On Roe v Wade and Abortion as Healthcare
Since our founding, we at Faith for Justice have been dedicated to faith rooted activism for the sake of Black liberation. We remain so rooted; moving to see justice for our people, and everyone, in many ways through many strategies. Reproductive health is part of that.
Over the past two years, Faith for Justice has supported the betterment of birthing outcomes for Black babies and their families. We’ve connected community members to doulas and midwives, and partnered with neighbors, congregations and organizations responding to needs for childcare and family planning support.
Public health is public wealth, and we are committed to advocacy, power building, and direct action which protects the freedom and well-being of all God’s children. Despite heated debates and judgments on this matter, we believe that access to safe, decriminalized abortion is part of reproductive healthcare.
The draft opinion document on overturning Roe vs. Wade, recently leaked from the Supreme Court, makes blatant a plan to repeal protections which have impact on people who are marginalized, judged, and dismissed among many religious groups. This is not a pro-life, pro-family or people protections issue. This is forewarning of an attempt to remove a person’s right to decide what is best for their body, for and by themselves.
For far too long, Black and brown people have fought to make this simple truth a part of public health policy. That fight continues, and it is a crucial part of the fight for full freedom.
Faith for Justice stands with child-bearing people of all genders, clergy and communities of faith who are fighting for reproductive freedom, which includes access to legal abortion care. We believe that reproductive justice is part of racial justice.
In all of our work with healthcare providers, households and healing practitioners who amplify Black birth stories, we have seen the most life giving care in communities that practice body autonomy and the freedom of choice. Community is crucial for learning the difference between individualism, and an individual’s basic rights. Anti-abortion structures cast aside this work, considering no factors of community care, access to living wage, number of children in household, or circumstances of conception. Their advocacy centers on a demand for lawmaking which limits freedoms according to the particular profile of well paid, partnered, privileged and carefree as it concerns child-rearing. And to solidify the elitism of this worldview, no provisions for people who do not fit that profile are connected to the plans for forced birth. There is no community in this idea because only one kind of person can thrive in it.
Rev. Michelle Higgins said it in December, 2015. We have been saying it for years. If the church was really supportive of better birth outcomes and quality of life, we would be pursuing policy protections for access to labor and delivery support, perinatal and postpartum well-being, quality childcare, all ages education, and young people with special needs. We would be more serious about both abortion and adoption, we could solve the national crisis of healthcare and foster care, “but we are too busy banning abortion and defunding Planned Parenthood.”
The anti-abortion faith community is not really pro-life in terms of supporting humane laws and broad access to resources for total well-being. Without grounding in a commitment to liberation and acts of life-giving, can we call it a faith community at all? We see unity in the diverse strategies and opportunities of reproductive well-being. That is, we are caring for each other by insisting that the law enshrine a range of options; from having the option to access affordable, safe and legal way to end pregnancy, to having all the necessary supports for pre-natal, birth, and postpartum care. Yet somehow, public breastfeeding is often frowned upon by the same people who promote abortion bans. That is not a community, it is confusion.
Our commitments are these: to hold space for people whose reproductive healthcare needs are judged and unanswered, to converse with our faith family who believe that abortion is morally wrong and sinful. We believe in learning before leading, connection before correction, and conversation above condemnation.
In Ephesians 4 , the Bible teaches: “Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient; bear with one another in love.” and we know that no two liberation journeys are the same. But that is our point exactly, and that is our pleading for fellow people of faith. No person’s power of choice should be overturned according to a fabricated, arbitrary rule of comfort, or social acceptance.
The Bible also teaches us “Above all, love each other deeply for love covers a multitude of faults. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling, Use whatever gifts you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” - from 1st Peter 4. Whatever faults we find in one another, however divisive our debates may be, we do well to pursue and then propagate God’s grace in its various forms. These forms include minding our own business, controlling ourselves but not each other, and viewing our neighbors as sacred, smart people in God’s image, who are capable of making responsible choices, and who do not deserve to be criminalized for the way they pursue their own care.
Follow Movement for Black Lives to learn how you can support Reproductive Justice organizations. Read the statement on why this issue matters for people of faith at Missouri Faith Voices.
Panel Quotes: “Let nothing overturn our power- to decide for our bodies ourselves” // “Reproductive Freedom is a human right”