Rowling Tweets Support for Abortion and Gay Marriage In Response to Challenge

May 10, 2022 by

Three quick thoughts after the jump!

(1) Is Anyone Surprised?

There is a footnote in my thesis draft that will have to be amended now that reads, “Rowling is anything but an orthodox Christian. Her strident support for same-sex relationships and ‘to-the-barricades’ feminism that all but certainly includes belief in pre-natal infanticide separates her from all traditional believers of her own professed religion as well as those who are orthodox Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.” I now have the url to cite that this is indeed the case with respect to abortion.

(2) Is She Clueless?

The UK abortion law holds that abortion is legal until 24 weeks gestation and thereafter only to save the life of the mother. Abortion law in the United States, as with Communist China, North Korea, and a few other outlier godless countries, allow the murder of the unborn until, well, even when they are born. Every state that has laws pending the overturning of Roe and Casey allow for terminations in case of pregnancies that will kill the mother if allowed to go to term (e.g., ectopic); the straw man argument that women will die if Roe falls, is just that, outright inflammatory dishonesty. Check out the map of those states. Four states have laws that would permit abortions only if before twenty weeks, five if the Dodds vs Mississippi case wins at SCOTUS. Seven have laws in place that will permit infanticide to birth and in some cases afterwards (take a bow, New York!). Overturning Roe and Casey, in other words, will make American abortion laws in 38 states more like those in the UK and less like those countries in which women have no rights and where individual lives, especially of the unborn, mean nothing.

(3) The Contradiction with the Divine Mother

Rowling uses as her go-to symbolism for the love that creates everything existent the selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love of a mother. We see it in Harry Potter, Christmas Pig, Casual Vacancy, even in spots of Cormoran Strike. Are we now to assume that the problem with the Dark Lord wasn’t his being raised in an orphanage rather than a loving family? He should have been aborted because he was unwanted? And Dennis Creed, the offspring of incestuous rape? His mother wished her step-father/rapist had killed her baby. Every person lives a life of contradictory beliefs and positions they hold in more and less conscious balance or separation. It seems clear that Rowling believes that there is no greater magic or love than that between mother and child and simultaneously holds that the pregnant woman needs to be able to murder her unborn child just because she wants to.

This will be a topic of discussion, I’m sure, among Serious Strikers because the Peg Legged PI seems to hold that because he was an “accident” and unwanted by his biological father, he should not have children himself lest he perpetuate the mistake. Accidental or unwanted children to Strike at this point in his character arc at least should be “terminated.” Robin believes this is a ridiculous position. The background drama of Margot Bamborough’s disappearance was her telling husband and best friend she had changed her position on abortion as a civil right after becoming a mother herself, but she lied; she facilitated the murder of a young woman’s child and then failed to help the woman who came to her on the night of her own abduction and murder, a woman who had an ectopic pregnancy, neglect that almost certainly resulted in that woman’s death.

The allegory leans hard against terminations except in the case of life-threatening pregnancies. Is that Rowling’s position? At best it is an open question. Is Strike more mythological in its psychomachia than Christian?

I attended a wedding this weekend on the East Coast. I was told by one son not to bring up Harry Potter because there were some congregants in the parish who think Rowling is a witch. Another son told me he had friends flying into the wedding, real Christian zealots, that love Harry Potter and they were looking forward to talking with me about it. Go figure.

For the record, Rowling has written and, in the case of stories like the Christian Pig, continues to write moral and edifying stories for those of all faiths and of no faith. She deploys traditional Christian and hermetic artistry and chiastic structure in those efforts. Rowling is not, however, a small or large ‘o’ orthodox Christian, as she has made clear in her many statements describing such believers as “bigots” and “fundamentalists,” i.e., “those with whom I disagree and despise.”

Her tweets today only make clear that, despite her command of Christological literary symbols and themes and success in delivering ego-transcending imaginative experiences, call them ‘solve et coagula CBT resurrections,’ she is as modern as they come on the issue of prenatal infanticide. She’ll speak truth to power on trans issues but not for the voiceless and most vulnerable people in the world. This is no Wilberforce.

Let it be blessed.

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