Biblical Feminism recognizes that life is a choice.
Life comes from God. Unlike pagan cultures, we do not believe that the sole purpose of a woman is to give birth in the service of mystical or political ritual. Rather, life is a gift that results from a three-fold cord union between spouses and God. Human beings can create physical bodies; God is the giver of the soul. The question of who has the power to terminate life, that is, who has the ability to choose whether another living being may live or die, is the crux of the abortion argument.
Today’s feminism teaches that women are in sole control of their bodies and therefore have the choice to end that life at their own discretion. The argument is wholly based on the idea that men don’t have the burden of carrying a baby and can walk away from sex without any consequences, so why shouldn’t women? The entire feminist’s viewpoint lusts after a man’s perspective, once again illustrating that contemporary feminism has more to do with wanting to be a man than celebrating being a woman. Moreover, the idea that men can walk away from sex consequence-free implies they are both physically and emotionally superhuman. Not only must they be immune to one of the many sexually transmitted diseases that could plague them for a lifetime or even kill them, they’re also stone-cold morons with no feeling. Only contemporary feminism could harbor a mindset that worships men as gods while slapping them in the face at the same time.
The man-worship feeding contemporary feminism stretches even further into the modern female psyche, implying that her sole concern in life should be the ability to terminate her child’s life at whim, from the moment they are conceived until he or she is bursting forth from the womb. For “a woman’s right to choose” advocates abortion is the only issue bringing women to the polls. (Outside, of course, of unacted upon platitudes about equal pay.) In fact, liberal male politicians garner a huge fan base for their pro-choice stance (so much for that “consequence free male” theory) while anti-abortion politicians are “waging a War on Women.” In either case, reproduction transforms from a natural part of human life into a political threat, furthering the notion that it is as easy to stamp out a life as it is to cast a ballot.
Control over human life is as hot a topic in religious circles as secular ones. Recently, an ultra-Orthodox push resulted in Israel’s Education Ministry removing chapters on “human reproduction, pregnancy prevention and sexually transmitted diseases from science textbooks used in state religious junior high schools as well as from their teacher manuals.” The ultra-Orthodox are known for their increasingly strict modesty rules regarding female attire. However, as the Forward‘s Elissa Strauss commented, “apparently they just couldn’t stop with the outside of women’s bodies, and now the inside of our bodies have got to go too. …Here is one section they removed: ‘Every month (during the woman’s period of fertility) one of her ova (the egg cells) ripens and is released from the ovary where it was created. This stage is called ovulation … Only if a sperm cell reaches the fallopian tube during those days will fertilization occur.’ I know, hot stuff, right?”
Ignorance is also a choice. Choosing to proliferate ignorance by censoring educational materials that teach biological facts because they offend your religious point of view is an abuse of power over the human mind. In censoring these textbooks the Israeli government is allowing the ultra-Orthodox community to foster a national division based on the idea that, like American women, Israeli Orthodox youth harbor a single issue mindset when it comes to reproduction. Considering that a woman’s menstrual cycle and fetal development mirror the yearly cycle of Biblical holidays given to Israel in Leviticus 23, shouldn’t the religious community be the first to champion the study of God’s physical creation since they so clearly demonstrate His spiritual truths?
But that would mean choosing to relinquish authority over life and death to a Higher Power, to acknowledge that you are not perfect in the choices that you make and that, very often, your choices have imperfect consequences. Ironically, according to Torah, choosing to respect the authority of God is the equivalent of choosing life itself. Yet, it would appear that whether you fall to the left or the right of the political spectrum that is not a choice you are willing to make.
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