The Professor of Religious Studies writes a column featured in Newsweek following North Carolina's legislature overturning Gov. Cooper's SB 20 veto.
An ordained Presbyterian minister, Professor of Religious Studies Rebecca Todd Peters recently published an op-ed in Newsweek titled “Not All Christians Oppose Abortion.”
In May, the North Carolina state legislature overturned Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of SB 20, “another in a long line of abortion bans blanketing the country,” Peters wrote.
Peters says the bill poses threats not only to the health and safety of pregnant people but to democratic processes. What is overlooked in the process, she argues, is how legislation banning abortions reflects a “ruthless attempt” to put a narrow vision of Christian ideals on a diverse, multi-religious nation.
“Anti-choice Christian activists have long been explicit about their intention to outlaw abortion from the moment of conception. While Alito and movements that claim to be ‘pro-life’ may not use overtly Christian language in their rulings, legislation, or even in their op-eds, their language of ‘the unborn’ and the ‘thousands of babies that will be saved’ as well as descriptions of abortion procedures as ‘barbaric practice, dangerous for the maternal patient, and demeaning to the medical profession’ is clearly dog-whistling to Christian supporters who share their theological belief that abortion is murder,” Peters wrote.
The full piece can be read in Newsweek.
Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of Elon University.