I have been meaning to write a diary on Beverly Wildung Harrison's breathtaking - and inexcusably out-of-print - book Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion for some time now. I just learned that Harrison died on December 15.
Harrison was a Presbyterian feminist ethicist, who taught at Union Theologial Seminary for many years. Along with her life partner, Carter Heyward, Harrison forged a distinctly relational understanding of religious ethics. Harrison learned much of her relational approach from the works of the Reformed theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, on whom she wrote her dissertation. Harrison moved into more radical directions - embracing a socialist feminism as a necessary starting point for any adequate ethics - but always maintained a dialogue with her liberal Protestant roots. Her collection of essays Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics (also out of print), should be required reading for those who want to pursue a progressive political and ethical vision.
I do not have time this morning to lay out the details of her thought, but some links are here:
Mourning the Loss of Beverly Wildung Harrison
"God Bless the Revolution"