Bodies broken: abortion, abuse, and the body of Christ

ABSTRACT The topic of abortion has continually received public attention in the United States, with men in leadership positions in the Church and presidential campaigns regularly speaking on it. While the dualistic pro-life versus pro-choice framework has been used by presidential candidates especially since the 1980’s, more recently it has framed public discussions about Eucharistic participation as well. In this article, I look at these discussions about Eucharistic participation with special attention to survivors of sexual assault. Reading this site where abortion, assault, and sacraments converge with hermeneutical tools taken from the work of Judith Butler and practices in trauma theory, this paper will focus especially on the effects of these practices on women who are faced with a challenge to their admittance to the Eucharistic space, which I argue is rooted in the misrecognition and essentialization of embodiment, and is a practice in a dissociative theology.