But I did feel the swell of hormones that flooded my system for the next three months, bringing me to lows I didn’t know existed, sweeping me through endless forests of my own fatigued emotions. I felt the fraying of my mind after months of sleepless nights piled unredemptively high, the ache of every muscle across my arms and spine each time I rocked my restless baby back to sleep, and the deeply-set self-loathing that creeps in with every moment of weakness, failure, or finitude and says, “You’re not a good mom.”

This is not extraordinary. It’s all quite common—normal, even. I would go so far as to say, I’ve had it pretty easy. I know women whose pregnancies left them bed-ridden for months or hospitalized, whose labor complications put their lives at risk, whose precious children have been born with health complications, and whose post-partum recoveries have been perilous.

So, imagine my reaction when I watched Doug Wilson summarize the purpose of woman’s existence and the female contribution to life on this planet by saying: “Women are the kind of people that people come out of.” His further clarification that, “It doesn’t take any talent to just reproduce biologically,” certainly did not make things better.

In a feat of rhetoric, Doug—can I call him that?—has managed to both reduce women to their reproductive value and minimize the value of that reproduction. We could talk about women’s right to vote or whether a husband should make all the decisions in a family until we’re blue in the face (some of us have), but if we don’t address the theological root of these issues, we will never be able to stop up the dam of debasing ideologies. Doug Wilson is fundamentally misrepresenting our origins and misunderstanding eternity. Let’s discuss it. Read more»

Mary Van Weelden | “Doug Wilson, Women, and the Weight of Eternity” | Aug 12, 2025

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Post authored by:

• Mary Van Weelden

  

  Mary Van Weelden is a journalist, writer, and junior high teacher. She is the copy editor for he HRA and she is working on a dual MA in biblical and theological studies at Westminster Seminary California. Mary and her husband live in Escondido, California, and attend Christ Presbyterian Church. You can find her on Twitter.

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