If Rachel Does Not Weep, Who Will?

A Pro-Choice Quality of Life Womanist Reading of Matthew 2

Abstract

This essay is a womanist reading of the Matthean story of the attempted infanticide of the baby Jesus born king of the Jews. Although Jesus, through divine and human intervention, avoids death; other children do not. I place in dialogue the precarious reality of Black women and their children, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, and a critical reading of Matthew 2. Black women give birth to babies that enter a world hostile to them. Poor women and their children have nowhere to flee the violence, nor the means. Rachel is inconsolable while poor Black women lack a quality of life that ensures the survival of the children they birth.