Thank God for Abortion?

Maybe you, like me, have been talking in your households about the recent leaked draft opinion about overturning Roe v Wade. Maybe you've been talking with your partners and friends. Have you been talking with your church? There are people in your church who have had abortions. Maybe you are one of them.

We progressive Mennonites are not alone among progressive Christians who are vocal about many liberal leaning political issues but shy away from talking openly about abortion because of the shame and secrecy that surrounds our experiences of it. But one third of people who can bear children will have an abortion in their lifetime and the majority of those who receive abortion healthcare in the US are already mothers. We are not excluded.

My teen (whose most recent future career dream is OBGYN, incidentally) was listening in when her dad and I were discussing our disgust and disappointment about the likely SCOTUS ruling, asking questions about it, about the implications. We talked about some of the other likely outcomes: that this ruling will disproportionately affect people of color and those who are poor. That unwanted pregnancies increase poverty. That those who can afford to receive care will come to places like Washington to receive it, which will impact access for everyone. We shared our frustration that those who profess to be pro-life seem not to care much for the lives of the children and families affected.

Later, after some reflection she asked some more personal questions: Would I have an abortion if I got pregnant now. What should she do if she became pregnant? Yes, I said. Without hesitation, I would have an abortion. And while I would want the choice to be hers, I would support her in seeking an abortion. I believe all of our children who can or will be able to become pregnant and all of our children who might partner a pregnant person (ie. all of them!) should also hear this affirmation.

The God who created us cares deeply about us. About our children. God's love for us and for each human life is for the whole of our lives. I believe this means that I need to be sensitive to the ways that pregnancy and birth affect the whole lives of the people whose bodies carry a pregnancy and care for those who will be born. God wants us to thrive. That is the meaning of shalom. We are a shalom people.

The God who created us cares deeply for our freedom. God wants us to make choices that will care for our own health, the health and vibrancy of our communities and the health and flourishing of the earth. God gave us both this freedom and the responsibility to steward and care for the earth through the choices we make. God values our personhood and the ability we have to care for creation and for our own bodies.

I thank God for abortion. I thank God for abortion in the same way I thank God for birth control and for the miracle of medical science that can offer non-fertile people the ability to bear children. In the same way I'm thankful that after I miscarried, I was able to receive the surgical procedure that I needed to prevent abnormal cell growth in my body. I thank God for these interventions which give us the ability to create families (or not!) and have lives and children that can be healthy and whole and thriving in our and God's loving care.

If you are looking for more faith-based support for abortion care, I encourage you to check out the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. For scholarly Biblical understandings that counter the conservative Biblical narrative try the writing of Rev. Dr. Cheryl Anderson. And for a compassionate look at the balance between the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of freedom of conscience see the Salt Project. Please also learn more about Viva Ruiz, the artist whose work is pictured above at ThankGodforAbortion.com.

If you are advocating around abortion as healthcare, I encourage you to do so a person of faith. As a person who is seeking shalom in the world - God's vision for a Just Peace for all of creation. May we together grow into God's vision.

The Voice of the Gardener

"I’ve been through childbirth, I can handle this." I thought, as I lay on on the table in the gynecologist’s office, trying to relax and breathe and hold it together through the pain I was experiencing.  And then I thought, "But then I was rewarded with a baby.  This is like giving birth to nothing.  To death."

 

I was taking the final step in physically moving on from my miscarriage.  I was in on the doctor's table having a D&C to remove the ‘products of conception’ that had been stubbornly hanging on (even multiplying, as if there was still a life to support) even though it had been two weeks since I learned of my miscarriage and likely at least a month since it had happened.  I say it was the final physical step because although I had been thinking about 1:00 Friday, March 1 being the end of it, of course it’s not the end at all.  I had been mostly avoiding thinking about it, diverting questions about how I was feeling (I’m fine, let’s get on with the meeting) and focusing on work and the medical follow-ups.  So I was a little caught off guard by my own powerful grief during the D&C.  I knew it would hurt physically.  I was unprepared for how much it would hurt emotionally.

I had met with a midwife once early on, and although I cancelled this month's appointment with her, I got in touch with her because it was important for me to hear her perspective and her thoughts on miscarriage.  I thought, and I was right, that she might offer a somewhat more holistic sense of what might be happening in me.  And when I talked to her on the day before the D&C and she said to me, "You’ll always remember the due date.  You’ll always get a little pang."  She reminded me that might keep feeling it in different ways.

A congregation member whose sister died this past summer asked for prayer this week as she and others encounter new levels of grief now, these many months after the death.  I can’t really equate the loss of this pregnancy to the death of a beloved wife and sister.  But in terms of the way grief lingers and presents itself in nuanced ways, perhaps there is a correlation.  That pang will return and I will feel it in different ways when I remember the loss of this one-that-almost-was, this dream of someone to be.

The midwife also told me (it was almost the first thing she said), “It’s not your fault.”  I think it was after I heard that that I began to realize that even though I knew intellectually that there was nothing that I had done or not done that had caused the miscarriage, that I was feeling shame and guilt at the loss.  I have for so long conditioned myself to not be ashamed – not of who I am, not of what I feel, of my actions – that I am still somewhat incredulous that shame could be an emotion that I feel at all.  I feel shame that my body failed me, I feel shame that what I announced with joy and excitement turned out to be a lie, shame that there was indeed nothing I could have done to prevent this loss.

It may have been these feelings of shame that fueled the internal voice that asked, ‘Does this mean maybe that more kids just aren’t in the books?’  I tell myself that I don’t believe in signs, but on the other hand I was thinking, 'Maybe what we’ve said all along – that we’re just a one-kid family – is what we need to keep saying.'  I told myself, that maybe my body just doesn’t want to do this – can’t do it.  And maybe God doesn’t want us to do it either.

In the midst of all of this, in preparation for writing a sermon, I have been dwelling with the Luke 13 parable of the barren fig tree, the owner who wants to root it out and the gardener who asks for one more year to dig around it, add fertilizer, tending in with the hope of fruitfulness in the future.  The beauty of Jesus’ parables is how their meanings can have a depth that you never would have anticipated.  I need this parable this week.  I was hearing the voice of the fig tree’s owner in the shame of a failed and ended pregnancy and in all my questions and doubt.  I needed the voice of the gardener.  And I heard it, again from the mouth of my midwife, saying that perhaps I could understand this as a sign not of failure but of my body’s readiness.  My body has told me of its ability to be fertile and that it was only the timing that was not right.  The garden only needs to be further tended.

The pain is still pretty near the surface.  The doubt has not gone away.  Unearthing shame?  Way easier said than done.  However, having heard the gardener’s gentle challenge, I have an easier time understanding the grace that is offered by Jesus in this parable.  There still room and time and means for the tree to bear fruit.  I need to keep listening to that voice. 

Dust and Sand

This past Wednesday evening members of our congregation worshiped together and were marked with ashes, a reminder that we are made of dust and that we return there.  We also heard and saw the pouring out of sand.  We symbolically poured ourselves out before our God and the sand became a symbol of cleansing, renewal and assurance as we offered ourselves to God for forgiveness.

For the past seven years as I’ve worked with youth, sand has not been a symbol of renewal or assurance.  It has instead been the counterpart of oil, as we share the sand and the oil of our lives with each other.  Where oil is the anointed and assured presence of God with us, sand is the barrenness and where we feel bereft.  Sand represents the all-alone breadth of the wilderness.

This week my experience turned from the former to the latter.  On Wednesday I ran my fingers through the sands of Ash Wednesday and on Friday I felt thrust into the dusty sand of the desert.  I learned that, although my body had given  no indication, had continued giving me all the right (although uncomfortable) signals, I am no longer pregnant.  Probably for several weeks now.  Probably even as I announced the news with joy.  

I was shocked.  I was upset.  I lay on the ultrasound table alone and bereft and totally utterly thrust into the wilderness.  And so Lent becomes something much different than I had ever anticipated.  It was going to be a season of waiting and preparation and growth.  It becomes a season of introspection and discernment and grief, learning to hope and wondering what is next.

When Jesus went into the wilderness, he was driven there.  He was thrust by the Holy Spirit.  That entry too was not gentle.  Although not in the Luke version of the story that we read this morning, it is in the other Gospels that record this story that he was waited on by angels.  Our psalm, Psalm 91speaks of the angels that 'will bear you up.'  In that psalm it is to God that the Psalmist turns for refuge.  This season of Lent I am looking to God’s providence and am grateful for the angels that have already offered comfort, understanding and presence.  I pour myself out to my Creator like sand.  I pray that I may find renewal.