Activate Series: #19 – Is Personhood Actually Oppressive?

Our weekly #Activate vlog series uses clips from Educe® online courses to illuminate the truth behind the cultural battles of today (and tomorrow) and move Christians from education to action in their communities, churches, and circles of influence.

Just when you think you’ve had enough of feminist dystopian fiction hurling itself into the public square (aka, all those handmaid costumes lurking about), here comes Red Clocks, a brand new tale of a “grim near future” when the United States passes a “sexist and oppressive” Personhood Amendment at the federal level to bring a punishing end to women’s rights. According to the author and many other abortion advocates, personhood is extreme and represents “a grave threat to women’s health and reproductive rights.” Yet, some activists are attempting to use their own definition of personhood to push back against personhood. It’s a strange desperation. But the question remains: Is personhood actually oppressive to women?

The answer as to whether personhood is oppressive is an emphatic yes…but not to women. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Personhood is oppressive to all efforts throughout history that have risen up to destroy civil society’s most fundamental truths about human equality and human dignity, and it is oppressive to arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Human personhood is simply the right to have rights. It aims to restore legal protections surrounding an innate, God-given right that all humans already have—the right to life. By its nature, personhood directly challenges the self-indulgent, vulgar, Marxist movement that feminism has sadly become, because personhood rests unshakingly on a foundation of equal human rights. Not rights based on class, societal contribution, relative value, or the ethics of the moment, but rights based on humanness. Period. Even more specifically, personhood has abortion advocates in a panic because it successfully undermines feminism’s most powerful, but easily dismantled, argument—bodily autonomy.

This week’s online course clip exposes some of the major weaknesses in the bodily autonomy argument and responds with simple truth that lies at the core of human personhood—the equal, intrinsic, and exceptional value of every human being, at all developmental stages, and in every circumstance.

This course excerpt is from Session 6: Awakening, the final course in our Foundations online curriculum.

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