyen, A. T., Mandel, M. G., Hollier, L. M., Ramer, S., Rodenhizer, J., Whiteman, M. K., & Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, November 24). Abortion surveillance — United States, 2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Surveillance Summaries, 72(9), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss7209a1
[5] Vitae Research Institute. (n.d.). Summary of Study #1 – Abortion: The Least of Three Evils. https://vitaeresearchinstitute.org/research/abortion-the-least-of-three-evils-2/
[6] Harrington, M. (2023). Feminism against progress. Regnery Publishing
Barb Adamson is the Digital Media Coordinator for Vitae Foundation, a national nonprofit that facilitates research on abortion decision-making to inform effective pro-life messaging. She holds a Master of Arts in Communication from the University of Central Missouri and a Master of Arts in English from Truman State University. In addition to her professional work, Barb is a wife and mother who volunteers at a local women’s ministry.
