This needs to be shared more widely
Not all Christians are ready to turn our daughters into Handmaids
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This article — “Why I’m a pro-choice Christian and believe you should be too”, just published on a Baptist Church website, reminds us that not all Christians are pro-Trump cultural crusaders.
One passage caught my eye for its brilliant and brutal exposé of the hypocrisy underlying the current fervor on the right for sticking the State’s nose into every American woman’s … private business. It deserves much wider circulation:
Methodist pastor David Barnhart, wrote, “‘The unborn’ are a convenient group of people to advocate for.
They never make demands of you;
they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted or the chronically poor;
they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct;
unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy;
unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education or child care;
unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural and religious baggage that you dislike;
they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships;
and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you.”
That’s what you get when a real Christian looks at these anti-abortion crusaders. As I’ve argued elsewhere (here and here) and as this article makes abundantly clear, the war on women’s bodies has nothing to do with protecting life. It’s about raw political power, reviving a vanished patriarchy, and scamming vulnerable white American males who yearn for an imagined past of docile wives, obedient children, and minorities who know their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Let’s be clear. This anti-abortion movement will kill American women and daughters, not save any lives. It is brutal, cruel, and counterproductive. It is an abomination of everything true Christianity stands for.
There are many valid and complex components to consider when weighing the morality of abortion. But if the moral goal is protecting life and lessening abortion rates, we must start with the data-informed realization that banning abortions does not lead to fewer abortions; it leads to fewer safe abortions and higher maternal mortality rates. — Laura Ellis, “Why I’m a pro-choice Christian and believe you should be too”
