Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
How Will the Pro-Life Movement Address Women’s Rights after Roe v. Wade Is Reversed?

How Will the Pro-Life Movement Address Women’s Rights after Roe v. Wade Is Reversed?

Last updated on: May 18, 2022 at 2:46 am by Daniel K. Williams

How Will the Pro-Life Movement Address Women’s Rights after Roe v. Wade Is Reversed? 2022-05-17T22:17:54-04:00 Daniel K. Williams

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

One of the reasons that the conversation about abortion is so polarizing in the United States is because it pits two competing rights claims against each other – women’s rights versus fetal rights. And in that battle between fetal rights and women’s rights, pro-life advocates appear to have nothing to offer the women’s rights cause. They may claim to be “pro-woman, pro-child” and to “love them both,” but the reproductive rights movement is highly skeptical.

File:Pro-life-march.png

Pro-Life demonstration in Washington, January 2018

This skepticism is likely to only increase if Roe v. Wade is overturned. “When the right to abortion is endangered, the fundamental equality of women is threatened,” NARAL Pro-Choice America declares on its website. “A woman can never be equal if she is denied the basic right to make decisions for herself and her family.”

How can pro-life advocates respond to this? Is the pro-life movement inherently opposed to women’s rights, as the reproductive rights movement claims? Or can the pro-life movement do something to advance women’s rights after the end of Roe?

Different Assumptions about What Constitutes Women’s Rights

Although reproductive rights advocates often believe that the pro-life movement is opposed to women’s rights, it would be more accurate to say that the pro-life movement’s vision of women’s rights is different from the one associated with the reproductive rights movement. It is true that the pro-life movement rejects the fundamental women’s rights claim that the reproductive rights movement commonly makes – that women have a fundamental right to control their own bodies, including the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This claim is grounded in the views of the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the pro-life movement has incurred the opposition of numerous second-wave feminists by rejecting it.

But pro-life advocates have always held a different view of what constitutes women’s rights – a view that is derived not from second-wave feminism but from an early-twentieth-century feminism of difference that argued for governmental protections for mothers. Pro-choice feminists of the late twentieth century often focused on achieving equality with men, but pro-life difference feminists argued that women’s biological differences from men meant that women could best achieve their maximum potential by being empowered in the area where women’s difference from men was most obvious – pregnancy and motherhood. In the early 1980s, sociologist Kristin Luker discovered that perhaps the greatest difference between pro-life and pro-choice advocates was their attitude toward motherhood. Pro-choice advocates considered unplanned and unchosen motherhood a great intrusion on a woman’s life and therefore a great tragedy, while pro-life advocates viewed motherhood as a great blessing, even if it might be unplanned and might be personally costly for a woman.

Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood

Abortion, they said, was an attack on women, because it robbed women of their children and facilitated the continued sexual exploitation of women by refusing to hold men responsible for caring for their offspring. Combining a feminism of difference with a general sexual conservatism, the pro-life feminists advanced an alternative vision for promoting women’s well-being that took issue with the culture of pornography, abortion, and sexual exploitation. “The idea is that a man can use a woman, vacuum her out, and she’s ready to be used again,” pro-life feminist Juli Loesch said. “It’s like a rent-a-car or something.”

But if motherhood even in crisis pregnancies was something to be celebrated rather than dreaded, it would make sense for pro-life advocates to work not only for legislation restricting abortion but for legislation protecting working mothers, just as early twentieth-century women’s rights advocates did. And indeed, this is what some pro-life advocates of the early 1970s wanted. Perhaps there should be disability insurance to provide financial resources for women who chose to carry a pregnancy to term even though their child had severe fetal deformities. Perhaps there should be expanded maternal and prenatal health insurance, some pro-life organizations said.

A Pro-Life Feminism of Difference and Social Obligations

Pro-life advocates had a theological basis for this advocacy: the Catholic theology of mutual obligations instead of individual autonomy. As the Catholic pro-life philosophy professor Francis Beckwith wrote, “Human beings are persons-in-community and have certain natural obligations as members of their community that arise from their roles as mother, father, citizen, child, and so on.”

This view of natural social obligations, which was widely shared (perhaps even near-universally shared) in the pro-life movement of the 1970s, objected not only to the individualism of the pro-choice movement but to the individualism of the sexual revolution and, indeed, of much of modern American culture. Indeed, it was this same rejection of autonomous individualism that made the idea that human personhood began with conception, long before a brain or other complex organs were formed, easy to accept. If a person was not defined by self-autonomy, the fact that a person was fully dependent on another human being (as a fetus, of course, is) did not make them any less of a human being. Nor did a person become less of a human being if they lost certain brain functions or if they, as a zygote or embryo, were still waiting for those brain functions to develop.

This concept of mutual obligations and concern for the protection of all people’s well-being offers the basis for pro-life advocates to offer an alternative vision of women’s rights. Instead of autonomous individualism or an acceptance of the assumptions of the sexual revolution, the pro-life movement can instead offer a vision of human flourishing that includes a social obligation to provide the economic and healthcare structures for women to become mothers and care for their children while also empowering them to pursue their career goals and life plans. Pro-lifers, in short, can show by their actions that pregnancy and parenthood, even when they are unplanned and occur in crisis situations, do not have to be the debilitating, soul-crushing interruptions that reproductive rights advocates sometimes imagine.

As I have argued elsewhere, this vision is actually more in line with the values of the low-income women who currently have most abortions than the philosophy of the pro-choice movement is. A majority of women who have abortions today are already mothers of at least one child. Most are unmarried and poor. Their choice to have an abortion is not an effort to escape motherhood but is instead often an act of desperation because of their perception that they lack the resources to welcome another child into their home. Pro-lifers could offer an alternative vision for women’s empowerment that gives these women real opportunities through government-funded childcare, college, healthcare, and job security. Some pro-lifers have offered this vision, especially in the early 1970s. But today most pro-life activists have instead embraced another political vision.

The Individualism of Contemporary Pro-Life Advocates

The pro-life campaign of the early 1970s was grounded in Catholic social teaching, which attempted to replace an individualistic rights-based framework with a theology of social obligation. Many pro-lifers who believed in a consistent life ethic denounced the Vietnam War and advocated for expanded healthcare and antipoverty initiatives. But their fundamental claim – that the fetus was a human person and that if it is wrong to kill an innocent human life, it’s wrong to kill the fetus – was an individualistic rights-based claim that resonated with people who did not share Catholic social teaching’s vision of mutual social obligations but who did share a positive view of pregnancy (whether planned or unplanned), an opposition to the sexual revolution, and a strong belief in gender differences. White evangelicals (especially in the South) may have been the most individualistic (and generally most politically conservative) group of Christians in the United States, and when they joined the pro-life cause in the late 1970s and 1980s, they gave significantly less emphasis to the theology of mutual obligation and more emphasis to the politics of personal responsibility.

A minority of pro-life evangelicals continued to advocate for a theology of social responsibility, as Ronald J. Sider did in the 1980s and as Tish Harrison Warren did this month in the New York Times. But in much of the country today, it’s more common to see pro-life evangelicals couple their antiabortion statements with support for gun rights than it is to see them advocate for an expanded social safety net for pregnant women. So, what is their moral reasoning?

Politically conservative pro-life advocates today tend to think of rights in individual and absolute terms. Rights, for conservatives, are almost always negative rights – that is, a right to be protected from something rather than a right to receive something. If the fetus is a person, it has the inviolable right not to be killed. Its mother, however, does not have the right to receive Medicaid assistance from the state to allow her to provide better care to her unborn infant. Women have the right to choose not to be pregnant before they get pregnant, but once they become pregnant, there is no right, whether in the Constitution or elsewhere, that gives them the right to kill an innocent human being living within them. Women do not have the right to gender equality in the abstract sense; they have the right to equal treatment under the law, but they do not have the right to achieve equal outcomes with anyone, because equality in that sense is not a right that anyone has. Nor is it something that the state should work to achieve. In the long term, they believe, personal responsibility, private charity, and free enterprise can do far more to reduce poverty than state welfare programs ever can.

Contemporary pro-life advocates believe that they are advancing women’s rights by shutting down abortion clinics that they think exploit women. But because their vision of rights does not include anything beyond individual negative rights, low-income women who face crisis pregnancies in states that restrict abortion without expanding Medicaid or other social welfare provisions will probably end up poorer than they already were – either because they pay to leave the state to access abortion elsewhere or because they give birth to a child and have to pay for its food and healthcare with minimal assistance from the state.

What Is the Solution?

Seven years ago, the Catholic pro-life ethicist Charles Camosy argued that restrictions on abortion need to be coupled with stronger defenses of women’s economic opportunities and expanded governmental support for working mothers if the pro-life movement was to have any credibility with its opponents. He believed that a compromise between the two sides could be worked out if pro-life advocates would devote just as much emphasis on advancing women’s economic opportunities as they did on behalf of fetal rights. Camosy is not alone in holding this position, but nevertheless his view is a minority position in the pro-life movement today, because it is out of step with the conservative evangelical Republican politics that have come to dominate the pro-life movement.

Amazon - Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation: Camosy Phd, Charles C.: 9780802871282: Books

The pro-life movement would likely have a much higher chance of reducing the abortion rate, advancing women’s opportunities and equality, and convincing its opponents of its sincerity if it now focused at least as much of its effort on expanding the social safety net and empowering women as it has on legally restricting abortion. However, in view of the current religious, regional, and political demographics of the movement, that’s highly unlikely.

What is more likely, I think, is that by joining themselves to a political ideology that is anathema to a significant section of the electorate, the pro-life movement is likely to settle for regional influence at the expense of national scorn. Though free to drastically restrict abortion in the Deep South and a few other Republican states, the pro-life movement is likely to have less influence than ever in more progressive states that will point to the examples of states such as Mississippi as places where low-income women are becoming even poorer and where maternal life expectancy is lower than other parts of the country.

This doesn’t have to happen, because pro-lifers are not opposed to women’s rights. Pro-lifers have historically held to a feminism of difference that is grounded in a deep historical tradition and that has appealed to numerous women. When abortion restrictions in conservative states lead to the further impoverishment of low-income women, it will not be because of an inherent misogyny in the pro-life movement or because of the failure of its historical approach to women’s rights. It will instead be because the conservatives who enact abortion restrictions this year have abandoned that approach and have instead adopted an individualistic view of rights that may share the historic pro-life movement’s defense of fetal rights but has completely abandoned other aspects of the early pro-life movement’s social vision.

Roman Catholic church

women

Previous Post

May 17, 2022

An Oral History of The Anxious Bench: Change over Time

Next Post

May 19, 2022 Charlotte Brontë and Teaching Global Christianity

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was the primary agricultural tool in Biblical times?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Stone hoe Wooden rake Iron plow Bronze sickle