Trust Women

Praise

“A courageous, personal book. . . This theologically astute and social justice–minded book will appeal to progressive Christians who are interested in reclaiming abortion as an issue of women’s health and could easily become part of the required reading for an array of university courses.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Offers a compelling case for radically revising the way we think and speak about women’s reproductive experience. . . . While written specifically for Christians, this will be a valuable read for anyone who questions the pronatalism and misogyny that constrains reproductive decision-making in the United States and seeks to shift our public debate in a more just direction.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

“[Trust Women] will pave the way for more accounts that connect faith and reproductive justice, but it also shows how hard it is to escape the access focus of reproductive rights.”
—Rewire News

“In Trust Women, Rebecca Todd Peters lays bare the real question underlying the abortion debate: whether or not women can be trusted to make their own decisions. She is compassionate and clear-eyed in constructing her faith-based case for abortion, and her voice cuts through the noise to affirm what we at Planned Parenthood have long believed: the best arbiter of a woman’s reproductive destiny is herself.”
—Cecile Richards, former President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund

“Rebecca Todd Peters pivots away from Christian fatalism about women and sex, baked-in misogyny about women’s morality, and patriarchal legislation controlling women’s bodies. Creating new language and new ethical theory, she applies an intersectional reproductive justice framework to persuasively argue that reframing abortion as a moral good for women begins with trusting women to be moral decision makers.”
—Loretta Ross, co-editor of Radical Reproductive Justice and co-founder of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

“Peters offers us the moral conversation for which we have been waiting. Instead of the polarizing and ahistorical Christian perspective that you have come to expect on this topic, be prepared to read something that makes you think through a deeply nuanced and unflinchingly personal lens about abortion, motherhood, and justice.”
—Traci C. West, author of Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter

“Dr. Peters exposes the unethical framework that for years has been the foundation of antiabortion politics and policies. Highlighting the systemic devaluation and marginalization of women, especially those of color and who are poor, Peters’ work exposes the hypocrisy of the religio-legislative narrative of abortion as attacks against the most vulnerable. This is an important book for physicians, clergy, legislators, justice advocates, and those who seek to understand critical debates about life!”
—Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

“Rebecca Todd Peters, in a creative, elegant, and timely move, changes the Christian ethical question from the morality of abortion to the morality of choosing motherhood. She exchanges a justification model for one steeped in reproductive justice so women’s many choices can be respected.”
—Mary E. Hunt, co-founder and co-director of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER)