 |
| The article used their own picture of Bristol by way of illustration, but I like this one better. |
Courtesy of
Raw Story:
America’s high rate of abortion can be directly attributed to conservative Christianity’s obsession with controlling and suppressing sexuality.
The most effective way to reduce abortion is to de-stigmatize sexuality, improve sexual education, and ensure broad access to excellent contraceptives. In the highly secular Netherlands, this formula has knocked abortion down to 7 per 1000 women annually, one third the U.S. rate.
That is obviously a valid point which is hard to argue with, if you rely on logic that is. Which of course we all know is not how fundamentalists frame their argument.
Raw Story then goes on to lay out four aspects of conservative Christianity which promotes accidental pregnancies:
1) Pro-natalism. One of Christianity’s competitive strategies is to drive up the birth rate of believers. The Old Testament describes an estimated 1.2 million deaths at the hand of Yahweh or his servants, which makes it hard to argue that Christianity is pro-life. It is, however, pro-birth. Be fruitful and multiply, says the writer of Genesis (Genesis 1:28); Women will be saved through childbearing, echoes a New Testament writer centuries later (1 Timothy 2:15). Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, bluntly put it in his own words: “If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it.”Treating women as breeders, a strategy for increasing adherents, is at the heart of the Catholic anti-contraceptive stance and the Protestant Quiverfull movement. Historically, these attitudes may have driven up the number of Christians, but thanks to the Religious Right meddling in politics and education, today they drive up accidental pregnancy and abortion for Americans across the religious spectrum.
Remember during the time of the Bible, and in the early years of the church, religious, economic, and military superiority was a numbers game. The more babies you made, the more Christians you could send into battle, work on your farms, and spread your religion.
2) Obsession with Sexual Sin. “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe”–we all know what it means. By the Iron Age, when Judaism emerged, the male determination to know which babies were whose had taken the form of men owning women. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:17) Women caught in adultery (or missing their hymens) were killed by the ancient Hebrews, just as they are by conservative Muslims today.Christianity’s obsession with sexual sin or rather with female virginity has produced the American purity myth, which makes candid conversations and education about sexuality a challenge.
In modern times this of course has led to abstinence only education and the shaming of women for allowing boys into their beds before they are wed. Women may no longer be property, but according to conservative Christians they should still know their place.
3) Emphasis on Righteousness over Compassion. Traditional Christianity is about right belief. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. (Acts 16:31). (Contrast this with the central virtue of Buddhism, ahimsa, or non-harm.) The focus on being right has caused Christianity to fracture into over 38,000 denominations. But schism is just one of many negative consequences that come from valuing right belief over compassionate living. Many believers would rather be right (and righteous) than loving. They’d rather be right than solve problems. They would rather condemn abortion from a position of righteous superiority than solve the complicated conditions that cause women to terminate pregnancies. They’d rather judge from the sidelines than get their hands dirty.
I don't think I really need to add anything more to that.
4) Structuring Society for Fantasy Perfect Humans Rather than Real Humans. In the ideal fantasy world of Evangelical Christianity, teenagers wouldn’t have sex. In fact nobody would ever have sex unless they were married and ready to have a baby. In this fantasy world all we need to do is teach teens to abstain (and then shame and punish the ones who don’t) and voila, teen pregnancy will go away. This is the worldview that produced the painful story of Bristol Palin, who earned a quarter of a million dollars promoting abstinence only to find herself awkwardly announcing a second pregnancy.In the real world, the most dramatic improvements in teen pregnancy and family flourishing come when young people have excellent information about their own bodies and access to top tier contraceptives.
And now you know why they chose Bristol for their abstinence only example at the top of their article.
Of course Bristol is by no means an accurate example of what most young unwed mothers go through after giving birth. Her famous name and access to well paying job opportunities have kept her off of the streets, and out of minimum paying jobs, though it seems just barely.
However I think most of us believe that Bristol's lack of proper sex education have resulted in far more brushes with pregnancy than have ever been made public.
Which in some ways makes her perhaps the perfect example of the dangers of a conservative Christian message about sex.
