This article considers and responds to some of the ways the Bible is used in US immigration debates, focusing on restrictive interpretations by conservative scholars. It highlights how biblical texts are often applied to support modern distinctions, such as legal versus illegal immigrants, by selectively interpreting passages like those referring to the “least of these” or the treatment of sojourners versus foreigners. The discussion draws on some complexities of theological history, including how Western Christianity’s colonial mindset distorted biblical teachings, leading to exclusionary practices. The article contrasts these views with more inclusive biblical interpretations that emphasize hospitality and justice.

Précis: 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.

This article offers a critical theo-ethical reflection on abortion from a reproductive justice (RJ) perspective. Focusing on the socio-political structure that shapes abortion discourses and legislation and affects women’s agency over their reproductive ability, I complicate the ways of thinking about abortion. The abortion debate reveals what we, as the church, value, how we embody God’s love and justice, and how we should live. In search of the answers to these questions, the article engages in women of color’s theory and activism for RJ through the theological, the political, and the sexual. Finally, the article suggests that the Episcopal/Anglican church reconsider abortion as a social justice issue and meditate on its commitment to God’s justice in light of RJ.