Before You “Swallow” The Pill

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 by Candi Finch

Consider these stories that have been in the news recently:

 

• On January 10^th, a Texas court overturned the ban against the law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to undergo a sonogram.[1] While this ruling is a great victory, the Center for Reproductive Rights has vowed to fight the appeals court ruling.

• Just last December, a federal judge in New York invited an abortion rights advocacy group to file motions against the Department of Health and Human Services’ ruling that girls under the age of 17 could not get the “morning after pill” known as Plan-B One-step without a prescription.[2]

The American people are fighting a war within our own borders over this issue of what constitutes a life. Each January, churches across America set aside a Sunday to recognize the sanctity of human life.[3] This event usually coincides with the Sunday closest to anniversary of the passing of Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973). However, this tragic, landmark decision by the Supreme Court does not really mark the date where America began its march to the “death culture,” as it has been dubbed by some commentators.

Abortion, family planning, the morning after pill, the delaying of fertility—all of these are symptomatic of a larger issue where our culture has accepted the message that children are a burden and not a blessing. The idea that children are a blessing of the Lord is almost extinct in today’s society. God says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Ps 127:3).

So when did our thinking begin to change?

I teach a class in “Feminist Theology” at Southwestern Seminary, and during the semester we examine how feminism has impacted our culture and our theology. The term “feminism” can be defined and understood in two ways:

• It is a movement – a social, historical movement seeking rights for women; organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests; and

• It is a philosophy or ideology – the theory of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.  

While the movement of feminism, especially during its first wave in the late 19^th century, fought for some really good things like access to higher education for women, reforming child labor laws, overturning slavery, and a woman’s right to vote, the underlying message at the heart of this movement shuns God and exalts humanity, specifically women.

Speaking of the feminist movement in her book Radical Womanhood, Carolyn McCulley states, “Right observation does not always lead to right interpretation.”[4] In my own journey, I came to realize that while the feminist movement had observed some injustices against women correctly, its “interpretation” of how to solve these problems was incorrect because feminists abandoned God and His plan for women and men. Unfortunately, the American culture has embraced the message of this movement in regards to children, and to some extent, the church has allowed it to creep within its doors.

For any Christian, the essential problem with feminism is that this ideology exalts women and their experience as a source of truth, and, in turn, women’s experience often becomes more authoritative than Scripture.

Consider the life and work of Margaret Sanger (1879-1966); she came on the scene towards the end of the first wave of feminism, and the impact of her ideas is forcefully felt today, though many people may not even recognize her name. Sanger was one of 11 children born into a Roman Catholic, working-class, Irish-American family. Her mother, Anne, had several miscarriages, and Margaret believed that all of these pregnancies took a toll on her mother’s health and contributed to her early death. The family lived in poverty as her father, Michael, an Irish stonemason, preferred to drink than provide for his family.

As a nurse working in a poor, immigrant neighborhood, Sanger treated women who had undergone back-alley abortions. These experiences galvanized her to fight to make birth control and contraceptives available, and early in the 1900s she began to dream of a “magic pill” that could control pregnancy. She said, “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be mother,”[5] and she argued that every child should be a wanted child.[6]

She said, “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”[7]

Sanger’s work Woman and the New Race introduced the idea within the popular American consciousness that children became a burden and not a blessing if a woman could not control her own fertility. Through the efforts of Margaret Sanger, children began to be viewed as holding women back from realizing their full potential.  In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which in 1942 changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of American, Inc. Sanger and those secular feminists who followed her felt that other than the church, the institution that is the most oppressive to women is the traditional family and the home. For that reason many feminists dedicate their lives to fighting for advancements in birth control and access to abortion so that no woman will have to be “imprisoned” by motherhood.

Could I possibly agree with Sanger? Well, until a few years ago, I would have to say that my views about birth control were more in line with Sanger than Scripture. For many Christian women my own age who got married, using “the pill” was just a given; it was seen as the “responsible” choice until a young couple was ready to have kids.  Without realizing it, many women in my generation have accepted Sanger’s views about children: They are ok if you get to decide when you have them and how many you have. Honestly, I probably would have used some form of the pill if I had gotten married in my twenties. However, when I learned that many forms of the pill are “abortifacient” drugs that can cause a fertilized egg not to implant, causing an early abortion, I was shocked! How is it that no one told women my age about this?[8] How is it that the church will loudly stand against abortion but not talk about abortifacient drugs that cause abortions?

Christian women have a duty to be informed.

You and I must ask questions, and lots of them, before we blindly accept something just in case there is anything in our own thinking that is more culturally conditioned than informed by Scripture.

Scripture says, “There is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death,” (Prov. 14:12, 16:25). Today, you may hear people refer to an unborn child as an “accident” or a “mistake” or an “inconvenience that doesn’t fit into my stage of life right now,” but the Bible says every child is a human being fashioned in the image of God. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well,” (Ps. 139: 13-14). God values children; He knits together each one. Children are a blessing—the people of God must boldly proclaim this truth, and we must make sure that all of our actions line up with this message.

 

Candi Finch serves as Assistant Professor of Theology in Women’s Studies at Southwestern and is nearing the end of her PhD studying systematic theology. She loves used book stores, getting to teach young women, and eating any food she doesn’t have to cook herself!  Her secret ambition in life is to compete on Survivor or The Amazing Race. Connect with Candi on Facebook!