Essays and Articles

Vulnerability, Recognition, and the Ethics of Pregnancy: A Theological Response

Vulnerability is a notion discussed in feminist philosophy as a basis for a morality that widens our sense of those whose deaths are grievable. Vulnerability and grievability also factor in reproductive ethics. This essay employs recognition theory to analyze critically how these notions are mobilized in conservative Christian anti-abortion writings and in feminist philosophy.

Disabled Bodies on Earth and in Heaven: Eschatology and the Ethics of Selective Abortion

This essay critically examines the claim that selective abortion contradicts the principle of Samaritan hospitality and the claim that envisioning disabled people in heaven means that selective abortion is an illegitimate use of women’s moral agency.

The Resurrection and Unborn Beings: The Seeds of a Materialist Emergence Proposal

This article looks at how two apparently unrelated issues—the afterlife and reproductive loss—turn out to be interrelated in complex theological and ethical ways.

Prolife Christian Romance Novels: A Sign that the Abortion-as-Murder Center Is Not Holding?

This essay offers a theological answer to the question: How should we speak of a pregnant woman’s identity such that she is recognizable as uniquely entitled to make the gestational choice to end fetal life?

Unwanted Pregnancy, Abortion, and Maternal Authority: A Prochoice Theological Argument

Sexual Pleasure

This essay presents important representative historical Roman Catholic and Protestant views about sexual pleasure from the New Testament period to the present day.