Roe v. wade

THE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH landscape in the United States has changed drastically in the last year, and it continues to change. But some things remain the same. One consistent aspect of our ongoing national conversation is that many of those who support the greatest restrictions, including on access to abortion and other elements of reproductive health, claim Christian faith as a primary motivator.

I spent much of my young adulthood in evangelical contexts where people had strong opinions about faith and reproductive rights. Most evangelicals I knew believed that life begins at conception and thus abortion should be broadly prohibited by the law as akin to murder. In these spaces, the Bible was considered the main — sometimes the only — source of authority when it came to navigating ethical questions. I’ve come to realize, though, that the Bible hardly speaks anything straightforward into the intensely personal realm of when human life begins and what decisions should be made in complicated, real-world situations.

I wonder, then: What does it look like to wade through this murky territory as people of faith? Who are Christians called to be in a post-Roe world?

FOR 30 YEARS, I held an uncompromising conviction that abortion was murder. I preached against “child-killing,” suffered multiple arrests for blockading clinics, and had pro-choice groups successfully sue me. I led a national anti-abortion organization and directed the only large-scale annual pro-life event held in the U.S. Capitol. I personally appealed to Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Today, I no longer have these positions, and I did not applaud the recent reversal of Roe. I remain an evangelical by belief, but I now call myself a “pro-choice pro-lifer.” I have concluded that legislators and judges are not the people to try to resolve this complex, moral, social, and health-related question. Even among religions, there is no consensus on what constitutes permissible or impermissible abortion. Moreover, each woman’s experience with pregnancy is unique. Therefore, there can be no universal mandate forcing her to continue her pregnancy.

My transformation from an absolute to a nuanced position on abortion proceeded slowly and fitfully. Many exasperated old pro-life movement friends ask, “Whatever happened to you?” The short answer: empathetic listening. There came a moment when I realized I was doing all the talking and no listening on this subject. For nearly three decades, I had lived isolated in a fantasy where I presumed everything would work how it was supposed to, so I questioned nothing. In this fictitious pro-life world, all a woman in an unwelcomed pregnancy needed was to call out for help. In response, pro-life people would instantly help her, offering free housing, parenting supplies, medical care, babysitting, and, should she so choose, adoption. “With so much support,” I asked my audiences rhetorically, “why would anyone choose abortion?” I didn’t want answers.

HISPANIC CULTURES ARE profoundly relational. Family is family whoever they are, whatever they believe, and whatever they have done. Family also includes people who are not blood relations; being family is a way of life. Being family means that the suffering of our daughters and our mothers, our sisters and our cousins, matters. Our relationship with God also matters to us, and how we see and sense the voice of God influences our choices.

So, what does this all mean when it comes to abortion?

Whether or not Hispanics fight to affirm Roe v. Wade, our fundamental perspectives may not fit neatly into the two sides of the debate. While some values are shared across generations, they are differently weighted in ways that impact political decisions, creating a family dialogue that is profound and deeply emotional.

A core precept of liberation theology in Latin America, and its evangelical cousin misión integral (holistic mission), is the power of place and position in determining perspective. While it is not possible to talk about a single “Hispanic culture,” given the broad diversity of the Hispanic community, there are common experiences and values between various Hispanic cultures that impact the way that we see the moral, scriptural, and spiritual issues in the abortion/choice debate.

The following formative experiences and values have significant impact for many of us.

Seeing God in babies. I remember when I was a pastor of an English- and Spanish-speaking congregation trying to
explain to the English-speaking members why we let children run around the church freely, appreciating their playfulness. On a deeper level, I remember explaining why we would take in a distant cousin’s child to live with us without a moment’s hesitation. In traditional Hispanic Catholic circles, the figure of Christ as a child is one of the most popular depictions, along with Madonna and child images. There are many Hispanic people who are deeply troubled by abortion. If we can’t know the exact point at which cells become a baby, many Hispanics would feel like we should approach the question with fear and trembling.

Sharing my story about anything related to abortion causes me to worry for many reasons: For one, in the evangelical context I grew up in, “pro-choice” might as well have been a four-letter word. Secondly, it’s fair to wonder, “What does this dude from New Hampshire, who has had no personal experience with abortion, think he has to offer to this contentious, decades-long debate?” But that’s kind of what this story is about — it’s not what I know about abortion, but what I didn’t.

The Rose Garden event was part of a deliberate strategy to raise the visibility of anti-abortion protesters, who have complained they haven’t gotten as much attention as other Washington protests, including last year’s Women’s March — which specifically excluded women opposed to abortion.

A decade ago, a critic accused me of writing a book about a “nonexistent” threat from the religious right. One reviewer called my work a “paranoid rant,” while another detractor wrote my “alarmist” views were “exaggerated and implausible.”

In The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans For The Rest Of Us, published in 2006, I had warned that a well-financed and highly organized group of religious and political leaders was seeking to impose their narrow extremist beliefs and harsh public policies on the United States, even as our nation’s population was increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, and multiracial.

President Donald Trump announced his Supreme Court nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February: Judge Neil Gorsuch. Here are five faith facts about the nominee.

As a Christian who truly believes that abortion is a moral issue, I am deeply committed to dramatically reducing them. But criminalizing an often desperate choice is not the answer. We must also be deeply committed to the economic security, healthcare, and childcare choices that women need, which are critical to reducing abortion. I believe in the sacredness and dignity of life from womb to tomb. But a “consistent ethic of life” also ending poverty, human trafficking, the death penalty, ceaseless and senseless wars, and weapons of mass destruction.