Abortion & Religion Reader

  • ABORTION AND RELIGION

    Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives

    This volume introduces students to the history of cultural and theological responses to abortion as background for understanding a diversity of ethical positions in contemporary Christian, Jewish, and Muslim writings. Politicized debates about abortion are often presented in terms of a binary rhetoric of prolife versus prochoice; however, this collection of essays shows how that binary often breaks down when abortion is seen from different religious perspectives and in light of the voices of women themselves. 

    While abortion is a global phenomenon, this volume focuses on the U.S. context. American abortion politics and culture wars have been dominated by Christian voices; nevertheless, Jewish and Muslim abortion ethics engage many of the same issues from different cultural and religious perspectives. Finally, this volume presents important examples of recent social scientific studies about the relationship of religion and abortion in the diverse cultural, racial, and economic fabric of American society.

MEET THE AUTHORS

Rebecca Todd Peters

Rebecca Todd Peters is Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, North Carolina. Her work as a feminist social ethicist focuses on globalization, economic, environmental, and reproductive justice. She is the author or editor of eight books and more than twenty-five peer-reviewed publications, including Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice (2018) and Encountering the Sacred: Feminist Reflections on Women’s Lives (Bloomsbury, 2018). She received the 2018 Walter Wink Scholar-Activist Award from Auburn Seminary in recognition of her work on reproductive justice and poverty and economic justice and served as a Public Fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) from 2018 to 2021. She is a member of Planned Parenthood’s Clergy Advocacy Board and serves as an expert witness on abortion and religion with the Lawyering Project. For more information, see rebeccatoddpeters.com.

Margaret D. Kamitsuka

Margaret D. Kamitsuka is the Francis W. and Lydia L. Davis Professor Emeritus of Religion at Oberlin College, Ohio. Her research, writing, and public speaking offer a theological perspective on reproductive issues, bioethics, gender and sexuality, and mothering. She is the author of Abortion and the Christian Tradition: A Pro-choice Theological Ethic (Westminster John Knox, 2019) and Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference (Oxford University Press, 2007) and the editor of The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity (Fortress, 2010). Kamitsuka has published essays in Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal for the Feminist Study of Religion, Theology Today, and Christianity and Literature.  Her most recent monograph, Unborn Bodies: Resurrection and Reproductive Agency, will be published in 2023 by Fortress Press.  Kamitsuka also serves as the book editor for the American Academy of Religion’s Academy Series.  For more information, see margaretkamitsuka.com.