Lately, headlines have been full of reports of religious condemnation of abortion and birth control. As a person of deep faith, I believe the opposite: I believe that -- as a matter of social justice -- religious people should support the rights of women to make decisions about bearing children, including about abortion and birth control. God's love encompasses all creation. It includes a woman in labor and it includes a woman having an abortion. It does not stop at the door to a women's clinic. For women, justice must include the right to make decisions about sexuality and reproduction.
Many people of faith and religious institutions think that reproductive rights should be protected and expanded, but often they are silent. Women's reproductive rights have been so stigmatized and stripped of moral value by certain religious leaders that it can be difficult to speak up. Ongoing opposition to comprehensive contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and their allies is the latest example of stigmatizing women's health care. This is a good time to reconsider why religion should support, not oppose, women's reproductive rights. Here are six reasons:
- Religions hold that all human life is sacred -- and include the life of a woman as well as that of a potential child. This belief inspires many religious communities to work for a world in which women are healthy and every child is wanted, loved and cared for. Those religious communities support birth control, safe and legal abortion, and health care for all.
- Religions value the responsible and loving use of the gifts of sexuality and reproduction. The decision to become pregnant and have children is one of the most important we make as individuals and couples. We have a sacred responsibility to support the rights of women in this process because women have the responsibility of bearing children.
- Planning one's family is a fundamental right and responsibility. It is a key factor in determining the physical, social and economic health and well-being of individuals, their families and their communities. Religious institutions and people of faith have an obligation to contribute -- as other organizations do -- to ethically grounded policy on sexuality and reproduction.
- People of faith certainly have differing views on abortion and even on birth control, but most of us agree that God has endowed women with free will and the ability to make moral decisions. Free will isn't a matter of politics or ideology and it's not to be exercised only when it's convenient. An unwanted pregnancy or a pregnancy that threatens a woman's health and life requires a decision that is made freely, with information that resources and support are available, whatever the decision.
- Reproductive rights are central to the lives of women and girls along with access to education, health care, equal opportunity and human rights. Women's full participation in life and full expression of self requires that reproductive health care and options are available. This is especially true for women who are economically marginalized, who have unintended pregnancy rates that are four times as great as other women. In this country, half of all pregnancies are unintended and about half of those end in abortion. That means one in three women will have an abortion at some point in life. Use of birth control, which some opponents equate with abortion, is virtually universal. As many as 99% of women use it at some point. Access to safe, legal abortion and universal availability of birth control must be a basic part of a woman's reproductive health care.
- We are a nation with a rich diversity of religious traditions. Decisions about birth control and abortion are medical decisions and are also decisions of conscience -- what an individual believes is ethical. Since religions have varying views about reproductive rights, enshrining any one view into law restricts the ability of those who disagree to follow their own conscience and religious beliefs -- thus denying them religious freedom.
The harsh and condemning judgments of some religious leaders are troubling. They suggest that abortion is morally wrong, while ignoring the fact that miscarriages and unwanted pregnancies are common. They deny that God is present in these times. In my view, it is sinful to turn away from women who are struggling to make the best decision for themselves, their families and perhaps their future children. There is nothing holy about silence in the face of human struggle and there is certainly nothing religious about shaming a woman who has an abortion. Women deserve compassion and support -- public as well as private -- from their churches, synagogues and temples.
Rev. Knox, Interim Executive Director of Integrity USA, the voice of LGBT Episcopalians and their allies, was the founding director of the Human Rights Campaign's Religion and Faith Program and was appointed by President Obama to the President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He will begin his position at RCRC July 16.
Follow Harry Knox on Twitter:
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God cursed women in Genesis Chapter 3 so that she will have much pain in child bearing. In God's love he disciplined Eve, I don't think it would be loving to withdraw His discipline.
I agree with the authors stance on the use of birth control. However, the bible is clear on what the definition of a living person is. I believe that abortion is the taking of an unwanted life and is in direct conflict with the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder. No one is standing up for the child's rights and that is not fair.
Thank You Mr. Knox for supporting a woman’s right to life.
Is there something unreligious about this? Isn’t it really more unreligious not to?
Does anyone really believe in such a thing as a totally safe pregnancy?
Do they know or care how many women die each year in childbirth? Even when under a doctor’s care?
It’s the woman’s life that is one the line concerning whether she carries a child to term or not.
IT IS HER DESIGION
THANK YOU
Yes, "God gave us a choice"
And God told us,
both men and women, to:
1.) "...choose life,
so that you and your children may live"
Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV1984)
and to
2.) "Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter."
Proverbs 24:11
Both men and women have the responsibility before God
to choose life so that we and our children may live,
and
to rescue the unborn child who is bring led away to death by abortion.
Reference:
1.) Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV1984)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy30&version=NIV1984
2.) Proverbs 24:11-12 (NIV1984)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs24:11-12&version=NIV1984
(previously quoted and posted by: jenna1234 - at 03:41 PM on 05/04/2012 )
"But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess [ Israel ]. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. > Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, < loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."
If you truly believe abortion is wrong, you are right to speak out, you are called to. But be sure to not be deceptive, it weakens your argument, and is not convincing.
An unborn child is a child that isn't born yet, not a potential child.
Primary definition of Child:
Child: an unborn or recently born person
http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/child
Again- I say abortion is wrong, and life begins at conception. Psalms 139:16 show that God saw the "embryo" of King David. That his "DNA" were all in place, or as the Scripture says, that the formation of his body parts and even the timing of their formation were in a "figurative book" that originates with God.
You told me to read Jeremiah 1, which I did and you allude, I believe, mostly to Jeremiah 1: 5: "Before I was forming you in the belly I knew you and before you proceeded to come forth from the womb I sanctified you. Prophet to the nations I have made you." From his conversation with Jeremiah it is clear that he is one of the few men for whose birth God assumed responsibility. And why did he take this specific interest in Jeremiah from his conception onward? Because he had a special commission in mind for him. Thus he could say, "Before you proceeded to come forth from the womb I sanctified you." As verses 7 and 8 point out, what he should speak would be given to him by God so their was no room for timidity in his assignment, only for boldness as he trusted and relied on God.
Anyone supporting abortions that say they support life, especially those claiming a religious justification for doing so, are so twisted in their thinking it is unimaginable they are capable of right thinking.
Abortion is murder.
And NO murders EVER occur in a safe, legal pregnancy termination. It's just a safe, legal, and in most cases relatively minor procedure.
Women without reproductive choice are nothing but breeding containers. Anyone who opposes our civil, human and Constitutional rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, privacy, and personal bodily autonomy - HATES WOMEN, and thinks they are nothing but livestock.
We will always disagree when exactly life begins. But we should all be able to agree that the existing pro-choice philosophy in practice today allows for viable human life to be killed for no better reason than their existance is inconvenient.
Women always have reproductive choice...it's really very simple...if you don't want a baby, then CHOOSE NOT to perform the act that creates babies! Be a TRULY strong woman who knows what she wants and isn't just caving into lust. Stand up for yourself and don't allow yourself to be treated as a 'breeding container'. Removing the 'inconvenient product of your actions' doesn't mean you aren't a breeding container...you put yourself in that position and no abortion or removal of the 'result of your actions' will remove the fact that you put yourself in that position and that being a 'breeding container' (while worded in a most tacky way) is actually a wonderful and special gift that women have and should treasure!
It's about self control, something seriously lacking in this day and age.
I don't hate women and I think they are much more than livestock, so maybe you should check your overgeneralized accusations with facts before you spew them.
So is eating meat. Perhaps if the government removed that choice from you, you would finally understand what women are faced with.
When the right projects male sexual habits onto women, they assume were are indiscriminate libertines at heart tempting men in a manner that wreaks havoc on society so they feel they must control our sexuality by controlling us with isolation, fear, shame and humiliation.
When the left projects male sexual habits onto women, it's done in the form of arguing the male experience of sex, without consideration of risk mitigation or respect for sensible selection criteria is the only "true sexual liberation." Apparenlty a woman isn't "liberated" unless she acts in a way prescribed by the counterculture, instead of being true to her own inclinations/desires.
BOTH are incorrect. Sexual liberation is living in socio-economic condition in which women's sexuality is NOT:
- something they must trade on to support themselves,
- that their families can trade on to enhance their own status/wealth/social position/end blood feuds,
- something pop culture uses to sell products,
- something in which women can be influenced by pop culture to disregard their own best judgment in favor of how society wants them to act.
- something women feel they must trade on to advance their careers, social standing, etc.,
- something that men feel they can force, coerce or cajole from women as though they felt women "owed" them that access.
I would rather anti-abortion laws work to help women and men to prevent these situations. I was married young and my mother gave me long term birth control as a wedding present and it was the best thing she could have done. My husband and I were able to mature and get financially stable without an "accident" that could have made life much harder. I would rather make it possible for every young person or person of childbearing age for that matter to get long term birth control so that children are planned.