The Toxic Theology of the Extreme Pro-Life Movement
On the nature of God and the nature of women
We need to do a deep dive into a certain kind of toxic Christian theology and how it relates to the views of the extreme pro-life / anti-abortion movement. When I say “extreme,” I mean the people who believe that a fertilized egg has as much personhood as a fully birthed or grown human. They believe that life, by which they mean ensoulment, begins at conception. They believe it is unequivocally murder if a person has an abortion, or even uses contraception that might do something so *extreme* as preventing implantation of a fertilized egg. They also do not trust women to be moral decision-makers at all and are chomping at the bit to take away any reproduction-related choice she has.
If you’re a regular reader of the newsletter or know me well, you know I grew up as an evangelical fundamentalist Christian. I was also extremely pro-life. According to family lore, I was brought to anti-abortion protests as a child (I guess I can’t fault my parent, since I brought my baby to a Black Lives Matter march...). During some of my young adult years, I continued to attend some very conservative churches along my journey. I remain on the listserv for one of them, partially to infuriate me I guess, and partially to gather juicy tidbits for my writing.
As you might guess, the church’s weekly email really got me going this week.
The pastor shall remain anonymous, but here is a direct quote:
Few will say so publicly, or even out loud, but in our natural state, we hate God.
We hate that God has authority over us. We hate that God makes demands on our lives. We hate that God tells us what to do. We hate that God hates our sin. We hate that God's will supersedes ours. We hate that God's glory is greater than ours.
This hostility toward God was on full display this week at even the possibility that Roe v. Wade might be overturned and access to abortion could potentially be curtailed. I pray it is overturned. I also pray for the hard hearts who are outraged by this development to be regenerated and rejoice that this great evil might be restrained.
Okay first, I’ll admit: I do hate God. Or rather, I hate that God. I hate his version of God, only partially described in that quote. I think that God is traumatizing and used as a weapon of control over scared and shamed people. I also do not think that God exists in a real form outside of the minds and imaginations of pastors like this one and countless people who have been indoctrinated by this theology.
Sinners in the hands of an ever-angry God
The theme this pastor harps on constantly is how much “we” are enemies of God, at least until the moment we accept Jesus’ death was punishment for our sins and that believing this grants us access to heaven. We are enemies of God, and God is our enemy. In another email, he rants against Adam, the reason why we are sinners condemned to hell in the first place. He wishes Adam could have restrained himself from disobeying, yet goes on to ponder what if Adam hadn’t sinned: would Cain or Abel have? What about their offspring? And so on, eventually concluding that we’re naturally inclined to sin, so someone would have cursed all of humanity even if Adam hadn’t.
So to get this straight, the belief system says God created people with free will, and yet with this free will, we are unable to choose to never sin, because we’re naturally disposed to be sinful creatures. God purposely created humans, who (to quote this pastor directly) “cannot not sin,” and also declared that the wages of this sin is “death” which these Christians interpret as “eternal conscious torment in hell.”
What does this have to do with abortion?
It’s actually a fascinating parallel. We know that banning abortion does not eliminate abortions; it simply criminalizes it and makes it risky, expensive, and unsafe. Just like we “cannot not sin,” in real life, we will not have zero abortions. Abortions are going to happen. But parallel to this angry, vengeful God that this belief system worships, these extremists will behave in angry, vengeful ways towards women seeking abortions.
There is no room for compassion in this system. God, being all-powerful, *could* have chosen a different method for dealing with the sins of humans that he purposely created to be sinful (if he gave them free will but knew they would sin), but didn’t. Some are saved by the death of his brutally murdered son, while everyone else is thrown into hell.
There are plenty of other ways to deal with the problem of abortion, too. We know what they are: readily available, long-lasting birth control. Comprehensive sexual education. Dismantling a patriarchal society that believes men have the right to force themselves on women. Let’s make men get vasectomies (a reversible procedure) while we’re at it, until they’re truly ready to have children and their female partner consents. I bet the men won’t be so on board with that, but it would sure lower unwanted pregnancies!
But there is no room for compassion in our political system, when the reward of controlling women’s bodies – and thus, women’s physical, mental, social, and financial well-being– is so close at hand.
Women as fundamentally untrustworthy
Speaking of controlling women’s bodies, let’s focus on the essential piece of theology that the pro-life movement revolves around.
Another quote:
[Adam] didn't protect his wife from the whispers of the Evil One. He didn't guard his heart from the lies of Satan. He too desired to be like God, defining what is good and evil.
[FYI I was going to insert a picture of a serpent, but I’m so phobic of snakes it freaked me out too much to do that 😂]
In the evangelical telling of things, Eve was the direct cause of humankind’s descent into sin, because she is the one who ate of the apple. But Adam’s fatal flaw that that he “didn’t protect his wife.” Eve is hardly an independent agent in the storytelling: she is a puppet, a person guided by the whims of appetite and tricks of a [male] serpent, whose male protector Adam left her to her own devices. The female Eve’s natural tendency was to fall into sin when not being guided by the strength and wisdom of her male partner -- or rather, guardian.
You can see where I’m going.
To the hardcore pro-life movement, women are not seen as being capable moral decision makers. Men (because the group of decision-makers are always predominantly older white men) must legislate what a woman can or cannot do with her body. Left to her own devices, she would always eat the forbidden fruit that ends up being everyone’s downfall. (Think of how many fundamentalists have blamed anything that goes wrong in America on rampant abortion).
Eve, and all women thereafter, must be protected and guided by their husbands (or male lawmakers) to prevent her own ruin. Women who seek abortions are cast as Jezebels: sinful, sexually “promiscuous” women who lure men and sleep around casually and kill their babies if they happen to get impregnated. A “good” woman, on the other hand, the Proverbs 31 wife type (taught in these churches to be the epitome of what a woman should strive to be) is happy to mother, to wife, to work diligently in the home. Whose character is beyond reproach and would certainly never seek or need an abortion.
There is no depth or complexity to these characterizations. But in reality, we women are complex beings. We are fully capable of being moral decision-makers, no less so than men (and probably more so, honestly – if women ran the world, would we have as much war and ego-driven strife? I feel not).
Women make hard decisions every day. We carry our families on our back, literally and figuratively. We generally have a good sense of what we’re capable of. We don’t dismiss what it means to bring life into the world: we know just how much it means and how much it costs, and we don’t dare take it lightly.
Women must be trusted to be moral decision makers.
Where do we go from here?
What if we recast Eve not as a naïve, tricked girl, but a capable woman who made a decision to open her eyes to the knowledge of good and evil? The fall from innocence (something that happens to every child turned adult, in my interpretation of the story) was going to happen anyway as part of coming of age, and Eve deliberately took part in it. The serpent informed her, and Adam partnered with her. Their eyes were open, and they then knew shame and pain, but they also grew up.
This interpretation will not fly with the conservative evangelicals, but we can still spar with them in their own game. Perhaps we might ask: Why do we criminalize something that we know will happen anyway? Why not give women the supports and safety they need instead? Do you truly believe that women cannot be trusted to make moral decisions? Why do you trust yourself to make decisions, but not women / other women?
I’m curious what answers people might give to these questions. I wonder if people might be persuaded if they can get beyond the black-and-white dichotomous “bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe BaBiEs??”
Theology (what people believe about the divine) matters a lot, even outside a seminary. Scary, dangerous theology is guiding a small proportion of people to make dangerous decisions that affect the majority who often don’t agree with those beliefs.
Bad theology can kill – literally. But if we can shed light on the toxicity, perhaps we can clean a little bit of house and nurture some better beliefs in its place.
Christine, this article is a tour de force. You challenge the illogic of the evangelical interpretation of “salvation,” the dangerous assumptions of the Garden story, and provide an eye-opening alternative interpretation that it is a story of the natural process of growth and individuation. I love that alternative view that lauds growth over the fantasy desire to remain childlike. Most importantly, you have raised and answered the most crucial question—why do evangelicals not trust women to make their own and society’s moral choices according to their own values and situations? Answer: their world view, which is distinctly in the minority now, paints women as incapable, needing the protection of a male partner and by extension, a patriarchal society. Yet, as you point out, women often make better, more compassionate moral choices than men, individually, and socially. Our society needs the balance that it could have if women shared equally in power and leadership. And as you also point out, using force to “stop” abortion will not stop it. It will simply move into the shadows where great harm to women is done in a multitude of ways. I am certain that if women who hold the majority view had control of this issue and of society at large, we would see an array of compassionate social services enacted to care for women and families during and after a pregnancy. And if such services were enacted to ensure not only safe abortion, but also necessary supportive followup benefits--free birth control, childcare, paid parental leave, universal healthcare (to ensure parents/kids/everyone has adequate healthcare including mental healthcare), a UBI with added benefits for parents and kids, and free education through college or trade school--we would see safer and fewer abortions and more children growing up well-cared for, happy, and well-educated, all of which is good for individuals, families, and society.