Reproductive justice is a phrase used within the social justice movement. Generally speaking, it is the woman’s right to have bodily autonomy and the right to have or not have children. Please consider the following definitions.

“SisterSong defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities….the individual right to plan your own family must be central to global development” https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice

Reproductive Justice is the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social, and economic well-being of women and girls, based on the full achievement and protection of women’s human rights. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/courses/fileDL.php?fID=4051

Reproductive Justice is different than reproductive rights, which is the “legal right to access reproductive health care services like abortion and birth control.”¹https://www.publichealthpost.org/viewpoints/reproductive-justice/  Reproductive justice claims that women have an inherent right to have children, not have children as they maintain personal bodily autonomy.

Biblical Response to Reproductive Justice

Scripture most definitely affirms the right of people to have self-governance and personal freedom.  However, Scripture also affirms our responsibility within that freedom to treat others well (Lev. 19:18). Furthermore, scripture reveals that life in the womb is to be guarded and valued (Psalm 127:3; 139:13-16; Job 31:15; Isa. 49:1; Luke 1:41). The problem with secular reproductive justice is that it strips human life in the womb of its inherent human nature and rights and denies that such human life is made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26). It devalues the life in the womb at the whim of the mother. Furthermore, it promotes autonomy from God, which is ultimately sinful, and uses human reasoning and needs as the standard of right and wrong. Therefore, reproductive justice is, ultimately, a form of humanism. It is self-centered.

Furthermore, when it speaks of the right not to have children, reproductive justice is actually a euphemistic term used to justify abortion. So, instead of women being the bearers and nurturers of life, they become the harbingers of death justified by the autonomous, self-oriented need that sacrifices the lives of the children within them to their idol of self-serving-autonomy.

If they desired not to have children, then they ought to exercise responsibility in their sexual activity (i.e., within marriage). Freedom comes with responsibility, and when freedom is used to deny one’s own responsibility and oppress others, then it is evil.

But, in a humanistic ideology where God has no part of the moral framework, then everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6; Deut. 12:8). This is because human-based morality is godless, ever-changing, self-contradictory, and subjective. It is shaped and reshaped to justify human desires, no matter what the cost might be to others.

Reproductive Justice is not justice to the unborn.