I’ve done shitty things in my life and not felt a modicum of guilt until much later. Now, here I am, a healthy, reasonably slender woman who only occasionally indulges in utter garbage eats, and I was virtually wallowing in shame. How did this happen? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with ickiness over a simple choice in dinner?

I suppose the only way to really remedy this dissonance is to consciously remind ourselves that we exist in service to the relationship, in whatever role we occupy. We must do our parts in faithfulness and loyalty, but we cannot demand the fidelity and commitment of our partners.

The only ethical obligation we have to pregnant women is to treat them as intelligent, thinking human beings who are completely capable of making their own difficult decisions without other people deciding what is important for them to know or not know, what is important for them to consider.

The pro-life faction has such pretty rhetoric, such an idyllic, pastoral understanding of the nature of life and living. But truly, it isn’t as simple as “choosing life”. It’s a question of navigating a vast web of interconnected outcomes, and figuring out which path is the path we want to travel. Neither having an abortion nor having a child is without its consequences.

I am concerned that introducing Biblical ethics in a high school class of this sort would only serve to legitimize certain religious agendas: to keep gay marriage illegal, to repeal abortion laws, etc. I worry that bringing the Bible into a high school setting under the pretense, genuine or not, of studying law will re-enforce the appropriateness of Biblcal ethics as basis for law when perhaps the question the students should be investigating is whether or not any one religious perspective should be the foundation for a legal system of a nation of 300 million people.