Episode 6 - Catching Wisdom with Dr Rebecca Todd Peters - Right to Life

Episode Transcript
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>> Rebeca (00:20):
I'm Rebeca Seitz, and this is right to
Life.
You know, normally I sit down here and I can
fairly quickly figure out how to introduce
you to what's coming today.
I've been sitting here struggling for an hour.
I think it's because my mind is still

(00:42):
working so hard to take in
all that I learned in the conversation that you're about
to hear. So
rather than keep struggling and delaying your access,
I'm just going to let us hop right in.
Listen to this.

(01:16):
Doctor Rebeca Todd Peters from Elon University.
Thank you so much for coming on the right to Life show today.

>> Dr. Rebeca Todd Peters (01:22):
Thanks. It's great to be here.

>> Rebeca (01:24):
as I have told you before we started speaking today, I
have many questions about
the religion, of the history of religion and abortion
in America. And I understand that you are the person to
speak with about that. So I guess we should start with how in the
world did it come to be that you are
specializing in this area and understanding the intersection
of religion and abortion.

Sure. So I grew up a PK,
my dad was a presbyterian minister. I grew up, I was born in
Florida, I was born in Tallahassee, baptized
in, faith Presbyterian church in Tallahassee. we lived in
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Missouri,
while I was growing up. And then I went to college in
Tennessee and have lived in lots of other

(02:05):
places. But, most of my life I've lived in the south
and I have been a Christian in the south. And
after college I worked for
the national headquarters of the Presbyterian church.
And that was in the early nineties, and
during that, work with women's
issues in the Presbyterian church, one of the things that

(02:26):
I did was sit in on the
deliberations of the problem
pregnancy task force that the church had at the
time.

>> Rebeca (02:34):
Was that the name of it? The problem pregnancy task
force?

Yeah, task force on problem pregnancy and abortion. It might have
been on abortion, but it was a special task force and that
was their job, was to
really think about what the denomination
stance on abortion and problem pregnancies
was in early nineties.
And at the same time I was
also becoming a clinic escort.

(03:00):
And in that space, in both of
those spaces, I encountered people
who said that they
were pro life and yet said
things that were probably the most hateful
things I'd ever heard christians say.

>> Rebeca (03:18):
Like what?

Yelling at women who were going into
facilities. You're a murderer.
Putting in their faces
pictures of,
things that they were, claiming were
abortions. I don't know what they were because as
I heard on your show, you helped
your listenership, know that

(03:43):
95% of abortions happen,
you know, before, 20 weeks and
what?

>> Rebeca (03:49):
Yeah, 95% in the first trimester, in.

The first twelve weeks. And, and that's not
what those pictures were showing. And those pictures were
meant to make people feel bad and to,
try to change people's minds. And, you know,
as a Christian, I
believe that people should talk about their differences.
And if that group of people doesn't

(04:12):
think that women should be having abortions, then, you
know, fine, be part of a conversation. But
to yell at women hateful
things when they're in a moment of
vulnerability, that's not what
my family taught me about what it means to follow
Jesus. And that's not what my
understanding of what it means to be a

(04:34):
Christian is. And so in that I was in my early
twenties and I was just gobsmacked
that there were these people who also
said they were Christian, who were acting in
ways that were, in my mind, very
unchristian. and that was really just
this wake up call for me, about
this issue in America.

>> Rebeca (04:55):
Now, how is it that you ended up in Greensboro?

Right. So I did this work at the church
and, you know, in my own
discernment, I went to seminary.
Growing up a PK, I didn't really think I
wanted to serve in a church. I was really
interested in, theology and
ethics. I ended up doing a PhD in christian social

(05:18):
ethics. So I'm a christian social ethicist
and.

>> Rebeca (05:21):
Wow, that's a cool title. You are
a christian social ethicist. Where did you go to
seminary?

I went to seminary at, ah, Union Theological Seminary in
New York. I know it.
And that was where I
began to work on lots
of contemporary ethical issues. I work on economic
ethics, poverty. I work on
sexuality ethics, which includes reproductive health
rights and justice issues. I work on environmental

(05:49):
climate issues. And these are the things I teach
on, the. A college professor I teach at Elon University.
And these are the issues that I work on. These contemporary
social issues and try to help christian communities
think about them.
Using scripture rooted in
tradition, but confronting how

(06:09):
these issues and problems are manifesting in the
21st century. We didn't have climate crisis when
the Bible M was written. The
legalization of abortion wasn't a question in
biblical times. so all of these issues
are new for us as christians to
try to figure out how to navigate. And my role
as a christian ethicist, the work that I do is

(06:32):
trying to help people have informed
conversations. Informed by social
science, informed by science informed by
reason and, thinking
about these questions
theologically, in ways that
make sense in our contemporary
climate.

>> Rebeca (06:53):
We chose not to have video as part of this
show so that we could protect the anonymity of the women
who share their stories. So you can't see my
grin that formed while hearing Doctor Peter's words
here. What she's describing is
a walking out of that favorite verse of
mine. Proverbs four seven.

(07:14):
Chase wisdom. If it costs you
everything, get understanding.
She's literally spending an entire
career chasing wisdom and getting
understanding, and then she's helping others do the
same. So, of course, I took this
opportunity to delve into some specifics with
her, you know, to chase for

(07:35):
myself.
Got it. Okay. So, as I've shared with you, my background
is Southern Baptist. That was my tradition. Well, 40% of the country
says they're protestant. 16 million of those people say
they're southern Baptists. So when I
first started coming out of that tradition,
I was shocked to look, all I knew

(07:55):
of the Southern Baptist convention's position on
abortion was what I had been taught in my Life,
which really was the position they began to take in the
1980s, which I understand now
was different than what it had been in the decades prior to
that, because you are much more of an expert on this
than I am. What was the position of the
SBC before then and then

(08:17):
afterward?

Yeah, and I'm gonna frame that a little bit
broader in terms of evangelicalism.
Certainly the Southern Baptist convention is a large part of
that, but particularly the sort of
Whitesnake evangelical movement is broader than that umbrella as
well.
so if you're familiar with Christianity today, it's one
of the flagship magazines, of the

(08:39):
evangelical movement. In 1968, they
pulled together a symposium of 25
evangelical scholars, and they
wrote a statement that was then published in
Christianity today called a protestant
affirmation on the control
of human reproduction. So it wasn't just about abortion,
it was also about contraception. But I want to share with you

(09:01):
some of the things that they said about abortion
in 1968. This group of 25 evangelical
scholars. So one of the things they said,
because I think that your listeners are going to
be surprised. I'm going to read you the quotes. This is
exactly what they said. The
Bible does not expressly prohibit either

(09:21):
contraception or abortion.

>> Rebeca (09:25):
Wow. That's
certainly not today's teaching.

Yeah.

>> Rebeca (09:31):
Really?

Yes. So it goes on to say, I'm gonna read the whole
quote. The Bible does not expressly prohibit either
contraception or abortion, but it does set forth
certain governing principles, such as the sanctity of
Life, the command to multiply, and the
apostolic injunction for a husband and
wife to satisfy each other's sexual
needs, which I found amazing.

>> Rebeca (09:54):
Okay. All right. That feels a little
intrusive, but okay. All right.

This is what these theologians say in
1968. But I think the most important
part of that is they were very
clear that the Bible
doesn't expressly prohibit
contraception or abortion. And it doesn't.
Right. That's one of the things that my work is so centered
on, is just helping

(10:21):
people understand the Bible
doesn't say anything about abortion.

>> Rebeca (10:26):
So what do you do with that verse in Jeremiah, which is so important m
to the movement that always comes up of, before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you before. Before you were born, I set you apart.
That's sort of the, one of the hallmark verses that
gets cited in the pro life. So does that
not mean that it's a Life
before it's a Life? Do you know what I mean? It's a Life before birth.

Well, 25 evangelical scholars
in 1968 didn't think so. I don't think so
either. I mean, most biblical scholars don't think so. I
mean, it's poetry. The
images, what we call the womb passages. Right. You could
also pull in psalm 139.
these womb passages are
poetry. They're trying to evoke

(11:09):
images and to help people think
imaginatively about
different things. Right. What's going on in
Jeremiah's. And what's going on in psalm 139. Right.
But specifically, psalm
139 is a poem. and in
Jeremiah, you've got this poetic
imagery that's being used

(11:30):
to talk about Jeremiah's
call, like how he understands
why he is doing what he is
doing. and so he's telling this
story about his
relationship with God. And I think it's quite
possible to talk about our relationship with

(11:51):
Goddesse, you know, in many ways
as beginning in the womb, without
also saying that that means
that every
pregnancy, that
that passage
about Jeremiah's calling
means every pregnancy should be carried to term.

(12:14):
Right. Those are two separate things.

>> Rebeca (12:15):
That's what I have realized is that if I.
If I believe that
God allows for babies
to be born that will die of sids three months
later or six months later or nine months later,
then it's the same mindset
for me that

(12:36):
allowing conception
doesn't necessarily also
require a belief that every life is meant to be 85
years or 82 years or whatever. It could be
that that conception was allowed
so that it would end in an abortion, because there were
things that needed to happen in the grand plan. And

(12:57):
that, to me, is a total mind cluster for
me to start wrapping my mind around.
There could be reasons for conception beyond
birth.

Well, yes. And I would add,
what? How do you think about those
questions when you also realize
70% of fertilized eggs
are sloughed off by the human body?

>> Rebeca (13:23):
Well, and many of us have. And many
of us have miscarriages. I mean, I've had three miscarriages and two live
births, so I don't think any of
those conceptions were any less legitimate than the two that
I managed to birth into the world. They all were
conceptions. And, yes, like you're
saying, certainly, I've only had the five pregnancies, and I'm 46.

(13:43):
I've had way more eggs released than those five
eggs. So it's an interesting thing to
even.

Not just the eggs, Rebeca, fertilize eggs.
Right. So they're 30% that are
fertilized and then just never
implant. There are nothing.

>> Rebeca (13:59):
Really?

Yes. That's what I'm trying to communicate.

>> Rebeca (14:01):
Oh, I missed it.

There's another 30%
that fertilize, implant,
and then you bleed before you ever
can test that you're pregnant and know that
you're pregnant before any pregnancy test
you could even take could measure that. And
then in addition to that, there are 10% of
miscarriages, right?

>> Rebeca (14:25):
So there are millions upon
millions of fertilized eggs that are
not coming to birth anyway. And if we
believe that God allowed for that conception to
happen and for that sloughing off to
happen, then I don't know how we then
stay consistent in our beliefs if we
also say, well, but if there's some sort of

(14:47):
intervention on behalf of a human, well, somehow
that's not. Because even to carry that logic forward would
mean that humans can't intervene in anything, or
it would somehow negate God's will and God's
plan. And, of course, we all know. No, we're all
supposed to be agents of that. That's why we're always checking
our actions. So that's just. That's

(15:07):
fascinating to me.

Say that.

>> Rebeca (15:08):
So 30? Did you say 30%? You're
blowing my mind here. 30% of,
fertilized eggs?

Well, 30% fertilize, and then
just don't implant. Another
30% implant,
and then you bleed. You have your period
before you could ever even test. So that's
60% of. Of fertilized
eggs.

>> Rebeca (15:33):
Oh, my goodness. See,
this is. Okay, why did. This is why I'm doing
this. Show, because we weren't taught
that in the Southern Baptist church. you are blowing my eye
again. I'm 46 years old. I didn't know what you just
told me. And that changes
completely how I think about it.

(15:53):
Did you know this, or were you as in the dark as I
was until this moment?
60% of, fertilized
eggs naturally do not
come to term.
60%. If we believe
that God is governing conception,
then we must also believe that

(16:15):
60% of the time, the majority
of the time, God
himself is not
bringing those conceptions
to birth.

So I want to go back to 1968 and these. Oh,
sorry. No, no, no, don't apologize. These evangelical
scholars, because they say lots of stuff that I think is
really amazing, and so I want to keep going. So they
also, and this relates to our fertilized eggs.
They also say, quote, the human
fetus is not merely a
mass of cells or an organic

(16:58):
growth. At the most, it's
an actual human Life, or at the least
a potential and developing
human Life. So they're saying.
End quote. They're saying that
this gestation, that
what happens in the womb

(17:19):
is a spectrum, and it's a process.
And that there's some theologians who might
say that it's a full human Life, and there's
some theologians who are going to say that it's
the potential and developing human
Life. Right. But that it's a spectrum and
that we can have different beliefs
about this and all still be

(17:42):
good evangelical scholars. These are
evangelicals that said, yes, these are
evangelical scholars.

>> Rebeca (17:49):
That's insane, because now it's nothing but a human
Life. That's the only.

And so, you, know, I
think what's really
helpful about
their words and where I stand on this
issue is to say,
abortion is a moral issue.
It's not a trivial decision

(18:16):
to end a pregnancy. But
it's also,
to your point, part of our
free will and moral agency to be
making decisions about
when we have children, if we continue a
pregnancy. And that,

(18:37):
when we take that decision
seriously and recognize
that that gestating entity, what I call
the prenate, is the
potential for Life.
Then we say, this is a serious
decision. So, I mean, I think that one of
the things that is a misconception

(18:59):
is that people, women make this decision. Oh, it's no big
deal. Oh, you know, I'm just gonna owe two.

>> Rebeca (19:05):
I hear that a lot. Yes.

That's not what happens. So, my
current research project is the abortion and religion study. And I'm
interviewing protestant women having abortions. Across the
country, and they're
telling their stories, and every one
of their stories is a story of
moral discernment and prayer, and
what am I going to do? And

(19:28):
talking it through with God and
taking it seriously.
And I think that is something people need to
hear.

>> Rebeca (19:38):
I think that the, what we were taught,
in the movement was, you know, abortion is
for women who want to have a lot of sex and not have to deal with the
repercussions. And the more women that I meet who
have had abortions, whether they're christians or not,
I have yet to meet one woman. I've now met
hundreds. I have yet to meet one woman

(19:59):
for whom it was a frivolous experience that she
did not. Some of them, you know, it
was a massive loss, and it was something that
they simply had to choose to have the abortion. They did not feel there was
any other option. So it was something they mourned for. Other women,
it didn't reach that extreme, but it was still not let me go
out and do this frivolous thing. It's just like going and getting an

(20:20):
ice cream cone. I've not met any woman like
that. And so it feels to me like we have
certainly done women a, ah, disservice in the
pro Life movement, in painting
abortion patients that wet patients receiving abortions that
way, because it's simply not the truth.
We always do a disservice to human beings when we don't operate in
truth, and that is just not the truth. Not that there aren't

(20:43):
some that, you know, go out and try
to, Like I saw a few years ago, I saw a
woman saying, celebrate with me about my
abortion, and she was doing that in the face of
extreme hate she was receiving. And so
I understood the reactionary response, but that's just not what's
happening for millions of women.

Right? Right. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So
back to 68, right?

>> Rebeca (21:07):
Yes.

when we think about the context of what's happening in the
country in 1968, why did these 25
evangelical scholars come together to even have this
conversation? There are debates
in the country about abortion.
This is the five years preceding Roe v.
Wade in 1973. there are
increased media reports about

(21:30):
the dangerous nature of illegal
abortions, about the number of women who are
dying, about the
reality of. There was a german measles
epidemic that caused a whole lot of very, very
severe, well, miscarriages and severe birth
defects. There was a drug called
thalidomide that people were taking

(21:52):
for, I think it was off market use, but
people were using it as a sleeping aid, not knowing it
was a teratogen, meaning it was causing
severe birth defects. And
these were stories that were in
the public media
consciousness as abortion was

(22:12):
being debated. Should we decriminalize abortion in the United
States? So these scholars come together,
and then, you know, here's the end of the statement. They say
there could be compelling reasons
why abortion must be considered
individually. So they are saying
that even when we
affirm the sanctity of Life,

(22:35):
we have to also acknowledge
and recognize that there are sometimes compelling
reasons. So then, moving forward to your
actual question about the Southern Baptist Convention. In
1971, the Southern Baptist
Convention passes a resolution. And again, I'm going to read
you word for word.

(22:55):
We call upon Southern Baptists
to work for legislation
that will allow the possibility of
abortion under conditions of rape, incest,
clear evidence of severe fetal deformity,
and carefully ascertained
evidence of the likelihood of damage to the

(23:15):
emotional, mental, and
physical health of the mother.

>> Rebeca (23:20):
Which is exactly what Roe did.

Yeah.

>> Rebeca (23:24):
So they passed. This was 1971.
The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution basically
calling for exactly what the law became.
So what happened?

Well, that was reaffirmed
in 1974 after Roe was
passed. It was reaffirmed again
by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1976.
This was a consistent message within the
Southern Baptist Convention for
this period of the early seventies.

>> Rebeca (23:59):
So what happened.

A little bit more after Roe was passed? Have you ever heard of
WA Criswell, former president of the Southern
Baptist Convention? He said, quote, I
have always felt that it was only after a
child was born and had a life separate from its
mother that it became an individual person.
And it has always therefore seemed to

(24:23):
me that what is best for the mother and for the
future should be allowed, end
quote.

>> Rebeca (24:30):
Wow.
The president of the Southern Baptist Convention basically
saying, it's not a human until it's separate from its mother.

Then in do you know the Baptist
press?

>> Rebeca (24:43):
Oh, yes, very well.

W. Barry Garrett wrote in the Baptist press, after
Roe was passed, quote, religious liberty, human equality,
and justice are advanced by the Supreme
Court abortion decision, end quote. So Baptists
were really happy about Roe because it drew
this clear, separate separation line between church
and state, and they.

>> Rebeca (25:05):
Were free to practice the religion without government intrusion
into the decision.

Yes.

>> Rebeca (25:10):
you have to tell me how this changed, because I knew that the
position was different. I mean, I wasn't ignorant of that, but I
didn't know it to this degree.

Yeah, you know, that question
is more complicated, and it's harder
to
pinpoint exactly where it happens, because many
things happen right. So Randall
Ballmer, a scholar who has
studied the religious Right, makes the
argument that the rise of the

(25:40):
religious right in the late seventies, you
know, in what becomes the moral majority
movement, and other sort of pieces of
that movement, he argues
that,
really, evangelicals
were deeply concerned about

(26:00):
losing their tax exempt status
for parochial schools,
for christian colleges, because for
many years, they had said to their,
you know, to their people, you know, we don't take government
money, so we can do whatever we want. We can say whatever we want.
Which is true that, they didn't take government money,

(26:20):
but it's not true. Once
Brown v. Board of Education was passed, once it was
illegal to have
segregated educational
institutions
and have any sort of government
support. So tax exempt
status was at risk.

(26:43):
Right. Even though they weren't getting direct
money, the fact that they were tax
exempt meant that they had to abide
by federal laws. You follow?

>> Rebeca (26:54):
Mm Mm

So the threat that they would lose their
tax exempt status really
got people concerned, what are we going to do?
Because we don't really want to come out and
say we support
segregation.

>> Rebeca (27:09):
Some of them did, actually, but, yes.

But in the late 1970s and early eighties, they didn't think
they could mobilize voters based on
that.
So, m they were looking for an issue that would get people
to the polls, and that's when they picked up
abortion.

>> Rebeca (27:25):
And I feel like gay rights, too.

Became those two, gay rights and abortion, sort of the
trifecta of each.

>> Rebeca (27:31):
So it was, these are the things that will mobilize
our church members to go vote in our
best interest, which will help protect our tax exemption
and.

Okay, and this is the
same time that abortion is
politicized and put into
the plank, a plank of the Republican Party.
If you look at polling data in
1975, same time period we're talking about, right,
that Southern Baptists are affirming abortion
legality through 1976. If

(28:02):
you look at polling in 1975 and that classic
question pollsters ask you, do you think abortion should be
legal, you know, under any circumstances, certain
circumstances, or never, right? You familiar
with that one? In 1975,
there is one point different
between Republicans and Democrats. They are the
same on all three of those questions. They're just

(28:25):
in the same place. They believe the same things. It's not a
partisan divide, but abortion
gets picked up and used,
put into the republican platform to
get voters to vote republican.
That's when you see the divide
between Democrats and Republicans on the issue
of abortion.

>> Rebeca (28:48):
Wow. And I do know that,
informational campaign, which I guess hearing
all of this was really just propaganda because it's not where the church had been
before. Because that's when my mother got involved
and then went on to found a crisis pregnancy center. And it
became just a linchpin moment in our
family's Life of this is when we got
politically aware and politically

(29:10):
involved.

So it tracks onto that.

>> Rebeca (29:13):
Absolutely. That's when, I remember my
sister was in high school, which was from 1988 to
1992. Ah, when my
mother had, the first meeting in our
living room of concerned citizens. It was a very
philosophy eagle for moment of
the leaders in our community, the church leaders in our small
community in west Tennessee, and saying we have to

(29:35):
remove the scourge of abortion from our tri
city area or the Trichino area. And,
you know, all the statistics were flowing in of how many
abortions were happening, and we have to get rid of this.
And my mother just sort of. She became the
leader of this movement of, we're going to start a crisis pregnancy
center and we're going to have these girls choose Life.

(29:55):
And that became the rallying cry, choose Life, choose
Life. And then, you know, it evolved over the years where
no girl was receiving reproductive
education before she received salvation education
in the center. But
our entire family changed to the point that we cut
off some family members, my mother cut off some family members that I

(30:16):
recently rekindled with. And they said, we just don't understand
what happened with your mom. She became very different.
And I said, it's. She became political on this
issue. And there was no room for a conversation
like what you were talking about earlier, there was no longer room
for conversation and rationalizing and coming together. Come,
let us reason together. There was no room for that anymore.

(30:36):
It was, this is what's right. This is what we have to fight
for. So it just floors me
that nowhere in those conversations in my home, which I
sat in as a child and then participated in as a young adult and
continued to, you know, I marched in the march for Life in DC
and all that. nowhere do I ever remember
anyone saying, when did we shift on

(30:57):
this? Why did we shift on this? Does anybody remember what we said
last year about this? I don't remember any of that. So that,
that's fascinating to me, that no one went to that history.

So that's one piece of it. This piece that Ballmer describes,
the other piece of it, and, you know, this well, you lived through
it is the, really sort of what's often called
the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. When the
Southern Baptist convention really shifted
to say, we don't think women should be
pastors. Right? M. We are anti
abortion. Right? There were. There were a number of

(31:28):
very strong
declarations that shifted the
convention, to a
much more hierarchical,
patriarchal, male
centered, authoritarian,
or authoritative structure, and

(31:49):
much more
vocally articulated
gender roles than there were
prior to that shift. So, again,
that's culturally part of what's happening
with this move is these very
clearly defined gender roles that say, well, women's role
is to bear children, and women's role is to stay

(32:11):
home with those children and to care for their husbands.
And that. That's.
I mean, I have lots of friends who grew up
in the Southern Baptist church, and that wasn't
what it always said, right? That wasn't what it always did.

>> Rebeca (32:25):
That's. You know, if my ex husband is listening to
this, I'm sure he is. I
was married for about five minutes when I was
younger, and it did not work for a number of reasons. And
I'm thankfully married to the love of my Life and have been for
20 years. But I will say this, there was a moment in that
five minute marriage. It really was a few months. It really was less than a
year. I was earning a lot of money because I had

(32:48):
a degree and my husband did not. He was, ah, coast
guard, and he'd gotten out of the coast guard, and he didn't have a degree. So he was
struggling to make. To figure, you know, to get his feet underneath him.
We were young, we were early twenties, and so I was making quite a
bit of money. And my mother, along the
lines of what you were just talking about, because this was the decree from the
SBC, came to me, and she said,

(33:09):
your marriage will never work because
it will never be right with God so long as you make more money than
he does. I quit my job,
and I took a secretary job at a
church so that I would be making less money than him.
Now, what is the number one cause of arguments in
marriage? Money. We

(33:29):
fought like cats and dogs from that point
forward, because there was never enough money to
pay the bills and do what we needed to do to enjoy our lives
together. It was just an argument from that point forward. And
there I was wrestling with, why is my marriage getting
worse and worse when I'm being obedient to
what I'm being taught by my church, which is

(33:49):
I shouldn't make more money than him, because that puts me in some sort
of authority over him. And I'm, no longer, Now he's. I'm the
head of the household, not him, because I'm having a career and he's
not. And so when I realized, too, again, that, no, that
was a shift in the church, because the
church was deciding to take some different political
stances and put the entire denomination behind

(34:09):
those. One of those, being a woman, being subservient to a man, and being a help.
Help meet. That just. I mean, it
literally cost my marriage. I mean, it got
bad. It got very bad. It was just. And I look
at it now, you know, with the hindsight that I have now of having
left that movement and just go, wow, that was a really poor
decision, Rebeca. You should have known better. But I think that's how we

(34:29):
have to, especially to my friends who listen to this, who are still in the
movement, we really have to take a step
back from the doctrine and the denominational
teaching to go, does that make sense
with the idea of a loving God? Does it?
Because I think if I had done that, I would have been like, I don't think it does.
I think maybe no. So let me ask you, we've talked

(34:50):
about the Southern Baptist, because that's where I came from. But
was this also. I know this was a protestant
thing, but was this also a catholic thing
happening? What was their history?

sure. So, I mean,
the Catholic Church's history is the history
of Christianity, too, right?

>> Rebeca (35:09):
So it's also.

It encompasses protestant history. If we want to talk
about sort of in the
development of these ideas from sort
of day one, right, the beginning, when we think
about this question of
how we even define what it means to be
pregnant, like
questions around when does

(35:32):
Life begin? Or, you know, how do we think about these
questions and how have we thought about them historically? Right.
When we look at the history of Christianity
and we think about pregnancy,
you know that moment when you can first
feel movement in a, pregnancy?

>> Rebeca (35:51):
Yes, I remember it well. It was like having a butterfly.

Yes. Yes. So that's called
quickening. In human history,
pregnancies weren't confirmed until
quickening, because how would you know
if you were pregnant if you couldn't? You
know, you might have an illness, you might
have your stomach might be upset. I mean, like, there's.
There's no way that you knew

(36:16):
before. Sort of all the scientific,
you know, medical tools that we have now
without those things, really, the only
definitive confirmation was when you could
start feeling the movement in the womb.
So it was quite
common for theologians to talk

(36:36):
about quickening as the moment.

>> Rebeca (36:38):
Of insulment,
insulin, meaning when the soul attached to
the Life

And so prior to quickening,
if you did something to try to end a
pregnancy, it was discouraged, but it
wasn't a mortal sin.
And mostly it was discouraged in the catholic
tradition, because the catholic understanding
of sex is that the purpose
of sex is procreation. So

(37:07):
any kind of sexual activity that
interferes with the
possibility of the birth of a child is
considered sinful.
So ending a pregnancy, like
taking, herbs to try to end a pregnancy, if you thought you
were pregnant, even if it hasn't been confirmed, if you, you're just trying to sort of
bring on your menses. Right. And you might take a, ah, take

(37:28):
a tea or, something, to try to do
that, not even knowing whether you were pregnant or
not. But if you did
happen to prompt or
promote, an abortion, the Catholic
Church would have said you were interfering with that,
because the purpose of sex is procreation. But again,
that idea of the purpose of sex being

(37:50):
procreation relates to any
sexual activity. So you aren't supposed to have sex when you're
menstruating. Right. You aren't supposed to have
any kind of sex that, that doesn't involve,
you know, how explicit would.

>> Rebeca (38:03):
I'll say it. No oral, no hand
jobs.

Exactly how you say it.
Can't do those things. Right. This is also why, well,
specifically male to male, you
know, sexual encounters are
again, quote unquote, prohibited by
these theologians because
they're perceived as interfering with what is the purpose of
sex. So that idea of what the purpose of sex

(38:30):
is changes for Protestants.
Protestants are able to affirm, and in that
68 statement, they say this as well, right.
That the evangelical theologians say this as
well. Sex is also about our
relationship with our partner, and it's about our
care for each other, and it's about how
that intimacy

(38:51):
helps us grow and build our
love and our Life together. But in the
early church, in specifically sort of the history of the
Catholic Church, this
idea about quickening
and insulin happening and. Right, that happens at
the third or fourth month.
So to go back to your data that you've been educating your

(39:13):
audience about, that's
after 95%
of abortions have happened. So the
history of the Catholic Church, the history of the
christian church isn't to
prohibit or to mark those
early abortions as
sin, certainly not as

(39:34):
murderous, because this idea
that Life, quote unquote,
begins at conception, is, a
very modern idea.

>> Rebeca (39:45):
So where did that, People
can't see me because we don't have video, but my mind
is just a little blown. So
where did we, as the
church, begin to parrot the phrase that
you just said, Life begins at conception.

Yes. So just to finish, the
catholic church.

>> Rebeca (40:06):
Oh, sorry.

No, no. Which relates to this. It's not until
1965 that the Roman
Catholic Church shifts their concern from concealment of
sexual sin. Right. You're not doing sex. Right? Because
you're not allowing for
procreation. So, m
that or the other fear is that
women will have abortion. Like unmarried women

(40:29):
who get pregnant are trying to conceal their sexual sin by
having an abortion. Right. So all, up until
1965, the Roman Catholic Church's
prohibition against abortion is
for this concealment of sexual sin.
It's not till 1965 that that shifts over to the
protection of Life. So you see what I'm saying?

>> Rebeca (40:49):
Wow, thousands of years, and they're like.

Isn'T about protecting Life. That's a
modern idea. So
I think that begins in the mid 19th
century, century, when abortion is
legal. Well, it's not criminalized.
we have a big movement in the mid 19th century
to criminalize abortion, and it's led by

(41:14):
physicians. It's actually called the physicians
campaign to criminalize abortion.
And what you have happening
is they're all christian doctors in
this victorian erade who
are. This coincides with
the invention of the microscope. So the
ability to begin to see fertilization

(41:37):
happening in cells
and the recognition of the
continuity that happens from a fertilized egg
to through gestation before
this, through
autopsies and other
means. People knew about how gestation
happens, but they couldn't get back to the

(41:59):
cellular because it was too small. They couldn't see
that. So the
microscope sort of opens up that window into
those earliest stages, and these
doctors start to say, well,
because this is a continuous development,
there's no point at which this isn't

(42:19):
a baby. And therefore, women
who are having abortions don't know what they're doing. And if we just tell
them what they're doing, they'll understand how wrong they
are. So you see
echoes of contemporary
legislation that is
labeling women as stupid. Right. The
scripts that are some, states that you have to read

(42:42):
to women about what they're doing, as if they
don't understand that when they schedule an abortion, they're going to
end their pregnancy. They have to read you the script. So you have to
understand this. The parallels from that go back to the
19th century to these doctors who are. Who think
women are so dumb that they don't understand what they're
doing, and they're

(43:02):
they're meaning these physicians,
frustration, exasperation,
just plain upsetness about women
controlling their fertility. And
women in the 19th
century often had as
many or more abortions as they had children.

(43:22):
Abortion was used by
women to, not because they didn't want to have
children, but they wanted more years between their
children, so they wanted to space their children farther
apart. If you're. Did you know that our fertility is
about 35 years?

>> Rebeca (43:38):
Yes.

If you are trying to manage
your fertility over a 35 year
period, you can have so
many children during 35 years.
And that was hard. Right. Women
died frequently in childbirth. Women
had, you know, many, many children. If you look at sort of

(44:00):
the colonial era, the birth rate is up to
like 8910. And then by the mid
19th century, it's dropped to three
or four.
So how did it drop that much in 100,
150 years? It dropped because women
were seeking all the ways they could to
space out their children longer. So that was

(44:20):
abstinence, that was longer
time breastfeeding, that was
abortion. And
they were managing all of these
tools that they had to not have
as many children because it's hard on your body, it's
hard economically. I mean, we know all of the
ways that so many children

(44:42):
is, or can be a
challenge. And so this
move to reduce the number
of children they had,
regularly involved abortion
as a way of managing their fertility. And the doctors
didn't like that. And the doctors didn't like even
more than women managing their own fertility, the fact

(45:03):
that they were using midwives. Because if
you use a midwife to help you deliver your baby,
when that baby gets sick, you're likely to call that
midwife. You're not calling the doctor.
Doctors wanted to be doing medical
care for those families, and so they were trying to figure out
how to cut the midwives out. How do we
get control of the

(45:25):
healthcare of these families?
And all of these
reasons, or sort of pieces of this
puzzle are documented in terms of what was happening in this
physicians campaign to criminalize abortion.

>> Rebeca (45:40):
So the physicians campaigned to criminalize abortion.
Those were christian doctors.

Yeah. I mean, when you read their language, they talk about
the christian duty of women to mother.
Right. Christian language is all
through their
speeches, through the documents that
they're preparing, and it's all about
women's responsibility as
christian women to bear children.

>> Rebeca (46:06):
So it was this idea that a woman's purpose
is to be a wife and a mother. And that's, it's,
Who was the football player that reminded us of that a few months
ago in the commencement speech. That that's our highest and
greatest call. And while I do adore my children and I love being a
wife, it was, interesting to hear
that somehow I'm supposed to value

(46:27):
that more than the thousands of
people that I have gotten to help and work with
in my 20 year career in this business, and the
hundreds of good messages and stories that I've put out into the world and
made the world a better place. Why? I don't know why we have to
put those into a hierarchy in the first place. Why can't
I love being a mother as much as I love being a storyteller

(46:47):
and a story, to use your word of story midwife, of helping to
bring stories into the world? there's not a need to
have. There's not a need for a woman to have that
competition within herself, to be
valuing more of a part of her
than another part of her. She can be all these things
at once. She's capable of being all of these things at
once, and equally. And they can all be equally important.

(47:10):
So that's interesting to me, that there was a physicians
movement, the physicians being motivated by
the concept that, no, no, women need
to be wives and moms before and to the
exclusion of anything else. So, of course, we have
to make it where they have to give birth every time they get pregnant, whether or not
they can afford to feed those children or house those children or

(47:30):
clothe those children, that's somebody else's problem.

Yes. And, you know, so prior to this mid 19th
century campaign, you know, women were having abortions, and
women have always had abortions. We have some of the
early written documents. There's egyptian papyri
that have recipes for how to end a pregnancy.

>> Rebeca (47:47):
Wow. Women were
like, we will figure this out.

Yes. So
before. Before married women
in the mid 19th century start using abortion as a, as one
of their tools to manage their fertility,
you largely had
poorer women, sometimes, you know,
more single women who were,
having abortions, and most of society

(48:15):
just sort of, turned away. Right. They didn't.
Okay. These women are managing. It's not our
concern. It was the fact
that married women were
using abortion to control their fertility that
became the
sort of, I don't know, trigger

(48:35):
for these physicians, and they were able
to use that as a cultural tool that
if only these married women understood what they were doing, they would
stop. And they used, they went across the country
and state by state, passed the laws.
Those are the laws that we saw after
Roe that came back into effect.

(48:55):
I mean, after, you know, after Dobbs, when
Roe was overturned, you saw
these laws from the 1970s, the
1870s, 1880s,
1890s, come back on the
books and, you know, different states
handled them in different ways. But that's the
origin of the criminalization of abortion in the

(49:18):
country.

>> Rebeca (49:18):
The laws that came back on the books are, these laws
from the 18 hundreds
that were rooted in the motivation of a
married woman needs to give birth every time she gets pregnant,
period.

Yeah. It was the very
beginning of the American Medical association as they were
professionalizing and they were trying to stake
out their claim as the authorities in
medicine. So it was a combination
of what you just described, right? Sort
of the, you know, it's kind of like how
the evangelicals used abortion to mobilize

(49:53):
people to go to the polls, right? Physicians
found this issue that had political capital
and they used it to promote
their professionalism and authority. Because
if you wipe out all the midwives, if you wipe out all the
other people who are your competition, then
you're there with the power and the authority.

>> Rebeca (50:15):
And of course, none of those good christian
physicians were females, I'm sure,
in that organization.

But we have records from, and not all the
physicians. Certainly there was a group of people who
took this on as their campaign.
And you know, it's also, it's the same era as the
Comstock laws, right? The Comstock laws are
the ones that forbid any kind
of mailing of information about
contraception or any mailing of

(50:42):
contraception, contraceptive devices,
as you, know, immoral. And so all
of these ideas around controlling
women's fertility and sexuality are
being shut down by these male authority
figures. And those comp stock laws, they're talking
about using those to prohibit the
mailing of medication abortions today.

>> Rebeca (51:06):
Did it, I just wonder, did it ever once
occur to all of these male physicians to simply
tell their fellow male counterparts,
if you don't want your woman to be pregnant, don't have
sex? Like, could it ever be? Could it
ever, could any shred of responsibility ever
rest with. It's not like we're out here making
fertilizing eggs by ourselves.

(51:29):
It takes both of us. And I don't understand.
I still, I didn't understand even when I was in the movement, but I don't
understand still to this day, the just
complete absolvement of, even
what percentage of responsibility on the
male in the equation. He's just, it's just the
woman's thing that she has to deal with and not. So

(51:49):
we say to the woman, you have to manage
this. But we are also
going to control what options you have to m manage
this.
Let me ask you this. We've done Protestants, we've done
Catholics. What about our jewish friends?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to talk
about, you know, lots of other faith traditions. Certainly it's important
to talk about our jewish friends. So within
Judaism, the predominant understanding
of when life begins is when the
first breath is taken. And that
goes back to Genesis two.

>> Rebeca (52:29):
Very Genesis, yeah.

And, God formed man from the dust of the earth
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life.
And then Adam,
man became a living Nefesh.
That Nefeshen, that's the hebrew word for breath of
Life. And that
when you have that breath of Life, that's

(52:50):
when you become human, that's when you enter
into personhood with human rights
and all that that entails.
So for Jews,
Life begins at birth.
And they also have
very clear teachings in, you know,
the Hebrew Bible, what christians call the Old Testament,

(53:13):
but the Hebrew Bible or the Torah, you know, in
Exodus, there's this classic story
in Exodus 21 about when two men fight and they
accidentally strike a pregnant woman. You
know, what are, it's in a whole list of all of
these sort of penalties. What happens
if she miscarries? Well, it's
very clear in the text that if she

(53:35):
miscarries, the penalty is
different than if she dies. So
if she miscarries, whoever struck
her and caused the miscarriage was required to
pay recompense to the father.
Right. Has nothing to do with the pregnant woman mother. It,
goes to the man. But if she
dies, then the law of

(53:58):
lex Talionis, an eye for an eye, which was the
ancient near east law of if
you kill someone, then their life is
required. And so that eye for
an eye doesn't come into play if you cause a
miscarriage, there's just a fine.

>> Rebeca (54:14):
So I just want to make sure, I'm digesting what you're saying. In
jewish tradition,
ending whatever is happening in the womb,
which Southern Baptists call Life, is
not ending a Life because it's not receiving
the penalty for ending a Life, which is eye for an eye.
And that is the penalty that applies if you end the
woman's life, even though we were

(54:36):
property.

Right, right.

>> Rebeca (54:39):
But it's, that is a very inch. I didn't realize that.

And I've, you know, it shows a distinction.
Mean, that gestating,
you know, prenatal potential and,
and recognizes. Yes, that
was bad. Right.

>> Rebeca (54:55):
You shouldn't there is a loss.

There is harm done. There is a loss.
But the penalty helps us
recognize that it's not
valued. It's valued. It's not valued in the
same way.

>> Rebeca (55:10):
As a human life.

That's right. And I think
that has informed my work on this
issue, because I think it's really
helpful. I
don't agree with secular feminists, and not a lot
of secular feminists say this. You know, that the idea
that it's like cutting your hair, right? An abortion is like cutting your
hair, or like, it's like, well,

(55:34):
that it's part of your body and you can do whatever you want with it. Right. It's a
clump of cells. It doesn't matter. I do think, like I
said earlier, it's a moral issue. It is the potential
for Life, and therefore must be taken seriously
as a decision. But that doesn't mean you can't make the
decision, because there is.

>> Rebeca (55:50):
Oh, that's an important distinction.

Yeah. Yeah. Because there is
that difference between the potential
for Life and an actual Life. So we respect
the potential for Life. And again, like I told
you, the women that I interview are. They're
thinking carefully. They're thinking about, what would
it mean if I had this pregnancy, if I continued

(56:13):
this pregnancy, what would it mean for the children that I already
have that I'm struggling to feed? Some of the women
say to me, I can't even take care of myself.
How could I possibly be responsible for another human being? I
would be a terrible parent right now. I want to be a parent someday,
but that's. That is not.
That is respecting the potential for Life, right.

(56:35):
To say, I would be a terrible.

>> Rebeca (56:36):
Parent, that's interesting to think
of. The impact of the potential
on becoming a m human
is respecting the potential Life
to think about what's coming. We do that in everything else
in Life, right? You know, we make decisions for our children because we can
think through the repercussions, and they can't. They don't have fully

(56:58):
formed frontal lobes. I tell my teenagers all the time,
you can't do it. You can't do it yet. It's okay. It's why you have
me to
think about the fact that we do that before they're
born and as well. And that. That is
respecting. That is a mother respecting
the potential of that Life to think about, what

(57:18):
if I actually allow it to become human
Life and be born? It's a
very different way of looking at the woman
than she's just having an abortion because she had too much sex and doesn't
want to.

There was a, one of the women we interviewed,
Sierra, 28 year old nurse, has a three month old and
a one year old. And she. She said, oh, God, love her.
And she said to us, the
selfish choice would have been to have that baby
because I need to take care of
those two kids I already have. And as much as I

(57:53):
might have liked to have had a third, and I know I
would have loved it, that wasn't
the thing I needed to do to take care of
the two children I already had.

>> Rebeca (58:04):
There's so many things to think through.
Again, I go back to, we have to
consider that as women when we're pregnant.
And I don't understand
why the government needs
to have a presence in that
deliberation.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's. I think
you really honed in on the central issue
here is that if we
can all acknowledge that these are
factors that people are navigating,
everybody's situation is unique
to them. The only person who has
full knowledge is that person. And why is the

(58:46):
state intervening?
Why does the state think that that's a good
idea to tell people, what
they can and can't do in those situations? And this
is the other, I want to share another really
important piece of this study,
and that is the women we

(59:06):
interview who say, yeah,
abortion is a sin. What I did was a sin
and I prayed about it, and
God forgives sins.
and it's such a revelation
to me to hear these women say, yeah, that's a
sin, and God forgives sinse and

(59:27):
I've prayed about it and God and I are
good. And the state has no
role in that because it's between me and God.

>> Rebeca (59:36):
It goes back to that idea of perhaps that was the purpose
of that conception because,
you know, to go through that process in your relationship
with God, of wrestling through that and working
through that, in that relationship. You
certainly have a different relationship
with God afterward because you've wrestled through

(59:57):
that with God. And who's to say that wasn't the
purpose? I, don't think it's the state to say
that wasn't the purpose. It just,
you know, when I started the show, I. And I
still have it to a certain extent. It is a true.
How do we think about this? Because, you know, you're not
in Florida, you know, but, you know, we have this amendment that we have to vote

(01:00:17):
on this November, and I
am a pro Life person. I do value Life, I do nurture Life, and I
really do want to make a decision
that set politics aside, set religion aside.
At the end of the day, does my decision protect and nurture
Life? And the first thing I had to come to terms
with was I was not taught to factor in the Life of

(01:00:38):
the woman, only the potential Life within
her. And so I really had to wrap my mind
around the audacity of forgetting
that there was a human, another human being, an
actual human being involved in this, that was going to be affected by this
decision. But now even coming to that
place of when you recognize that
every woman is faced with different circumstances

(01:01:01):
with every pregnancy and
is factoring in her circumstances,
is in many ways knowing she's making
a moral decision, from what you're telling me of the women that you're talking
to and feeling
like the government
should have the audacity to have a
word in that

(01:01:23):
internal conversation she's having, and maybe with her
partner and maybe and with her God,
it feels very, arrogant on the part of the
state to insert itself
into that deliberation, to remove anything,
basically, because she's a. She has to live with it,
in her faith, in her family. Her family has
to live with it.

>> Dr. Rebeca Todd Peters (01:01:43):
You know, and I think what we're seeing in these state
legislatures is it's predominantly
male, christian legislators
who are promoting these bills
and voting for these bills. You know, in South
Carolina, there were these women legislators, and
all the women legislators in South Carolina,

(01:02:04):
Republican, Democrat, independent, voted
together to say, you
men need to stop,
because this is not the
state's role. So, I mean, I think they
were this amazing. They all got voted out. Well, the
Republicans got voted out.

>> Rebeca (01:02:23):
Doctor Peters is referencing three republican state
senators from South Carolina. Katrina
Shealy, Sandy Send and
Penry Gustafson. They
joined Democrat Margie Bright
Matthews and independent Mia
McLeod in filibustering South
Carolina's near total ban on abortion

(01:02:44):
and halting its passage three times.
For those efforts, Shealy
Senn and Gustafson lost
their party's primaries. They've also
faced threats, violence and harassment.

But such a witness to
just what you're talking about, right? That this
is not something that the state should be
intervening in. And men don't always
get that because m women
who can get pregnant have a
different understanding of the
complexity of what that means

(01:03:23):
and how you are situated
in your life circumstances and how
you navigate that and recognize
that even if it's a choice you
wouldn't make, other people
should have the free will,
right to use christian language to do that. God

(01:03:43):
gave us free will. And, you know,
some, as my interviewees
remind me, God gave us free will. And sometimes
we make a decisions that God doesn't
like, but God still gave us free will.
And that's again between
us and God.

>> Rebeca (01:04:02):
I will say, I've said it before on the show and I'll say it again. You
know, when we're in a voting booth,
our pastor's not there, our husband's not there,
the other kids aren't. You know, it's just us. It's just us in a voting
booth marking those ballots and that it's
just us that has to answer
for how we mark that ballot.

(01:04:23):
And the more that I
learn about this issue, I'm comforted by the
fact that we women will stand
alone in those voting booths
and we will have to decide what's
the thing here that really does protect
Life and really does nurture Life. A

(01:04:43):
woman's Life, a family, her relationship with God.
Is it giving her the ability
to walk her own journey out?
Or is it saying, no, you, you can't. The state
gets to tell you that you can't. You can't make those choices.
The state knows better your circumstances. It's been
a really enlightening conversation. Well, doctor Peters, thank

(01:05:04):
you so much for coming on to write to Life. I have
certainly been schooled and educated today. I really
appreciate the information I say often on this show. My favorite
verses, this is proverbs four, seven, which is
Chase wisdom. If it cost you everything, get understanding. And
I certainly got some today. So thank you for coming on the show.

Thank you for inviting me. I really enjoyed our
conversation.

>> Rebeca (01:05:26):
The thing about chasing wisdom is that you have
to be willing to live within it when you catch
it. That's the rub.
The verse says, chase wisdom
and get understanding.
Understanding is the act of incorporating the
wisdom into your being so that it becomes a part

(01:05:46):
of your knowledge. You begin to
move from a place of
understanding. It's a little like when we're kids
and we first touch a hot stove.
That's how I think about it.
That pain when we touch the hot stove.
That's wisdom. We now know
the stove can bring pain under certain circumstances.

(01:06:07):
We show that we understand this new
wisdom by adjusting our behavior
around the stove. We no longer lay
a hand on.
It without a thought. We tap it.
You know that fast tap we do. Or we toss a bit of water on
it and see if the water sizzles. That those
acts. That's our understanding at
work today

(01:06:29):
talking to doctor Petersen, christian social
ethicist who is deeply rooted in studying
the intersection of abortion and
faith. We chased wisdom.
This discussion was chasing wisdom,
and we caught some. The
question now for you and for me

(01:06:50):
is whether or not we'll move that wisdom
into understanding.

>> Announcer (01:07:00):
You've been listening to write to Life on the
one 1C Story Network. If you have a story to
share.
Or would like to learn more, please visit
righttolifestories.com.
this show is brought to you by.
The generous support of people who value Life.
To contribute, visit
righttolifestories.com or get in

(01:07:20):
touch.

>> Singer (01:07:33):
The one 1C Story Network
for the love of stories.

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Episode 6 - Catching Wisdom with Dr Rebecca Todd Peters

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 6 - Catching Wisdom with Dr Rebecca Todd Peters