Toward Eve’s Exodus

Abstract

OPEN ACCESS CC BY-NC-ND Paid In an American context of reproductive injustice, the Christian right legitimizes a coercive pronatalist policy agenda by appeal to the theological belief that ‘human life begins at fertilization,’ which they ground in the biblical narrative of Genesis 1–3. Drawing upon interdisciplinary resources and utilizing an innovative feminist methodology, this article demonstrates that, while the story of pro/creation in Gen. 1–3 does not directly support ‘life at fertilization’ theology, it does provide a de facto undergirding for that conceptualization via its highly androcentric ideology of reproduction. Through symbolic, mythical narration of how ‘life’ comes to be, Gen. 1–3 constructs a central fiction of the Father God’s paternal reproductive omni-potence, which is built upon God’s colonization of agents with the capacity for maternal gestation labor and his violent destruction of those agents’ collective autonomy and capacity for reproductive anti-labor. In its ancient religious context, this rhetoric championed God’s patriarchal, patrilineal world-building project, which served those establishing and reinforcing a society that generated power and wealth for dominant men. As a story deeply socialized through lived religion over time, it operates now as a contemporary social fact that the Christian right exploits to construct its own, more extreme fiction of paternal omnipotence. Illumination of the Gen. 1–3 narrative’s oppressive constructions of women as reproductive laborers/anti-laborers – symbolized by Eve and other agents – enables feminist religio-cultural narrative intervention. A new story of life’s pro/creation is needed in both religious and secular settings to liberate ‘Eve’ and advance the movement for reproductive health, rights, and justice.