When Christians and feminists enter the abortion argument focused on rights, they disregard their own defining values.
As a Christian man whose academic study involves feminism I am troubled trying to take a stance on abortion, and I don’t think I’m the only one. If I support women in having total rights over their body then I risk having my Christianity questioned. If I support the legal ban on abortion I risk being labeled a patriarch, or at least insensitive. If I fall somewhere in the middle I risk being isolated from both feminism and Christianity. I want to be sensitive to women who have endured generations of oppression, but I also want to continue embracing the values of my faith. What’s a guy to do?
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Some of the core values of feminism can be seen either in Christ’s teaching or His actions.
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I think a closer examination of the intersectionality between feminism and Christianity offers some hope.
The current argument over abortion is not about any of these Christian or feminist values, it is one of rights. It pits the woman’s rights against the rights of the baby/fetus in a battle royale. Whichever side is determined to have slightly greater rights or inalienable rights wins and the claim to rights of the other are disregarded. If the argument is about rights and rights alone then it is not about care, love or liberation. When we enter an argument focused on rights as either a Christian or a feminist we are devaluing the values that define us.
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About Daniel S. Gluch
” If I support women in having total rights over their body then I risk having my Christianity questioned. If I support the legal ban on abortion I risk being labeled a patriarch, or at least insensitive. If I fall somewhere in the middle I risk being isolated from both feminism and Christianity.”
Surely you should decide what position to take based on your understanding of the morality involved, rather than out of fear of being cast out of one group or the other. For what it’s worth I know pro-choice christians and pro-life feminists.
I have also met a couple pro-choice feminists, and I think you are right in that some people see this fear of exclusion as a method of choosing their stances on moral issues, but the point of the above quote was that when taking a stance on ones moral values a person can find themselves as an outsider of the group that is supposed to share those same values
“I want to be sensitive to women who have endured generations of oppression, but I also want to continue embracing the values of my faith”
If the values of your faith are at odds with your moral compass but you still want to embrace them then that’s an issue right there…
ummm I’m a guy, not a feminist just a plain regular guy. To be honest I don’t think that as a guy, you can really have a stance on abortion, I mean really. Are you the one that has to deal with an unplanned pregnancy? hmmm? NO. Its a decision that at least I feel lies solely with the woman in question, and as such I don’t feel that as a man I can take any stance on something that I can’t ever truly understand. So what ever your religious beliefs or political beliefs I don’t think its your place as a man to have any stance what so ever on a personal choice that should be left to the woman in question. In fact I think that women who find themselves in a position where abortion is a considered option, should be free to make a choice without any social pressures being applied at all. Especially considering that it must be a difficult enough choice already.
yours sincerely Moe
PRAISE KRISHNA!
I really don’t get this position:
If you think an unborn fetus represents a living human being then it’s not very morally admirable to stand by while murder happens every day.
If you don’t, and you think it’s up to women to decide for themselves, then surely you should try to ensure that they have the opportunity to make the decision you think is their right.
Either way, someone’s human rights are being denied and not taking a stance isn’t really respectable.
While I totally agree with Moe that there is an unfair social pressure around women’s choice to abort a pregnancy I am interested in what Moe thinks about infertile women weighing in on the abortion debate, or about the men on the Supreme Court who voted on Roe v Wade. If he thinks they shouldn’t have a say in the matter I may not agree, but I see his point of view. Thanks for the addition to the discussion Moe!
I also like Peter’s view of being passionate from either side, but I wonder if there is a view that isn’t totally focused on rights that better represents the Christian or feminist views on abortion
“but I wonder if there is a view that isn’t totally focused on rights that better represents the Christian or feminist views on abortion”
How do you mean not focused on rights? Surely feminism is all about rights.
Did you read the original post? There are a lot of feminist theories that disregard rights based arguments because they are viewed as either chauvinistic, domineering, or representative of former/present oppressive structures.
When men potentially find themselves in the position of supporting a child for 18+ years, let alone being in the position of becoming “a father”–with all the moral, ethical, physical and emotional implications attached to that word–the notion that you can’t “have a stance on abortion” is sort of surreal. Really? Not even a “stance?” I’m pro-choice, but what a bizarre idea.
It is a compassionate position you take apparently, but birth and abortion is like a spider with many legs. There are a myriad of issues that attach to abortion and birth. One significant one is when life begins. If we confuse this with the question of abortion and a woman’s right to choose we relinquish rights that we should have. I believe that life resides in both sperm and egg as separate entities. I choose this ethic because it should afford me the right to choose whether a laboratory gets to play with my DNA, observe it and study it without my permission. I can respect that in the womb it is reasonably the property of a woman, but upon exit it isn’t. I can’t speak for the ethical outcome of a person with the freedom to choose, if the choice were mine I know what I would choose. In the event of an abortion I would not in any circumstance ever consent to relinquishing the material of a fetus to a laboratory. Because issues like this are not addressed we will eventually relinquish the right to choose our own lives over that of hybrids. Which pretty much pits me squarely against intelligent design at this time.
In case your wondering if I’m wearing a tin foil hat, I got it from the church. Remember the apple of the knowledge of good and evil, kicking them out of the garden before they eat from the tree of life and become like us.
I’m not entirely sure all what Keith is saying, but I can speak to the inception of life. We cannot arbitrarily assign value to “life” otherwise we would have difficulty killing anything. If we assign value to human life we again have a difficult drawing a line, this is typically known as the personhood dilemma (where both sides have identical flaws in their arguments and neither side is capable of placing value where they want it and devaluing where they don’t want it). The wall the debate has reaches because of this dilemma is another reason why Christians and feminists should focus on a discussion centered around their values, not adopting the values of others.
I’m not entirely sure all what Keith is saying,
What I am saying is abortion is legally a choice exclusively to women. Because pregnancy is a prenatal state, we really have no right to argue the boundary of ethics with preconceived notions. A woman’s body a woman’s choice; designates an ethical boundary; you could say that it is a property right since that is how it is framed. It also makes the question of when life begins ridiculous. Once framed as an ethical boundary it does become a right to property which follows that the life of a child relative to its father does not occur until birth. Ergo men have no property rights to a child during pregnancy. You can’t argue attachment or easement to what is inside another persons body. But upon exit or birth the right to access should be equal, it no longer includes a woman’s body.
” We cannot arbitrarily assign value to “life” otherwise we would have difficulty killing anything.”
Sorry Daniel you just lost me on that stream of thought. I think we do set arbitrary values on life and we do it by applying value to property rights and boundaries. Otherwise the appropriate answer to war would be equal body counts. But we exercise the right to invade or attack PROPERTY and justify the body count under those terms..
Lets be sure not to confise legal with moral. Laws must be open to moral critique and considerations, if they were not then we would be incapable of changing unjust or immoral laws, like the Jim Crow laws.
What I meant by assigning value to “life” was that if everything that was living had the moral standing of human life then it would be murder to cut down a tree. The assignments of value to different types/kinds of life is not uncontroversial, but it is not arbitrary either, we must have reasons to assign value to types of life. If people assign human value to sperm and eggs for instance then birth control and condoms are tools of murdering things with human value. Another view is that human value only exists in things that can reason or have autonomy, then a lot of mentally disabled children and adults lack human value, or personhood. That is a version of the personhood dilemma. It cannot be wholly about property and rights, and even if we want it to be those are not particularly Christian or feminist values, and an argument can be made that rights/property is distinctly unchristian and unfeminist, so if Christians and feminists should discuss other things.
“Lets be sure not to confise legal with moral.” I agree completely; while morals may be used to govern ourselves as individuals they are a poor application to govern another and in almost every case contribute a justification for violence. Morals migrate with entitlement and privilege.
In the case of sperm and egg it makes sense to apply a restricted easement in the same way that we apply a restricted easement to “a woman’s body a woman’s choice”. Our genetic structures and materials should not be an open field to play in. Otherwise we are free to construct hybrids in the same way we breed corn.
“The assignments of value to different types/kinds of life is not uncontroversial, but it is not arbitrary either,” Actually I would argue that by not assigning value we impose an arbitrary value by extension. Because our morals do not respect personal autonomy because they attempt to impose arbitrary moral interpretations we are left to apply a more balanced approach such as restricted easement of property.
Another view is that human value only exists in things that can reason or have autonomy, then a lot of mentally disabled children and adults lack human value, or personhood. Sorry but this view to me is irrational and it makes clear to me that as a species we need to learn to stop pissing across the boundaries of others with our moral rectitude. These are views and arguments once again that cross into the boundaries of others. This is the hidden language of eugenics, better we should stick to property law easement restriction and maintenance.
If we apply a “restricted easement” to eggs and sperm (ending the ability to critique what they do with them on a moral level according to usage in above comment) then no one could say that performing gene manipulation and creating genetically altered humans is wrong and shouldn’t be done if they perform it on their own genetic material, something Keith seems quite worried about.
Morals have led to the justification of some terrible actions, but it is also morality that allows us to critique those actions and adapt interpretations that condemn those actions.
That is all I’ll say on the subject until someone posts a comment that addresses the original post.
One thing to notice is how we have to *guess* about what “would” Jesus do in a given situation. The fact that the most common versions of the Bible don’t really mention Jesus’ specific view of abortion is something to remember. Like most things, what is truly “Christian” is subject to some degree of speculation and interpretation, which is precisely why Christianity has survived so long and in so many disparate contexts. Christianity, like all religions, is man-made. Ultimately, its followers determine what is truly meet, right, and salutary. Even what is explicitly stated in versions of the Bible is often interpreted and re-interpreted from one century to the next. (Can a rich man actually get into heaven? The language seems explicitly to say NO, but that part’s been re-interpreted to have some wiggle room….)
Someone in first century Judea may have expressed little opinion about abortion, because it may have been taken as a fact of life. It certainly would have been quite easy to disguise an abortion as a miscarriage, considering how common that must have been in a pre-industrial agricultural economy, and considering the power of midwives over reproduction. You certainly don’t need modern equipment to induce a miscarriage, and the women of the Eastern Mediterranean had a full arsenal of natural remedies to terminate pregnancies. Perhaps they were illegal, but they were probably just “alegal,” like most abortion policies in Western history.
I also think it’s odd that everyone asks what Jesus thought of things, but no one asks what God the Father would have thought. The God of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is a pretty vindictive, murderous sort of fellow who would just as soon kill you as look at you. I doubt he would really have a problem with abortion, especially if it could be done in His name somehow. He’s certainly not squeamish about bloodshed or the death of innocent lives after they’re born, so before they’re born? Probably not much.
I guess there’s the old question of what happens to a baby that dies without being baptized. If an abortion kills an unborn child, then does that unborn child go to hell because it wasn’t baptized? Dante put pre-baptized babies in Limbo, the upper part of hell. If, on the other hand, all babies go to heaven anyway, then…..
“The God of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is a pretty vindictive, murderous sort of fellow who would just as soon kill you as look at you”
Like the case of Jonah and the Ninevites, the Gibeonites, King Manasseh, Rahab, etc.
I really like what ‘wellokaythen’ said, it is a impossible to sort through the human influence and attempt to speculate what Jesus or Yahweh would think (this question really only gets brought up by the title of the post though and is meant to grab eyes). The real question is what are the values that Christianity and feminism should support, and what do those values say about abortion?