REL 406: Religion and Reproduction

The idea for this course came from Dr. Wills’s interest in the religious energies behind intensifying pressure on reproductive freedoms over the past twenty years. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022 cemented her commitment to design and teach this seminar. She wanted to pay particular attention to two little-known episodes in the twentieth-century history of religion and reproduction – first, the establishment by Pope John XXIII in 1963 of the Pontifical Commission for the Study of Population, Family, and Births, which issued a report in 1966 recommending that the Roman Catholic Church lift its condemnation of artificial birth control methods; and second, the creation of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, a network of Protestant and Jewish clergy who connected women experiencing “problem pregnancies” with resources, including abortion care, from 1967 until the Roe decision legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
In the exhibits featured here, students have selected topics that show various dimensions of the relationship between religious commitments and reproductive choices. Curiously, since abortion was not the exclusive focus of the seminar, all of these exhibits nevertheless concern abortion. What do our own traditions and religious institutions currently teach about abortion? What religious commitments drive some to commit violence against property or people central to the delivery of abortion care? When participants in international politics discuss issues such as maternal and child health and population growth, how does the conversation turn to abortion? How do the world’s religious communities respond to governments’ policy decisions? And how does religious rhetoric in the U.S. political arena shape, for better or worse, the public’s perception of reproductive healthcare?

We hope you enjoy reflecting on these questions as you navigate through our exhibits. 

Student Curators

We are all deeply grateful for assistance from Cara Evanson of Library Research, Learning, and Outreach and Matt Davis and Jacob Heil of the Digital Learning Team.