4 - Pastoral guidelines through a reproductive justice lens

Summary

Introduction

Abortion continues to be both a politicised issue worldwide (Amnesty, 2018) as well as an everyday reality shared by many. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated one in four pregnancies ends in abortion (WHO, 2018). Although it is a life experience found across time and contexts, abortion continues to be non-accessible, criminalised and stigmatised. According to Starrs et al (2018), stigma exists whether abortion is legal or illegal and one of the factors that influences restrictive stances in law, policy and norms is religion, with the dominating perception that religion condemns abortion (Emerson, 1996; Beattie, 2010; Haffner, 2015; Kumar, 2018; Peters, 2018; Dozier et al, 2020). The domination of anti-abortion arguments in religion, and in particular Christianity, have long taken up much of the discourse, in the academic space as well as the public space (Haffner, 2015; Kamitsuka, 2019). The evidence is also clear that those in faith communities are as likely to have abortions (Dozier et al, 2020; Jones, 2020) and there is ‘a disconnect between the rhetoric … and the actual lives of the many’ (Kamitsuka, 2019: 3). Despite the negative impact on norms as well as policies of particular religious expressions and perspectives, the relationship between abortion and religion is both under-studied (Emerson, 1996; Turtle and Bloomer, this volume) as well as simplified (Peters, 2018; Kamitsuka, 2019). The world is, however, a diverse religious world where ‘no single religious voice can speak for all faith traditions … [or] no single faith can claim final moral authority in public discourse’ (Haffner, 2015: 29), and examples of faith actors finding themselves positioned along a whole spectrum on this issue do exist, from non-affirming, to a moveable middle to fully affirming (Mills, 1991; Kaplan, 1995; Davis, 2005; Haffner, 2015; Parker, 2017). The impact on public debate of more affirming perspectives remains limited as they are relatively small in number and can risk facing a backlash from those with more vocal or hostile anti-abortion positions (Kamitsuka, 2019). As trust in faith actors is low on these matters, finding other ways of relating and doing faith is crucial in the wake of strong and loud opposition (Peters, 2018; Kamitsuka, 2019). Visualising the journeys that faith communities have taken on this issue is thus a crucial contribution.