The Theology of Reproductive Choice

By Rev Madison Shockley

 

We were fortunate to welcome Rev. Madison Shockely, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, California, to speak on his important work on the Theology of Reproductive Choice. We offer you an outline of Rev. Shockley's sermon.

“And God made them in God’s image. Male and Female God created them.”

“And Adam knew Eve and she bore a son saying, ‘I have born a man with the help of God.”

I believe that God is Pro-Faith, Pro-Family and Pro-Choice. Given that God had created both men and women, when one considers the reproductive process, from a biblical/theological perspective one has to conclude that God, in fact, made the first choice. God chose, between these two humans, to hide the mystery of reproduction inside the woman.

Eve proclaims that what she has done was with the ‘help of God’. Thus, God and women are partners in the reproductive process and the woman is not a silent partner but a partner with voice and vote!

When one considers reproduction from a biological perspective it is understood that this partnership often does not succeed. Miscarriage (often with the woman unaware) is the fate of the overwhelming number of pregnancies.

We consider that a miscarriage has no moral content because we attribute it to God/nature. We say, “God/nature knew that the fetus would not survive.” Thus we accept that the process of human gestation was interrupted by natural forces. But if women are partners with God then do they not also have moral authority to interrupt the process of human gestation? Do they not have the moral authority to act when they know that the fetus will not survive? Oh but when she does it we don’t call it a miscarriage we call it an abortion.

We the 15 denominations and faith traditions who comprise the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice have come together to support women who face this very difficult decision. To empower women with the moral authority they inherently possess and to confer upon them the moral support of their faith communities.

If human beings took anything out of the Garden of Eden it was free will. Many submit that it is the free will of human beings that most reflects the image of God. We certainly don’t look like God.

When a woman is faced with a medical complication so severe that the choice is between the life of the fetus and her own life she not only has the moral authority to choose her own life but in regard to her other children who depend on her, her husband who loves her, her family who need her and her God who created her she has a moral obligation to choose life.

When a woman has been robbed of her God given free will by the violence of rape, or the powerlessness of incest, she not only has the moral authority to reclaim her will by choosing her own life but a moral obligation to determine for herself whether, when, and how many children to bear.

And when a government seeks to deprive a woman of the free will of her conscience, given to her by God, and legislates that should she not bring every pregnancy to full term delivery, that she has committed a crime and shall be punished by a levy against her resources and the imprisonment of her body, she and we have a spiritual, moral and civic duty to resist, defy, and deny that government’s attempts to convert her womanhood into a means of production for its political economy. We the people of the United States of America must repel those among us who would diminish the humanity of any of our citizens by the coercion of their very persons for purposes alien to their conscience, dangerous to their health and in contradiction to their faith. Let the people say, “Amen.”

 

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