Hello my friends!

I hope your November is continuing so well for you.

With election day last week and all that transpired with abortion rights, especially in Ohio, the debate over abortion erupted yet again, especially on social media. Several of you wrote to ask how we might navigate this conversation better, so I wanted to just share some thoughts on this complex topic in hopes of a more gracious approach.

First however, I wanted to share some resources that have really challenged me and helped me to think more deeply about this topic.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER

-It is really important to understand the policy and healthcare culture the Christian right has influenced in our modern culture. Listening to actual stories from women has is one of the most important places to start to gain that understanding. My friend Meghan Tschanz hosts the Faith and Feminism podcast. in Episode 181, called "The Power Worshippers" she interviews investigative journalist Katherine Stewart, who authored the incredible book by that same title. She shares her own terrifying experience with restrictive abortion practices towards the end. I was deeply convicted by her story. I encourage you to listen.

-Poverty is directly related to the abortion issue along with so many other issues in our country. If we dismantle systems of poverty, we would see such incredible things happen in our nation. One of them being a reduction in abortions. Jesus said, "I have come to bring good news to the poor." Dismantling poverty would bring such good news! One of the books I have learned so much from is "Poverty by America" by Matthew Desmond. He not only outlines the poverty issue in America and how it can be resolved, he shows how it is connected to and impacts things like abortion. If you haven't read this wonderful book, I highly encourage you to do so.

-Does the Bible say that abortion is murder? Here's a great short video on this question from Dan Mcclellan, who is a scholar of the Bible and religion. You can find it here.​

-Abortion is also a religious liberty issue. "Life begins at conception" is a Christian--mostly Catholic--theological statement and one not shared by other religions in our country, like our Jewish brothers and sisters who believe life begins at "first breath." Our church recently hosted a conversation about abortion, which began by a wonderful introduction to the Jewish perspective on abortion by Rabbi Daniel Fink, who is the rabbi for the Ahavath Beth Israel congregation here in Boise, Idaho. I found it so helpful to hear this issue from another religion's perspective, especially on how the Rabbi approaches it through scripture. If you are at all interested in hearing this whole conversation and the Q & A from people at the end, you can watch it by clicking here. I hope you find this discussion as helpful to foster more thinking on the topic as I did.

-Rebecca Todd Peters was also one of the speakers at the public conversation we hosted and she has authored a book called, "Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice" Roughly one-third of US women will have an abortion by age forty-five, and fifty to sixty percent of the women who have abortions were using birth control during the month they got pregnant. Yet women who have abortions are routinely shamed and judged, and safe and affordable access to abortion is under relentless assault, with the most devastating impact on poor women and women of color. Rebecca Todd Peters argues that this shaming and judging reflects deep, often unspoken patriarchal and racist assumptions about women and women’s sexual activity. These assumptions are at the heart of what she calls the justification framework, which governs our public debate about abortion, and disrupts our ability to have authentic public discussions about the health and well-being of women and their families. I am hoping to read this one soon myself. Let me know if you do as well.

-Abortion is so often framed as a "left vs right" issue and can often ignore the shared experiences of people who hold opposite views, yet come to the same needs. One of the best pieces of journalism on abortion I have ever heard is from the More Perfect podcast, which takes a deep look at how abortion was handled at the supreme court level and how it has impacted women on both the left and the right of the issue. I highly recommend listening to their two part series on the "viability line." Here are the links to both: Part 1 viability line and Part 2 If not viability, then what?​

-Before Roe was overturned, the Holy Post published a great video on the Evangelical Christian motivation behind wanting to overturn it. It is still very much worth watching. It is called "What About Abortion."

-Religious Scholar Randall Balmer has a wonderful essay about how the abortion issue became such a lighting rod issue in the Religious Right. It's called "The Real Origins of the Religious Right: They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation." Also, don’t forget to check out his book that dives deeper into this topic, called "Bad Faith. Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right"

-Lastly, one of my most favorite history podcasts, Throughline, also did a two part podcast series on how abortion has been viewed since the beginning of our country. The first episode is called, "Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade." Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Obstetrics was a new field, and they wanted it to be their domain—meaning, the domain of men and medicine. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state, spreading a potent cloud of moral righteousness and racial panic that one historian later called "the physicians' crusade." And so began the century of criminalization. In the first episode of a two-part series, we're telling the story of that century: how doctors put themselves at the center of legal battles over abortion, first to criminalize — and then to legalize. It is fascinating and cause for reflection. The second episode is called: After Roe: A New Battlefield​

Okay, onto today's content.

Abortion: Reimagining our Christian Response

Especially around election season and especially since the overturning of Roe v Wade, the public debate around abortion erupts. Unfortunately, this public debate is so often marked by hostility, shame, and condemnation.

So, I’d like to invite us to reimagine our Christian response to abortion.

My hope in what you read here is not to tell you what to think but to think with you over a very complicated and important topic. One that Christians have very much shaped and influenced in our country. All while inviting us to possibly reimagine and reframe our approach to the abortion and reproductive care moving forward.

What About Mary?

With Advent and Christmas right around the corner, I want to begin by using the context in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, became pregnant. I think it can really help us Christians talk about abortion with more discernment, compassion, and nuance.

First, let’s read a passage from Deuteronomy 22:20-21:

“However, if the claim is true and proof of the young woman’s virginity can’t be produced, then the city’s elders will bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house. The citizens of that city must stone her until she dies because she acted so sinfully in Israel by having extramarital sex while still in her father’s house. Remove such evil from your community!”

What we just read was the law of the land in ancient Israel. This was the law that the city’s elders were told to carry out when faced with a woman whose virginity couldn't be proven. What legal leg would Mary be able to stand on in her time? How could she prove her virginity let alone prove that her pregnancy was divinely caused?

We can’t underestimate the seriousness of Mary’s situation. According to the law, her circumstance brought with it the possibility of execution. Notice there’s no exception made if the young woman is pregnant, which would probably mean her unborn child would share in her same fate as well.

In such a patriarchal society, who on earth would believe the strange story of a teenage peasant girl, claiming an angel visitation and a consensual divine pregnancy? How could she possibly provide “proof” for this, as the law required?

Can you imagine her fear of what Joseph would do? What her father would do? Or especially the risk of entering a priest’s home (Zechariah-Luke 139-45) by herself who was mandated by the government to carry out God’s law?

Even though she went looking for her cousin Elizabeth, who had her own miraculous encounter with an angel, with her own pregnancy to follow, Elizabeth was legally married. Would she and her priest husband (Zechariah) accept this unwed, pregnant mother, and believe her experience?

What if those around her had been strict literalists when it came to the scriptures? What if those around her looked at her through their strict, uncompromising political views? What if those around her looked at her with a low view of women, or worse, stoked demonizing myths about "women like her?" What if those around her couldn't see past their moral outrage because she was pregnant and wasn't married?

Because Mary's story has become so common to us, I think we so often miss how complex, scary, controversial, and life-or-death her situation was. This would not have been lost on the first century audience of the gospel accounts. When we miss this, we also miss how at every turn, the love and mercy of God prevailed through the compassion of friends and family. Mary’s experience was believed, affirmed, and her agency was never infringed upon. When we miss this, we fail to do the same for the "Marys" of our own day.

I believe this same response should still happen among God’s people today.

I think we have a lot of work to get there and part of that work is reframing the narrative around abortion within Christianity.

Growing up an Evangelical Christian, the narrative I heard my whole life deeply demonized women. It also flattened something as complex and diverse as abortion to “murder” or "genocide," which were all based on hyperbolic and inflated narratives of surging abortion rates, all done out of selfishness. When in reality, abortions have been declining for years in our country and the reasons behind having an abortion are as unique and complex as those who seek them. Also, the entire narrative focuses on women when men play an equal role in making pregnancy happen. Yet men and their sexual activity are not the focus of demonizing myths, cultural movements, policy, or legislation! How can you maintain a truthful perspective of the issue let alone a compassionate view of women at all when you are framing it this untruthful way?

Combine this with some of the extreme language often found on the left of dehumanizing babies, insisting on only calling them “fetuses” for example, how can we ever hope to move forward productively on this issue with such maximalist categories? These hyperbolic and demonizing narratives are being allowed to influence policy and law. We have to find new, more compassionate ways of talking about this issue.

I think a big part of the problem is that we Christians have allowed ourselves to become so preoccupied with the law and theological debates that we lose sight of the individuals those laws directly impact, especially when they live in a socio-economic reality that we can’t even imagine living in ourselves.

So often, the conversation surrounding abortion is only about legality, totally neglecting the complexity of pregnancy and the lived circumstances of women, leaving us completely unaware of why an abortion might even be considered in the first place. We allow our advocacy for the unborn become a preoccupation to such an extent that we begin to see the rights of women as almost disposable. If life really matters to us, if individual rights really matter to us, this is unacceptable. The lives of BOTH women and babies matter. It’s not an either/or. If we can't approach the issue in a "both/and" way, then we need to keep working until we do.

For many, this preoccupation with the law leaves us unable or unwilling to show compassion, mercy, empathy, or understanding. In fact, some abortion laws, like those currently found in states like mine (Idaho) seem to try to outdo themselves to see how unmerciful they can be to women. As if they believe God told them directly that every woman seeking an abortion is just simply evil and they are to “remove such evil from your community!”

​It’s public knowledge that understanding and addressing the needs of the lived experiences of women dramatically reduce abortions more than making it illegal ever would. It also has a dramatic impact on addressing maternal mortality rates, which are the highest in the United States out of every other industrialized nation in the world. The maternal mortality rate for 2021 for example, was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019. Why isn't this also a "pro life" issue?

When states, whether they are blue or red, work to meet the economic, healthcare, social, and educational needs of their people, abortion rates drop. These measures save lives.

Imagine if we Christians pursued dismantling systems of poverty, barriers to healthcare, demanded livable wages, paid family leave, affordable childcare and ruthlessly advocated for women’s rights with the same passion so many have pursued making abortion illegal.

We might just make abortion more and more unnecessary.

Wouldn’t this be the most “pro-life” response? Caring comprehensively for both the sacred lives of mother and child? Before, during, and after pregnancy?

As Catholic nun, Sister Joan Chittister powerfully stated, "I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."

Let’s look at some more stats that might help us reframe somethings:

Did you know that 7 out of 10 women who have had an abortion in the United States identify as Christian? And within that 70% of women who’ve had abortions that self-identify as a Christian includes Catholics (27%), Protestants (26%), non-denominational (15%), and Orthodox (2%)? Further still, among Protestants, more identify as Baptists (33%), Methodist (11%), Presbyterian (10%), or Lutheran (9%). You can read more on these findings here.

That means the women who fit this statistic have likely heard demonizing and stigmatizing rhetoric from their own churches and faith leaders about them being "murderers" while their actual lived experiences and circumstances were completely disregarded. That means they have likely not felt safe to talk to their own pastor or possibly anyone in their church community about their own lived experience out of fear of being demonized, hated, and ostracized. That means they have heard sermons their entire lives about abortion being a "worldly" issue rather than a reality approached with humility as something that directly impacted those sitting in the pews of our churches.

​Studies also find that the typical abortion patient is already a mother, is in her late 20s, attended some college, has low income, is unmarried, is in her first 6 weeks of pregnancy, and is having her first abortion.

​Study findings also demonstrate that the reasons many women seek abortion are complex and interrelated. While some women stated only one factor that contributed to their desire to terminate their pregnancies, others pointed to a myriad of factors that, cumulatively, resulted in their seeking abortion. Women seek abortion for reasons related to their circumstances, including their socioeconomic status, age, health, parity and marital status. Do policy makers or we as the church consider women’s motivations for choosing abortion as deeply as we should? For our decisions to support or oppose such legislation could have profound effects on the health, socioeconomic outcomes and life trajectories of women facing unwanted pregnancies.

The women I’ve spoken to about this in my community and beyond are deeply concerned about what it means to be pregnant in states like mine (Idaho) where women and their doctors will no longer be the final authority on what is medically necessary when it comes to things like: high-risk pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, molar pregnancies, septic pregnancies, preeclampsia, cancer treatment while pregnant, being forced to carry their baby who won’t survive after being born, and other things that will threaten the life of the mother. Those decisions are now being made by many state governments.

Here in Idaho, it is having a drastic impact, especially on on rural communities, where our restrictive abortion laws have led to the closure of two maternity wards as medical professionals are either leaving or not seeking employment here because of the "political climate."

Women I have spoken to are also worried about things like forced pregnancy/delivery after rape or incest, the future of IVF, those who currently have fertilized embryos frozen, and certain forms of contraception (like IUDs) being banned. They are concerned that if they were to have a miscarriage, they might have to prove that it wasn't a self-inflicted abortion, and possibly not receiving economic/social support to keep their family from poverty.

As you all know, my wife and I are expecting our second baby, a little girl. It is a constant thought in my mind that if something, heaven forbid, were to happen to either the baby or Rebecca that needed life saving care, that decision would ultimately not be up to us. It would be up to the state of Idaho. In the middle of something so complex, so stressful, potentially so tragic, and so urgent, how can this arrangement be compassionate at all?

Compassion over Control

I have come to realize that my claim to care for babies in the past--which I still do very much--somehow meant I shouldn't care about the lives of women too. It was a "cut and dry" issue in my mind after all with absolutely no compromises allowed. I imagined anyone who pursued an abortion as my enemy rather than my neighbor. I was operating from an extreme political and theological legalism.

This realization absolutely broke my heart. Especially after women in my very own community were brave enough to share with me their own stories and the demonization they have endured. The nuance and complexity of their stories were things I had never even considered in my belief system before. It made me so convinced that when we reduce an issue as deeply complex as abortion to a binary, either/or, right or wrong paradigm, we overlook the very people it impacts the most. The very people we Christians have been called to love.

It has been through so many conversations and experiences like this that God has caused the myths and demonizations of mine to melt away into humility.

Again, this is where I believe we can learn a lot from what Joseph, Zechariah, and Elizabeth did for Mary. They heard her story, believed her story, and saw her beyond the categories of “legal” or “illegal,” to the categories of compassion, love, and mercy. People can only do that when they aren't operating out of fear, but love instead.

Fear builds walls instead of bridges. Mary’s story is the story of perfect love driving out fear, where she was empowered, protected, and believed. As the great Christmas Hymn says, "Christ’s law is love and his gospel is peace."

This reality of Mary’s life should be remembered the next time someone quotes Romans 13:1a out of context. “Every person should place themselves under the authority of the government.”

How different that first Christmas would have been if Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, and Elizabeth had followed such advice rather than the radical, risky, unexpected leading of God. It would have been just as wrong then as it is today.

We are living in a time where women are being reduced to categories of “legal” and “illegal” in regards to their reproductive care, with very little regard to their individual liberties, experiences, circumstances, and agency. We need a revival of love in the face of this legalism.

May we Christians remember the faithful example set by Mary’s friends and relatives that first Christmas. May we Christians be those who would have received Mary and her lived experience, with compassion and mercy rather than shaming her and sending her and her unborn child away or worse, responding with severe legalism.

May the individual experiences of the Marys of our world and their pregnancies inform how we respond to the laws that impact them most.

Now I'd like to hear from you.

What have been some of the most helpful ways you've found to navigate this complicated topic? How has your perspective on this issue changed or stayed the same over time? Send me a message if you'd like to share!

If you benefit from this project and would like to support it through a recurring gift, you can do so here: There's a $5/mo, $10/mo, and a $25/mo available.

If you’d like to support it through a one time gift, you can do that here: one-time-gift.​

As always, thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I truly appreciate you all,

Ben

Remember, you can now view all previous newsletters and invite friends to join through just one link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.