Feminist Scholarship and Its Relevance for Political Engagement: The Test Case of Abortion

This essay explores how gender studies in academe, including in religious studies, might remain relevant to ongoing feminist political engagement. I explore some specific dynamics of this challenge, using as my test case the issue of abortion in the U.S. After discussing how three formative feminist principles (women’s experience as feminism’s starting point, the personal is political, and identity politics) have shaped approaches to the abortion issue for feminist scholars in religion, I argue that ongoing critique, new theoretical perspectives, and attentiveness to subaltern voices are necessary for these foundational feminist principles to keep pace with fast-changing and complex societal dynamics relevant to women’s struggles for reproductive health and justice. The essay concludes by proposing ‘natality’ as a helpful concept for future feminist theological and ethical thinking on the subject

Unwanted Pregnancy, Abortion, and Maternal Authority: A Prochoice Theological Argument

This essay offers a theological answer to the question: How should we speak of a pregnant woman\u27s identity such that she is recognizable as uniquely entitled to make the gestational choice to end fetal life? Some prochoice thinkers carve out ethical space for a pregnant woman to reject a fetus with which she has not yet self-consciously entered into a mothering relationship. In contrast, the author argues that pregnancy automatically places serious mothering responsibilities on a woman and that ending a life in utero is a unique decision that a gestating mother should have the primary moral authority to make. Since discourses of mothering in Christianized cultures are arguably influenced by the Virgin Mary, this essay offers a reading of the Annunciation in Luke\u27s gospel and discusses one medieval mystic\u27s transgressive practices of imitatio Mariae as resources for Christian women\u27s reproductive choice about unwanted pregnancy today