Life

Choice is Also Life

By now just about everyone has weighed in on Roe v. Wade coming to an end. I realize for my own growth it is important for me to share my perspective in a more public setting, but I am not sure where to start?  I am angry, frightened, anxious about the future and heartbroken at the direction that my brothers and sisters of faith have gone in the last several years.  I write this fully aware that the current climate of the believing community has been a long time in the making.  It wasn’t until my complete break from organized religion, initiated by the pandemic and then formalized by my husband’s retirement from full time ministry that I had the freedom to acknowledge the inconsistencies, the movement away from being Jesus’ hands and feet in the world to this seemingly overt grasping of power.

When my husband retired, I retired too.  It was a final shedding of the restrictive pastor’s wife clothing I had been squeezing myself into for at least the last 15 or so years.  A uniform of conformity.  An outdated outfit that nearly fit, albeit a bit snug that became for me a corset pulled so tightly that I literally could not catch my breath.

My heartbreak has been about the loss of this idea, this ideal that I have given the best years of my life to.  This servant heart, this care for the least, this dedication to feeding Jesus’ sheep.  The last few years of ministry I felt that my husband was trying to get the Pharisees to understand deeper spiritual truths.  The Jesus we see in Scripture had very little time for the religious people of his day.  He was much more at home with those who lived in the margins, the poor, the sick, the tax collector, the prostitute, the adulterer and of course the many women he encountered throughout his short time on earth. 

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, although certainly not a shock has left me shaken.  I have always been a strong supporter of women’s rights.  I have voted for Pro-Choice candidates since I cast my first vote on election day 1988. My husband, Kurt has always known this about me.  He has never questioned me or judged me.  He believes voting to be a personal decision and for that I am forever grateful.  Although able to vote in 1985 when I turned 18, I just never did.  After we were married, Kurt simply stated that we would be voting in the election in November of that year, so I got myself registered to vote.  I was in school in Morehead, Kentucky, about 2 hours or so from the 3 Point Charge (3 small churches that share a pastor) where Kurt was serving as student pastor while he was getting his Master of Divinity degree.  We got up early on that Tuesday, drove the 2 hours from Morehead, voted and then drove the 2 hours back so I could attend class, then Kurt drove another hour or so to Asbury where he attended class.  It was a long day, but I felt good about voting.  At that time a women’s right to her own body was firmly upheld by the Supreme Court.

One of the sharp divisions in our United Methodist Conference has always been the abortion debate.  I have generally kept my thoughts on the subject to myself as I listened to friends and others share the evils of abortion.  Maybe it was my social work degree or maybe it was something deep inside me, but I have never been keen on the idea of deciding what is right for others.  After having our children, I tried to be more understanding of those of my friends that were so invested in the Pro-life movement.  I even went to a Right-to-Life dinner.  I can’t remember much about that event, but Kurt said he would never do that to me again.  My face must have revealed my discomfort and possibly my outrage.  After that I continued to keep my thoughts to myself and quietly vote my conscience in the privacy of the voting booth.

Until now, until the vote to overturn.  I hear the anger of the Pro-Choice crowd and I feel that.  I hear the uproarious cheers of those in the Pro-Life camp and am deeply pained.  Many of my friends are on this side of the debate.  Friends and companions, I have done life with for the last 30 some years.  I know them to be good people who are following their own convictions much like I am following mine.  I mean them no disrespect and am thankful for the ways they have enriched my life.

I only wish here to share what has brought me to feel more strongly today in choice.  As a social worker just out of college I worked in Adult Protection.  I mostly did home visits to seniors who were referred by a concerned neighbor or friend.  I did what I could do to get services to these people and make their lives better.  I loved this job and caring for the marginalized, older people with little social support or financial resources.  The office where I worked housed Children’s Protective Services as well.  The horrific stories of the conditions that children were living in made my stomach turn.  The worst stories found their way up the stairs to our office.  After I had my children, I would often have those stories flood my mind, torturing me with the cries of unloved, uncared for children from the past.  That was 30 years ago. 

Of course, I am Pro-life.  I do not want to see babies killed.  But I also know that I don’t know what it is like to have to make that kind of decision.  And I know that I don’t know.

I agree that all children should be wanted and given the best opportunities to succeed.  Hope lives in children.  But many children are not thriving and are living without hope.  If you stand for life, then be for all life.  Were the same people who were rejoicing over the lives saved with the abolishment of Roe v. Wade also working to make sure that the mother’s struggling to feed their babies had formula?  Is every single person that marched for babies’ rights also full-time foster care parents?  Is your home a place where Child Protection Workers can bring babies in the middle of the night that are taken from homes for neglect, abuse or worse?  How about the babies that grow into children like the 19 who were gunned down in Uvalde, are you working to keep assault rifles off the streets and out of our schools.  Are Pro-life folks working to make sure that the children of Flint Michigan are getting access to clean water? 

There feels like a disconnect here.  When fighting under the banner of life then it should mean all life.  This is the world I would like to see.  A world where we care so much about all of life that we protect the earth, we work to slow down climate change, we protect the lives of our rainforests and our oceans.  We care about the homeless, we take a stand against guns, we help suicidal teens see that there is a world out there for them. We stand with our brothers and sisters of color and support Black Lives Matter.  We say Gay, and Lesbian, and Trans and Bi and Queer and any other word that helps our fellow citizens understand themselves.  We pay attention to the pronouns.  We smile, we practice kindness and we let people live their lives. We work together in humility, understanding that we won’t always understand and that is ok. In fact, that is more than ok, that is life.

I am for life, all life.  I am for a woman’s right to decide for herself or with her partner what is best for her life.  I am also for equality.  I am for a women’s right to make her own decisions about the direction of her life.  An unplanned pregnancy brings to light the differences between men and women.  For a man, his life goes on as before and he can just walk away.  For the woman her life is forever altered.  She deserves the right to walk away too.  Freedom is not making sure that everyone makes the decision you would like them to make.  Freedom means learning to live and accept the choices others make.  Because the very right that allows me to live my life my way also allows for others to do the same.  Even if that is something I don’t agree with.  Especially if that is something I don’t agree with. 

By overturning Roe v. Wade, we are as a culture saying we do not trust that women are capable of making their own decisions for their own lives.  And for me that is tragedy of this Supreme Court Decision.