The Theological Anthropology of Dobbs: Women in Service to White Nationalism

In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protection for the rights of people who are pregnant to obtain an abortion. Discussions of abortion in the United States are, and always have been, bound up with issues of gender, race, and ethnicity. The Dobbs decision is the latest in a long history of U.S. policies that manipulate reproduction in order to maintain white dominance. In the same logic as military service, people who can become pregnant are now being required to sacrifice themselves, not for the possible individual embryo or fetus they might carry, but rather for the nation. They are conscripted into service of a particular vision of the United States as a white nation. This universal, enforced availability for service truncates the status of women, rendering us less than fully human.