Friends, I am off to a slow start. I am so tired. Everyday I come home overcome with fatigue, and I am not getting anywhere with school or work. After I write this, I am going to bed. I feel led to write this tonight b/c of the March for Life, and a predator who spoke at this event.
I am not afraid of a controversial conversation. And the discussion we had today on Paul in my NT class- now I know why. I will write on that more later. I am seeing Paul in a new way, and I like it. Paul told me he liked me on All Saints Day – I am starting to think I really like him too. But that post needs my full energy to write.
I want to talk about abortion. Even progressives are dangerous in regards to this subject. I see people trying to use the womb to tomb pro-life- which sounds great-don’t get me wrong. But abortion is complex; it fails to account for women in this scenario. Abortion is so much more than a woman wanting to abort a baby. We have reduced an extremely sensitive and complex subject to just a choice a woman can make. Let me tell you some other factors we are not considering when we flippantly talk about abortion:
1) Rape and sexual assault – we elected and Rapist-in-chief who spoke at the March for Life today. Too many people are not connecting the irony in this fact.
2) Adoption – we flippantly say adopt without considering our broken foster care system with children who don’t get adopted. They are traumatized by this conversation too. And to not even consider how hard it must be for a woman who can’t raise her child for whatever reason to just give up her baby so you will feel ok. So much of this is selfish- we want to adopt babies and not older children who might have issues we don’t want to deal with b/c of their trauma. We have to talk about this.
3) There is no agreement on when life begins amongst all people
4) High School girls who get in a bad situation, and parents will shame them and take on shame themselves. We blame the girl.
5) I would love to know how many abortions our president has paid for
6) Purity culture
7) This debate is driven by racism and xenophobia led by Jerry Falwell when he saw immigration was going to make Christianity and whiteness the minority in the future. The Religious Right wanted Jimmy Carter to take this one and he refused, so they got Reagan.
8) Sometimes it is to save the mother’s life!
9) what about handing out contraception’s ?
As you can see, abortion is layered. I did not even get to poverty. Women lose their jobs when they get pregnant. Can’t afford healthcare.
The abortion debated is deeply misogynistic. It needs advocacy and friendship – not criminalization and judgement. Policy is better than criminalizing-abortions are typically higher under GOP admins. That is ironic.
What brought this on? I tweeted last night that I am tired of sweeping generalizations about abortion. Too many faith leaders are speaking on a painful topic, and those who have had an abortion are listening. men will not engage what it is like to be a woman in America. Try Texas. Lord! This is not a woman-friendly state. Lots of women are in Complementarian churches buying the lie we are here to serve men. We use male-dominated language for the Divine.
This post has to be long because this is not a tweet size subject. I haven’t even gotten to the man who emailed me threatening me b/c of my tweet.
I am asking faith leaders to listen to me now. We have to diffuse the radicalization of the abortion debate. It is going to harm women. The most vulnerable women.
And for the love, who in the world thinks progressives love abortion. Such an asinine thing to say. Women are not the enemy. I am pro-choice b/c I believe in women.
I am not off-base here. I connect my theology to public life. The current debate led to a sexual predator speaking at a Walk for Life Rally . And Weeks after unnecessarily killing a sovereign leader (no such thing as redemptive violence). And our border crisis. Education under-funded and unequally funded. It has been an anti-life conversation.
There is Life Out There 