In the Name of the Mother: Renegotiating Conservative Women’s Authority in the Crisis Pregnancy Center Movement

Abstract

The majority of crisis pregnancy centers are part of an evangelical pro-life movement, which assumes the assumption that meeting the material and spiritual needs of women with problematic pregnancies will convince them to forgo abortions. The movement is unusual in the evangelical Christian context because the vast majority of lay activists and leaders are women. Furthermore, there are multiple sites of negotiation within the movement indicating that gender hierarchy is neither absolute nor taken for granted. These conflicts are enabled by gender essentialism, yet they destabilize the patriarchal bargain between women and men at both the national and local levels. First, the movement as a whole comes into conflict with the larger evangelical context as activists claim that, as women, they have legitimate authority to determine the authentic Christian response to crisis pregnancy and abortion. Thus, they compete with evangelical leaders by constructing gendered interpretations of religious doctrine that expand women’s autonomy over “women’s issues.” In terms of everyday practices, firsthand experiences with crisis pregnancy and abortion prompt a sense of gender identification that leads activists to prioritize clients’ nonreligious needs over movement goals. The failure of evangelical critics to reverse these trends demonstrates women’s centrality within conservative politics and their power to reshape gender ideology and religious identity.