This is a guest post by Dr. Taylor Ott, and is part of a new series focusing on Reproduction and the Common Good: Global Perspectives from the Catholic Tradition. To read the introduction to the blog series, see Simeiqi He, “The Fruit of Doing Flavorsome Theology Together.” In this post, Dr. Ott is responding to the Introduction to the co-edited volume, written by Emily Reimer-Barry and Simeiqi He.
The pope recently visited my university, KU Leuven, to mark its upcoming 600th anniversary. Though perhaps not entirely intentional, a string of comments over the course of his four-day visit seemed perfectly calibrated to enrage progressive Catholic women: first, in Luxembourg, he told an audience to have more babies; then during his speech at UC Louvain (the French sister university of KU Leuven), he referred to women as fruitful, nurturing, and life-giving, right after implying an equivalence between feminism and chauvinism and right before asserting that “it is terrible when a woman wants to be a man” (perhaps in response to KU Leuven’s rector calling for women’s admittance to the priesthood the previous evening). During a mass attended by over 37,000 people in Brussels, he declared his intention to start the beatification process for a former king of Belgium who refused to sign a bill legalizing abortion into law in 1990, but who also has a very mixed record on his views toward Congo, which was once brutally colonized by Belgium. Finally, in a plane interview on his way back to Rome, he called doctors who perform abortions “hitmen” (again), which led the prime minister to summon the Belgian nuncio for a rather serious conversation. On one hand, seeing these comments neatly lined up like this, in one’s current country of residence no less, puts the magisterium’s views on women into clear and infuriating perspective. On the other, I can’t help but wonder: what else is new?
This is the context into which Catholic feminist scholars inevitably tread when discussing reproduction: one that supposedly praises women’s reproductive abilities but also pigeonholes us into the role of nurturer, meanwhile promoting approaches that lack nuance, often without consideration of any surrounding context, and almost always coming from speakers who have never had to consider what carrying a child or giving birth would be like. It is as fraught as it is necessary. Each of the contributors to this volume have shown courage in tackling the subject. Equally important is that they have done so from a perspective that is intentionally and thoughtfully global and unapologetically feminist. As the editors stress, “Writing about reproductive justice together is an act of collective resistance to patriarchy” (7).
It is also refreshing, as well as more helpful and attentive, to see this volume focus on the holistic framework of reproductive justice rather than treading along the lines of the entrenched and polarized debate on abortion. As the editors point out, the reproductive justice movement’s attentiveness to the social, emotional, and physical health and well-being of women has plenty of overlap with Catholic social teaching – in particular, its commitments to the common good, solidarity, the preferential option, and an assertion that protecting human rights necessitates positive social supports. This more holistic approach undoubtedly became even clearer because of the global positionality of the contributors and the participants in the conversations leading up to it.
Yet, abortion is ineluctably part of this picture, and I can’t help but think that future stages in the broader conversation will need to make room for honest discussions specifically about abortion, albeit as one piece of the larger framework of reproductive justice. The model’s attention to marginalized groups makes this all the more relevant – in the U.S., for instance, 71% of Black Christians support legal abortion in all or most cases, and 28% of Black women say that abortion is their top issue of concern in the upcoming presidential election. These numbers are considerably higher than among white Christians or white people in general in the U.S. As my colleagues Judith Gruber, Ryszard Bobrowicz, Travis LaCouter, and I argue in a forthcoming article, prohibiting dissenting voices is simply no longer feasible in Catholic spaces. Moreover, those who publicly dissent do so specifically out of a concern for truth and ethics, not because they have given into apathy or relativism. As the editors also note, reproductive health is complicated. If we want to really listen to marginalized voices (and in the Catholic Church, this honestly includes not only ethnic minorities and people from the Global South, but, in different ways, women in general) then we need to make room for complex conversations that include the realities and complexities of abortion without concern for institutional repercussions.
Reimer-Barry and He make no claims to comprehensiveness, though (19). This volume is one piece of the conversation, and a much-needed one. I hope that the essays contained within it broaden the view of those of us who are based in the northwestern hemisphere, prove fruitful in university classrooms, and challenge us to think beyond simplifications and polarities in a highly contested conversation.
Dr. Taylor Ott is a postdoctoral research fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium where she works as part of a project called “Dissenting Church,” which seeks to theorize the role that dissent plays in building ecclesial community. She earned her PhD at Fordham University. Her first book, titled Conflict and Catholic Social Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Approach, will be published with Routledge in November.
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