Rebecca Todd Peters is a feminist and Christian social ethicist who serves as a professor of Religious Studies at Elon University. Peters' scholarship focuses on questions related to economics, the environmental crisis, globalization, poverty, and women's access to abortion. She claimed to have felt God's presence while receiving both of her abortions.
Peters received her B.A. in Art and English from Rhodes College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Christian Social Ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York. [1] She was also ordained as a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister and worked in the PCUSA national office of Women's Ministries for six years. [2]
Peters is the past President of the American Academy of Religion, Southeast Region, and was Elon University's 2011–12 Distinguished Scholar. She also served as the Founding Director of the Poverty and Social Justice program at Elon. [3]
Her books include:
Dominican University of California Professor Laura Stivers has stated that in her book Solidarity Ethics, Peters "lays the groundwork... for how we can come together in solidarity across lines of difference to create movements for justice and structural change." [4]
Peters' book Trust Women has been described as offering "a Christian argument for abortion" [5] and as "shifting the conversation [about abortion] to reproductive justice." [6] Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, has said: “In Trust Women, Rebecca Todd Peters lays bare the real question underlying the abortion debate: whether or not women can be trusted to make their own decisions. She is compassionate and clear-eyed in constructing her faith-based case for abortion, and her voice cuts through the noise to affirm what we at Planned Parenthood have long believed: the best arbiter of a woman’s reproductive destiny is herself.” [7]
Peters has been widely noted for her framing of abortion as "a moral good." [8] [9] [10]
Peters also writes about current events, theology, justice, and social change on her blog, “To Do Justice," on the Patheos website, and her op-eds have been printed in a variety of newspapers on topics including racism [11] [12] and sex education. [13]
The United States abortion-rights movement is a sociopolitical movement in the United States supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy, and is part of a broader global abortion-rights movement. The movement consists of a variety of organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body.
Numerous religious traditions have taken a stance on abortion but few are absolute. These stances span a broad spectrum, based on numerous teachings, deities, or religious print, and some of those views are highlighted below.
This index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.
The abortion debate is a longstanding and contentious discourse that touches on the moral, legal, medical, and religious aspects of induced abortion. In English-speaking countries, the debate most visibly polarizes around adherents of the self-described "pro-choice" and "pro-life" movements. Pro-choice supporters uphold that individuals have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive health, and that they should have the option to end a pregnancy if they choose to do so, taking into account various factors such as the stage of fetal development, the health of the woman, and the circumstances of the conception. Pro-life advocates, on the other hand, maintain that a fetus is a human being with inherent rights that cannot be overridden by the woman's choice or circumstances, and that abortion is morally wrong in most or all cases. Both terms are considered loaded words in mainstream media, where terms such as "abortion rights" or "anti-abortion" are generally preferred.
The Christian left is a range of Christian political and social movements that largely embrace social justice principles and uphold a social doctrine or social gospel based on their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity. Given the inherent diversity in international political thought, the term Christian left can have different meanings and applications in different countries. While there is much overlap, the Christian left is distinct from liberal Christianity, meaning not all Christian leftists are liberal Christians and vice versa.
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:
Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) is an abortion rights organization founded in 1973 by clergy and lay leaders from mainline denominations and faith traditions to create an interfaith organization following Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the U.S. In 1993, the original name – the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) – was changed to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
M. Kathy Rudy is an American women's studies scholar, and theologian.
Christian ethics, also known as moral theology, is a multi-faceted ethical system. It is a virtue ethic, which focuses on building moral character, and a deontological ethic which emphasizes duty. It also incorporates natural law ethics, which is built on the belief that it is the very nature of humans – created in the image of God and capable of morality, cooperation, rationality, discernment and so on – that informs how life should be lived, and that awareness of sin does not require special revelation. Other aspects of Christian ethics, represented by movements such as the social Gospel and liberation theology, may be combined into a fourth area sometimes called prophetic ethics.
Jung Mo Sung is a Roman Catholic lay theologian, writer and lecturer trained in theology, ethics, and education. He was born in South Korea, and raised in Brazil where he lives today.
Reproductive justice is a critical feminist framework that was invented as a response to United States reproductive politics. The three core values of reproductive justice are the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent a child or children in safe and healthy environments. The framework moves women's reproductive rights past a legal and political debate to incorporate the economic, social, and health factors that impact women's reproductive choices and decision-making ability.
In Judaism, views on abortion draw primarily upon the legal and ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the case-by-case decisions of responsa, and other rabbinic literature. While most major Jewish religious movements discourage abortion, even in order to save the life of a pregnant woman, authorities differ on when and whether it is permitted in other cases.
Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J. is a Jesuit priest, professor, author, and moral theologian currently serving as the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is a consultant to the Jesuit Refugee Service and is the recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1998.
Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a legal person has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability.
Erika Bachiochi is an American legal scholar and fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She currently serves as the director of The Wollstonecraft Project at the Abigail Adams Institute, where she is a senior fellow. Her BA is from Middlebury College, her MA in Theology as a Bradley Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Politics and Religion at Boston College, and she received a Juris Doctor degree from Boston University School of Law. Bachiochi is a Catholic feminist who identifies as pro-life.
The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, also known as SisterSong, is a national activist organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color.
Abortion in Delaware is legal up to the point of fetal viability. As of June 2024, Civiqs polling found that 72% of Delawareans believed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 23% believed it should be illegal in all or most cases. There was a therapeutic exceptions in the state's legislative ban on abortions by 1900. Informed consent laws were on the books by 2007. In 2017, Senator Bryan Townsend, D-Newark introduced legislation to try to make clear that abortion would remain legal in the state in case 1973's Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned. The legislation was subsequently updated. Attempts have been made to introduce mandatory ultrasound laws, but they failed to get out of committee. State legislators tried to move ahead the week at which a woman could get a legal abortion in 2019.
Catriona Ida Macleod is a South African researcher. She is a distinguished professor of psychology, SARChI Chair of Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction, and previous Head of the Psychology Department at Rhodes University. Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive health and feminist theory in psychology. Her book "Adolescence", Pregnancy, and Abortion: Constructing a threat of degeneration received the Distinguished Publication Award by the Association for Women in Psychology. Since 2013, she has been editor-in-chief of the international journal Feminism & Psychology.
Beverly Jean Wildung Harrison (1932–2012) was an American Presbyterian feminist theologian whose work was foundational for the field of feminist Christian ethics. She taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City for 32 years.
Teresia Mbari Hinga was a Kenyan Christian feminist theologian and a professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University in California. She was a founding member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.
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