I have been listening to the podcast called "The Holy Post" for a couple months, and have really enjoyed it--it has the guy from Veggie Tales, is witty, and covers current topics in a healthy way. Today I drove to Lagoa de Itaenga Living Stones (for the first time by myself) and was impressed enough by how they covered the abortion topic that I listened to it twice. I strongly suggest that you listen yourself to episode 352: Athleisure, Abortion, and Ancient Squirrels with Mike Nawrocki. I will summarize/quote the best parts about abortion (the bold parts are my thoughts):
"If you could reduce significantly the amount of abortions, without overturning Row v. Wade OR overturn Row v. Wade and have no change in the number of abortions--which would you pick? Abortion was not invented in 1973, it can't be undone with a court ruling."
What will undo abortions is people (the church) coming along side women before they ever get to an abortion clinic--and being there still after she leaves: no matter what choice she made inside.
"After the Civil War, reconstruction totally failed--why? Because at the end of the day, they (many Christian abolitionists) weren't against racism, they were just against slavery. My concern is that they (many Christian conservatives) will fight to overturn Row v. Wade and may succeed, just to end up seeing the abortion rate go up. Because at the end of the day, do they care about helping women who are pregnant, or just about getting evil legislation off the books?"
Are we just trying to get the government to do the work for us (on abortion), because it is easier than the actual hard work of relationships and adoption and loving hurting and broken people?
"Around 25% of abortions are done by pill or injection (50% in Europe). All these women have to do is go online and buy this drug and induce an abortion. Women have always had ways of aborting unwanted pregnancies and will continue no matter what is overturned. As the church, if we believe in the sanctity of life and care about these women, then we need a holistic response, not just a political one."
With politics, I think it is important to remember that they (the government) aren't going to solve all the problems, no matter how much they end up voting like you wanted them to. God chose us Christians to be the agents of change, and He chose to work through the local church (like it or not).
We need to find many different ways to reduce abortions, protect women, and protect babies. I am against abortion (just as I am against murder), and think it should not be done (just like murder), and should be illegal (just like murder). But, there are many other things that need to be done (over the counter cheap birth control, more male accountability, sex education...) before, during, and (perhaps?) after Row v. Wade.
Here are four other abortion/politics blogs from the past:
3 Things I learned from the Women's March on Washington
Never Ever
Stop Calling your Congressman and Start Making Relationships
Politics
In closing, I am posting from
Seth Woods (I've never met him, it is a Facebook post that a friend posted, but I felt too intimidated to repost on Facebook because I am just not ready for that drama):
I need to talk to my conservative/Christian friends and family for a minute. About abortion.
First: if you hold the personal belief or conviction that abortion is wrong, is a sin, is against God's will... That is absolutely okay, and understandable. There are so many reasons to feel this way, not just from a theological/religious standpoint, but from personal experiences, hopes, desires, etc. Your belief about where you stand on the moral/ethical merits of abortion are yours to have, to cherish, to speak about, to share. They are your human rights and your constitutional rights in our country.
Second: America is not a Christian nation. It is not a nation for Christians. It is a nation for all. I know this can be genuinely hard to accept. I grew up in the church too. We are sold this idea of a Christian nation, one nation under God. That was never what we had. What we have is a nation founded on the idea of liberty and equality, with the men drafting the documents having the amazing foresight to make the language broader than their own beliefs about equality (which many of them felt only applied to white landowning men). Thank God! What they gave us was so much greater than their own biases. They gave us room to grow in our understanding of equality and freedom and mutual cooperation. And so all faiths are welcome here. And that is beautiful.
Third: Knowing and hopefully accepting that, we can recognize that there are large portions of our fellow Americans who are not Christian. Imagine a Jewish senator putting forth a bill that would require every male -infant, child, and adult - to be circumcised. Or a Muslim governor signing a bill into law that states all citizens must pray five times a day on their prayer mats. You would be very understandably (and as far as the constitution goes, rightly) upset over someone trying to legislate their beliefs onto your lives and bodies...
Four: Your politicians are using you. They are using your deeply held spiritual and emotional beliefs about abortion to justify racial, gender, and class inequality. The men pushing these laws are concerned with power, not with the unborn. There are documented cases of GOP "pro-life" politicians who are pushing legislation like this with one hand and with the other hand are encouraging their secret girlfriends to terminate their very secret and unwanted pregnancies. For you, this issue is about speaking up for what you believe. For many many of the politicians, it is about feeding their own personal agendas and increasing their power. YOU GIVE THEM THAT POWER. And they are grossly abusing it, not to the glory of God. Please stop letting them use you to control people.
Five: this is pretty core, and I'm not sure how to say it, so forgive me my ineloquence here. If you want to see a world without abortion, you need to work to create a world that doesn't need abortion. That world cannot be legislated into being. That was never the job of the church anyway - to legislate their way to the kingdom of god? Ugh. You may want to see a world that didn't drink alcohol - how did prohibition work out? No more drunks? No. You cannot legislate morality. You can work toward it though. I love that you love the unborn. I love that you have a heart that feels that. Please have a heart for those who are already born as well. Please be truly pro-life, and take care of women instead of criminalizing them. A world that didn't need abortions would be one where birth control was extremely affordable and available, where young people everywhere were well educated about sex. It would look like accepting that abstinence is not the only choice that young people are going to make - "I believe sex is supposed to be saved till marriage, however, if you choose to have sex before marriage, as many of you will, there are things that are very important for you to know" is a totally acceptable way to talk about your beliefs AND the facts of life with your kids.
You are NEVER going to get close to having a world where people don't have sex unless they are married. TRUST ME. That will never happen. You absolutely can work toward a realistic world where we take care of people, where we help and educate and love people in a way where the number of unwanted pregnancies declines drastically. Do you want a world where people aren't allowed to get abortions? Or do you want a world where people dont need to get abortions, where it's not even a question or an issue that they have to face, because they have been equipped with the tools to navigate sex and relationships and personal choices with maturity and safety and love? And look, I haven't even brought up the very very troubling issue of rape, incest, abuse. And real quick on that: you CANNOT make decisions like that for another person. YOU CANNOT DO THAT. A person who has been abused needs to have our support, our ear, our compassion, and if they need assistance or advice or comfort or a friend then we can be that. What we can't do is make a life altering decision for them after they have already experienced a traumatic life altering assault. We shouldn't be making those decisions for anyone (just like we shouldn't have the legal ability to tell anyone else whether or not to drink, or to pray, or to get circumcised).
There's so much more. So much. And it all needs to be said - not just said but talked about. But here's what I want to end this with: WE NEED YOU. We need each other. We have become so divided from each other, and so much of that is because we rely on our intermediaries: the media, the politicians, the social media algorithms. But we are never going to go anywhere unless we come together to figure this out. No matter what you believe this issue really is (a woman's issue, a moral issue), it is not JUST that. Left and Right. It is multifaceted, it is personal, and there are real people on both sides. And so I am saying to you my conservative christian pro-life friends: we need you. We need you to stop letting your politicians use you. We need you to BE THE BODY OF CHRIST to people. Not because we believe what you believe, but because we could use some very Christ-like people right now. Who challenge the powerful and who love people, not judge them, not further abuse them, not investigate them after they have miscarried a pregnancy.
We are never all going to believe the same things. But we do not have to be enemies, we do not have be opposed. I get that this sounds crazy, but we need to work together to build that world where people are loved and safe, where humans have freedom to make choices, and we have equipped them out of love and with love. Please work with us to make that world where women are not put in a position to need an abortion. Our women are amazing and powerful and inspiring, and if we could make a world where they are not always having to fight to be heard or respected or taken seriously, then I think we would all be blown away by what they could accomplish for the world.
Thanks for reading this. It was written out of respect and love and with an open heart. If you are reading this, it is because I love you. Thanks.
