Women’s rights are very difficult for men to debate, Wright added, partly due to the “unmarried men from the Catholic hierarchy” telling females what they can and can’t do. “The optics of that are pretty bad,” he said. “That’s part of the same system of male bullying which we have to avoid like the plague.”
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Wright concluded:
However, having said that, I do think that that sense of respect for God’s creation in all its rich variety is the primary starting point, even if we then have to say with sorrow and a certain sense of this is the least-worst option in this situation, that there may be some cases of exceptions…I’m very much aware of just how sensitive this topic is politically, sociologically, as well as ethically.
Critics Call NT Wright’s Comments on Abortion ‘Incoherent’
Reaction to those comments were swift. Denny Burk, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, shared some clips and wrote, “This is incoherent.”
“N. T. Wright argues that it’s okay to kill unwanted children in utero so long as you do it ‘as soon as possible,’” said Burk. “He then admits that he doesn’t know when ‘viability’ occurs, but it’s okay to kill the baby before then.”
User Doug McHone posted, “As someone who was in utero with doctors recommending abortion at an early stage, I can say that N.T. Wright is in gross violation of biblical standards regarding the sanctity of life and is in urgent need of repentance.”
Author Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote, “As a professing Christian, NT Wright knows that abortion should at least disgust him. But more importantly as a Brit, he knows he cannot have the vulgar attitude about it that Catholics and American Evangelicals do.”
Protestia noted that Wright previously characterized the pro-life movement as “people nervous about sex” who are coerced by “powerful men telling women what they could and couldn’t do.” Wright has also been critical of conservative U.S. voters, saying it’s inconsistent to oppose abortion yet rally for gun rights.
Wyatt Graham Questions Wright’s Reasoning
In a response posted at The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website, Wyatt Graham began by giving Wright the benefit of the doubt. Graham noted that the scholar condoned abortion only for “exceptional circumstances,” acknowledged the “real suffering” of rape and incest survivors, and denied “that any viable human being should be aborted.”
The key point, Graham wrote, is that “Wright does not view an early pregnancy as one that has ‘a viable human being’ that should be cherished.” That reasoning doesn’t hold up, according to Graham. He wrote:
Wright holds to a position that is morally impossible to sustain. Let me put it simply: If I do not know when a human being is viable, then I am guessing. But if I am guessing, I may be wrong. If I am wrong, then I am terminating (killing) a viable human being. Without assurance that I am not terminating the life of a viable human being—and Wright acknowledges it is hard to know—then abortion runs the deep risk of killing a human being. In my view, this is an impossible moral situation that arises from an incomplete understanding of what it means to be a human being.
Graham, part-time editor-in-chief of TGC Canada, also provided biblical arguments against abortion. “We belong body and soul to God,” he wrote. “Any human life is made in God’s image.”
“Any human life is made by God. Therefore, any human life cannot be ours to take,” he said, “any human made in God’s image cannot be ours to destroy, and any human made by God cannot be ours to unmake.”
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Although rape and incest are “vile acts,” Graham wrote, “Human suffering does not change reality. What God has made through human procreation is still a human life… [and] a human life should not be terminated.”
“The outrageous acts of rape and incest do not change Christian teaching on what constitutes created life,” he added. “They only make it more tragic.”
One evil (rape or incest) shouldn’t lead to another (abortion), according to Graham. “We should not harm the new human life but should instead protect and cherish it. It is life made in God’s image and life innocent of the evil that conceived it.” Although Graham “can sympathize in the same ways that Wright does,” he said he cannot reach the same conclusions.
ChurchLeaders has reached out to N.T. Wright for comment and will update this article with any reply.
