Abortion,Reproductive Justice,and Justice-Based Sexual Ethics in the Episcopal Church

The right to have a child (children)

The right to have a child is grounded in universal human rights. Both the World Health Organization and the Center for Reproductive Freedom unequivocally state, “All individuals have reproductive rights, which are grounded in a constellation of fundamental human rights guarantees.” ¹⁴ These rights include the right to choose whether to have or not have children, to freely decide the number, spacing, and timing of children, and to get information, education, and support to make these decisions. These decisions must be based on the best information available. ¹⁵ On a surface level, the right to have a child (children) seems coupled with the right not to have a child (children). Both rights are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive. Nonetheless, each right is examined in women of color’s distinctive historical contexts and political concerns about body sovereignty, (re)claiming of moral agency, and access to reproductive technology. The faith community contemplates reproductive rights as human rights in light of their interpretation of biblical texts. Yet, as the Bible delivers a cacophony of stories of pregnancy and childbirth, how or whether the Christian Bible can be a theo-ethical source for women’s right to have a child requires justice-oriented scrutiny.

The Bible delivers the various stories of women who pled to God to give them children. Biblical women such as Sarah, the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac (Genesis 21), Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:1–20), and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–25), had anxiously waited for YHWH to hear their prayers and to grant them “sons.” When they were finally pregnant and gave birth to healthy male children, these women were believed to have proven their faith. Their children—Isaac, Samuel, and John the Baptist—were symbols of God’s blessings that recognized and protected their mothers’ respectable status in a patriarchal religious society. These stories depict pregnancy and childbirth as God’s blessings rather than human rights. Pregnancy and the safe delivery of a child are also attributed to God’s will, if not a divine mystery. For instance, when Rachel, one of Jacob’s wives, demanded that Jacob give her children, he became angry with her and said that it was God who kept her from having children (Genesis 30:1-2).

The Bible also records state-sanctioned violence against newborns and infants. For instance, the Book of Exodus begins with the story of the Pharaoh’s order given to midwives to kill all Hebrew baby boys (Exodus 1:1–22). Similarly, the Gospel of Matthew narrates King Herod’s “killing of innocents” as part of the nativity story of Jesus. Out of fear of Jesus, Herod ordered his soldiers to kill infants under two years old (Matthew 2:13–18). Both cases illustrate that state power decides who should be killed and who can have the right to have children. In the Exodus story, the state manifests its power by killing Hebrew boys because of their ethnic identity and presumed revolt in the future. Similarly, the Matthean story shows the state’s necropolitical power deployed out of fear of a presumed threat to the existing political order. Thus, from a biblical perspective, having a child (children) is not simply about individual choices or rights. Instead, pregnancy and childbirth are intertwined with God’s blessing and curse, as well as state-sanctioned violence against politically vulnerable populations.

U.S. women of color’s organized RJ movement brings critical awareness of the state’s disrespect, if not denial, of their right to have a child (children). RJ activists and scholars share their intergenerational memories of the abusive sterilization of African American and Native American women. For instance, Loretta Ross, RJ activist and scholar, fought against sterilization abuse in the 1970s after she had been sterilized when she was only twenty-three years old. ¹⁶ According to Ross, in the realm of reproductive politics driven by white supremacy, black women’s bodies are viewed as allegedly hyperfertile, wantonly immoral, and primitively animal. Hence, political conservatives, including Christian conservatives, still accuse black people in general and women in particular of moral incompetence and failed parenthood (motherhood). ¹⁷

U.S. reproductive politics is still haunted by eugenics, the pseudo-scientific argument of white superiority over other races, which also attracted many Christians at the turn of the twentieth century. Centuries-old prejudices against the black body, linking it with the images of animality, hyperfertility, and high sex drive, have their historical materialist roots in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the chattel slavery system in the United States. In the early twentieth century, the spread of contraceptives to American women partly appealed to eugenicists as a way of possibly curtailing the birthrates of the “unfit,” including Blacks. ¹⁸ For decades, U.S. government-sponsored family planning programs encouraged black women to use birth control and often coerced them into sterilization, practices which peaked in the 1970s. As a result, even in black communities, birth control and abortion have been viewed both as racial inequity (i.e., racial genocide) and as women’s rights to reproduction. ¹⁹ Black feminist legal scholar Dorothy Roberts accentuates the point that, “We must acknowledge the justice of ensuring equal access to birth control for poor and minority women without denying the injustice of imposing birth control as a means of reducing their fertility.” ²⁰ Roberts’s emphasis shows that the right to have a child and the right not to have a child are the two sides of the same coin, which should be carefully analyzed through the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

The right not to have a child

This principle ensures “person-controlled, barrier methods of contraception and the ability to access those methods free of force or coercion (emphasis added by the author).” ²¹ Society must provide education about affordable and safe access to contraceptives, birth control methods, and abortion for all people. To be clear, women’s health and wellness often depend on these means. At the same time, we should name and analyze various impediments to exercising the right—social, cultural, religious, legal, economic, and political impediments. Can we also faithfully argue for a Christian theology that can support the second principle of RJ and, thus, expand religious freedom and expression?

The second principle is entangled with the issues of social norms, cultural expectations, and identity, represented by “motherhood.” Developing a progressive Christian proposal for surrogacy, Christian ethicist Grace Kao argues that surrogacy as a practice can be seen as a threat to public confidence in the naturalness of motherhood and the universality of the maternal instinct. ²² Kao’s insightful analysis applies to anti-abortion sentiment in the church and society. Since patriarchal society has praised motherhood as an essential character of femininity, it is simply impossible for some people to imagine that “mothers” are willing to relinquish what they made—their own children. They cannot accept the fragility of the mother–child bond. However, a woman is not a natural-born mother simply because she has reproductive organs and the capacity for impregnation. Instead, a discerning process is required of a person to be a mother (parent), regardless of whether she already has a child or is looking for reproductive assistance (i.e., surrogacy). Pregnancy and childbirth do not make a woman automatically a mother, either.

Thanks to advanced reproductive technology and adoption laws, a person can have multiple mothers—some not legally recognized as the person’s mother or involved in the person’s life at all. By the same token, a person can discern their motherhood through various means. Our society sees an increase in diverse family models beyond a blood-based heterosexual nuclear family unit. In this changing social context, women terminate their pregnancies after a discernment process. Some women relinquish their children for adoption as a way of exercising the second RJ principle. Despite women’s varied practices and understandings of motherhood, abortion practice and discourse have not been free from idealized motherhood images both in the church and society.

Along with the purported naturalness of motherhood, theological debates over ensoulment and fetal personhood complicate Christian approaches to abortion. Without critical study of sacred texts, many people assume that Christianity has recognized the moment of conception as the beginning of human life. Fetal personhood, however, can be morally ambiguous and theologically dangerous. Unlike “people” whose bodies are recognized in society and who participate in social life, embryonic and fetal personhood are abstract and dependent on theological “probability.” Feminist theologian Margaret Kamitsuka explains “a probabilist approach” found in pro-life writings, Roman Catholic encyclicals, and other magisterial documents:

[A]n embryo should be accorded the full rights and dignity that any human person has, based on the probability that the embryo already is an ensouled person. “Probabilism” is a technical term referring to a mode of Catholic moral reasoning where an ethical stance is defended based on a probable state of affairs . . . [T]he theological pressure was on . . . to find ways to argue assertively for personhood from conception rather than remaining agnostic about the status of an unformed human being. ²³

A probability approach raises moral, social, and legal problems. Morally speaking, any decision, particularly social policy, made on a probability cannot expect responsibility and accountability from those only with probable status as humans. In the case of abortion, not a fetus, who is probably human, but a pregnant woman is subject to punishment for their moral and legal (ir)responsibility. Probabilism, combined with patriarchy and misogyny, suppresses women’s moral agency. As Protestant feminist ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters argues, U.S. anti-abortion social policy is not so much about protecting fetal life as it is about regulating women’s moral agency. A patriarchal and misogynistic society cannot trust women’s capability to make morally sound decisions for themselves, their families, and society. ²⁴ Women cannot be trusted because they are too emotional and sexual.

Black RJ scholars and activists add racial analysis to a white heterosexual patriarchal society’s mistrust of women’s moral capability. Namely, black women have not been trusted in the realm of reproductive politics. Let us consider an anti-abortion group’s 2010 billboards across African American communities in Atlanta, which said, “Black Children Are an Endangered Species.” From Loretta Ross’s perspective, this massive advertising campaign was a new assault on African American women’s reproductive freedom, an assault motivated by anti-black misogyny marked by the hypersexualization of black women and false racial compassion for black fetal life. ²⁵ Ross rightly points out the racialization of political efforts to restrict women’s practices of abortion.

Similarly, Roberts describes how the probabilism embedded in U.S. laws has targeted black and other women of color. For instance, in 2001, South Carolina prosecuted Regina McKnight, a twenty-one-year-old African American woman, for “homicide by child abuse,” claiming that her drug use caused her baby’s stillbirth. McKnight served eight years out of her twelve-year sentence until the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned her conviction based on her lawyer’s failure to bring an expert who could refute the state’s outdated evidence against her. ²⁶ A similar case in Indiana in 2015 shocked the Asian American community. Purvi Patel, an Indian American woman, was convicted of feticide and child neglect because her miscarriage was interpreted as an attempted abortion. The hospital staff, who had treated heavily bleeding Patel, interpreted her lack of emotional reactions to the loss of her “unborn child” as evidence of self-induced abortion. ²⁷ Without interrogating the medical staff’s racial prejudice against Patel, the court punished her for neglecting the life of her fetus, a “probable” human. The following year, the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned her conviction for feticide as a misinterpretation of the criminal law. However, her child neglect conviction remained. ²⁸ Asian American feminist scholar Priya Kandaswamy views the Patel case as another example of the Republican Party’s outrageous war against women’s bodies, particularly immigrant women of color. ²⁹ Between 1973 and 2017, more than seven hundred women, primarily women of color, had been arrested, detained, or forced to endure unwanted medical interventions because of pregnancy-related accusations. ³⁰ All these examples suggest that our society still sees fetuses as newborns. Women who cannot prove their willingness to protect fetuses in their pregnant wombs can be punished legally, morally, and theologically. Women of color’s will is more suspected than their white female counterparts. Moral ambiguity caused by probabilism harms women more than men and victimizes women of color more.

Theologically speaking, if human life is believed to begin at the very moment of conception, how can we grasp the theological complexities of miscarriage, stillbirth, and infertility, as well as the suffering and pain of women who mourn the loss of their fetuses? Even women who abort their fetuses need time to grieve! A probalist approach neglects women’s mourning and grief over their losses, if not punishes them. Just as Christians are not a monolithic group, their understandings of the beginning of life or personhood are diverse. A probalist approach should be treated as one of many understandings rather than a morally and theologically authoritative position.

I tentatively argue that the value of a fetal life often depends on its related parties’ hope for the fetus to become a fully recognizable member of society. In addition, fetal life is cherished and valued when it brings profound meanings of life to its related persons—parents, grandparents, a church community, and society. A fetus is not yet a person. Personhood is developed, recognized, and respected primarily when the person meaningfully participates in family life and various communities, including the church, society, and more. If a society prohibits a woman from making the thoughtful decision to seek abortion, the society undervalues her personhood rather than denies the personhood of a fetus. As Christians, we cannot reach an agreement on the beginning of human life or the personhood of the fetus. Nonetheless, we must probe theological complexities concerning what makes a person human and what constitutes personhood. This critical theological reflection also challenges us to ponder why many (conservative) Christians condone habitual killings of non-human environmental beings and wartime killings while defining abortion as a killing of “life.”

Fetal value and personhood should not govern our theo-ethical approaches to abortion. Even if a fetus is considered probably human, “probability” is not a robust moral ground to examine abortion. Here, I leave the personhood and the innate value of a fetus as ambiguous as possible because any theological and philosophical reflection on these matters cannot offer any sufficient answers. Instead, the RJ frame forces us to focus on the bodily experiences of women in general and women of color in particular when we, the church, theo-ethically approach abortion. Hence, the church needs to probe women’s experiences of abortion on a material level, seeing that abortion can be a result of their spiritual and theological discernment or women’s wisdom to build “a decent future for themselves and their families.” ³¹

Furthermore, a woman’s choice of abortion does not necessarily mean her/their denial of the fetal value. As Kamitsuka points out, many women acknowledge that they aborted their “babies.” ³² The church needs to see how abortion can be one of many faithful ways of expressing a woman’s will not to have a child. ³³ In addition, women seek out abortion for many, often complicated reasons. These reasons beg the church to compassionately listen to the women who abort rather than condemn them. The church can further reshape an abortion discourse within “a larger Christian theology of death,” which Kamitsuka proposes. ³⁴ The RJ frame allows us to contemplate various forms of parental discernment and the meanings of personhood, guided by informed theology and spiritual practices. The frame further accentuates that an abortion discourse should be guided by justice, not by the probable personhood of a fetus.

The right to parent the child(ren) one already has

According to Bond,

The right to parent the child(ren) one already has encompasses providing families with the social and economic support they need so that families can do more than survive but thrive. This includes receiving living wages, access to clean water, healthy food, and affordable housing. It also includes living in areas that are free from environmental toxins. ³⁵

The third principle of RJ requires a broader concept and practice of social justice. We all know that raising children demands a concerted effort from their families, social institutions (e.g., faith communities and schools), and governments on various levels. Basic economic necessities for healthy food, clean water, health care, safe shelters, and decent education are prerequisites for the strong moral character growth of children if they are to be responsible members of their various communities who can collaborate with others, respect others’ differences, and consciously avoid harming others. Unfortunately, the social reality in our country is far different from what we can imagine as the ideal environment for children.

For example, historically marginalized populations, women and people of color, have been impacted by low wages. According to one statistic, 58.7 percent of minimum wage workers in the United States are women, 21.8 percent are Hispanic, 12.2 percent are black, and 14.4 percent are multiracial or Native. Over a third of the total workforce, or fifty-two million Americans, makes less than $15 per hour, which puts them below the poverty line in many states. To support a basic standard of living without food and housing insecurity, a single person without children would need between $20 and $26 per hour, depending on the state. ³⁶ What would all of these numbers mean in the context of reproductive politics? Simply speaking, many Americans struggle to provide healthy food, appropriate clothing, safe housing, educational materials, and entertainment for their children.

Many people do not think about reproduction and childrearing in relation to “money” or the economic system. Christians, in particular, feel uncomfortable seeing their relationship with children through the monetary lens. As Economist Nancy Folbre argues, while people usually see economics as a sector motivated by self-interest, parenting is considered as the pursuit of (self-sacrificial) love rather than money. ³⁷ However, Folbre accentuates that love is as powerful as self-interest, motivating people to invest in their children for happiness and future happiness to come. ³⁸ Although children are not born with a price tag, they impose very real costs on their caregivers, raising questions about who should pay for them—whose children, how much, and for how long. ³⁹ These questions create further disagreements on public policy for children’s well-being and welfare due to the unclear distinction between parental and socially shared responsibilities. Measuring the material necessities for children based primarily on food expenditures, for example, is outdated, as economically struggling families spend much more on rent, health care, and transportation than food. ⁴⁰ Contrary to what many people assume, childrearing costs a lot. One study shows that private expenditures on children are more significant for children under five years old and in their early twenties than for other age groups because of the high childcare cost for under-school-aged children and the high price tag of college education. ⁴¹

Caring work is generally undervalued in our capitalist society when considered a nonmarket activity. For this reason (and many others), “the current cash and tax assistance programs for low-income parents consider care work to be ‘work’ only when it is conducted for pay.” ⁴² Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) subsidize childcare only if children are cared for by outsiders and primary caregivers who work outside the home. While many parents and caregivers (primarily women and mothers) devote long hours and money to their children, their care work does not have market value. ⁴³ Care work is considered income-producing only when caregivers care for non-kin children and elderly people. Parents and caregivers with young children, mostly women, are forced to choose between spending devoted time with their children and working outside for income and governmental subsidies. It is becoming harder and harder for many parents to have both. In addition, children’s intellectual, emotional, and psychological development relies on the parents’ and caregivers’ characters and love. Owing to the emotional labor involved in care work, especially for childcare, Protestant theologian W. Anne Joh analogizes a care worker’s bruised heart to that of Jesus, who gave his body to the politically and economically vulnerable out of his love. ⁴⁴ Childcare creates bruised hearts in many different people. Working mothers’ hearts are bruised as they leave their children in others’ hands while pursuing their careers. Yet, many middle-class professional women struggle to pay for full-time care for their children. Migrant domestic workers’ hearts are bruised. They earn money by taking care of their non-kin children in the United States while leaving their own at home far away.

Producing another child to the world can be burdensome for many women who economically struggle to survive, have multiple dependents, pursue professional careers, and feel emotionally exhausted from caring work. For these women, abortion and active use of contraceptives manifest their will to raise their existing children well. We should recognize diverse women’s various desires and life plans instead of lumping them together as natural-born mothers. To be clear, poverty is not the only obstacle to the third principle of RJ—violent racism, anti-immigrant hate, gun violence, and ecological deterioration also undermine the safety net for children and their families. Childrearing is one of the most challenging jobs even without all these possible dangers for children. Newborns and infants are vulnerable beings whose survival solely depends on their caregivers’ care and generosity. In a society where care work falls mainly on women’s shoulders, childrearing is considered an individual family’s responsibility, child poverty is growing, or child penalties exist, women may opt out of mothering multiple children. ⁴⁵

The right to sexual pleasure

Theologically robust sexual ethics that value sexual pleasure as God’s gift are necessary if we are to appreciate our reproductive power and responsibility as well as the sexual capacity to express intimate love. The fourth principle highlights sex and body positivity and body sovereignty as grounds for comprehending the mystery and power of reproduction.

Preventing sexual corruption is one reason that Christian anti-abortionists often give to justify their political and moral standpoint. They worry that if abortion is legalized and practiced without any regulations, irresponsible sex, especially between morally immature teens, will become rampant. Although there has been no social scientific evidence proving the correlation between abortion law and “irresponsible” sex, these politically conservative Christians’ argument stems from their centuries-long fear of and negative sentiment toward sexuality. The fear and negative sentiment generate a hierarchical body–spirit and a male-female dualism, which strengthens the patriarchal social order. ⁴⁶ The body-spirit duality in Christianity engenders hierarchical sexual ethics. Celibacy manifested in the monastic order is perceived as ideal. Heterosexual relations in monogamous marriage are proposed as the second-best option. Whereas sex outside marriage is condemned, the ideal sex is only for the purpose of reproduction in the heterosexual monogamous relationship. Most Christians, including Episcopalians, might see these sexual ethics as obsolete. However, it is difficult to challenge and reform these body-spirit duality-based sexual ethics because sex is considered an inappropriate topic to discuss in the church. Nonetheless, we need sex and body-positive sexual ethics for a just society for at least two reasons.

First, sex is generally used for pleasure and intimacy rather than procreation, even among married couples. Among U.S. women, 99 percent use some form of contraception in their lifetimes, which demonstrates most people’s rejection of the traditional Christian position on sex. ⁴⁷ In developed countries like the United States, pregnancy and childrearing have become more limited, intentional, and planned due to the cost of childrearing and women’s active participation in the workforce. In this context, people use sex for pleasure and to express intimate love; procreation is a different issue, often unrelated to sex.

Second, negative sentiments toward the body and sex epitomize a purity culture that approves of sex only within institutional monogamous heterosexual marriage. According to religious studies scholar Sara Moslener, purity culture has constantly drawn “ideological connections between sexual immorality and national security.” ⁴⁸ For purity advocates, sexual immorality is a cause not only of the moral and political decline of the United States as a global hegemon but also of the eschaton. Furthermore, purity culture has always been racial as well as sexual, as it profoundly concerns both sexual purity and racial purity. Since the early twentieth century, the purity movement has upheld anti-gay and anti-communist rhetoric, idealizing “the white middle-class, heterosexual, nuclear, Christian family as the foundation of American national strength.” ⁴⁹

In this context, socially distorted images of women of color’s sexuality undermine their sexual morality, reproductive freedom, and their motherhood. Black mothers are stereotyped as Welfare Queens who produce multiple children with different men and live off social welfare. Asian mothers are called tiger mothers, who strictly discipline their children. Native American women’s bodies are treated as dirty and, thus, rapable by European settler colonialists. As a result, sexual violence against women of color is often condoned as a cultural practice. Yet, these women’s reproductive activities and childrearing are scrutinized by society and even penalized, as we have seen in the cases of Purvi Patel and Regina McKnight. Ironically, purity advocates often fail to recognize gender-based sexual violence and intimate partner violence inside the church and society from a victim-centered perspective. In particular, they cannot comprehend sexual violence against women and children inside their faith communities while vehemently opposing prostitution, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, and more, which are believed to happen outside their faith communities.

By affirming sexual pleasure, the fourth principle of RJ respects human sexuality given by God. Our responsible use of sexual power without harming others is the critical step for RJ. As we appreciate our bodies and sexuality, we can use it to express ourselves and affection toward our significant others. Here, the notion of body sovereignty is crucial because it highlights the body as foundational for human existence, thus emphasizing violence against the body as an existential threat. ⁵⁰ If body sovereignty is recognized in our society and church, then women’s discernment for abortion should be honored with no attached moral judgment. Hence, abortion is not a result of women’s promiscuity but, in some cases, a last resort for the violated and broken body of which sovereignty has been usurped. In addition, abortion should not be used as a moral yardstick to judge and chastise women who choose to end their pregnancies. As argued earlier, socioeconomic circumstances and family plans are the primary reasons why many married and unmarried women choose abortion.