Roe vs. Wade milestone: gratitude, alarm

As a Christian ethicist and ordained minister, I felt a mixture of gratitude and alarm Jan. 22 as we marked yet another anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade.

Why gratitude? Because I’m persuaded that a free society should protect reproductive freedom as a fundamental legal and moral right. A just society must also provide the material conditions its citizens need to exercise their rights without discrimination of race, age, economic status or locale. With respect to promoting sexual health and well-being, women and men alike need lifelong comprehensive sexuality education and access to quality affordable health care, including confidential family planning services.

Birth by choice, or the principle of elective pregnancy and childbirth, is a basic moral freedom that benefits women and strengthens society as a whole. I’m grateful because for the past 28 years, women have had, as a matter of law, the constitutionally protected right to make their own reproductive decisions. Women, in company with those they trust, have been empowered to plan their families according to how they, not others, judge their circumstances and in keeping with their own personal values and beliefs, not those of others.

Why gratitude? Because over the years, as I have counseled women and their partners, I’ve learned again and again to appreciate women’s moral wisdom about the joys and sorrows of bringing new life into the world. Perhaps because I’m a man, I’ve also had to learn how to recognize the courage it takes to make these decisions.

Discovery of pregnancy is often cause for celebration, but regrettably that isn’t always the case. Birthing a child is not always beyond reproach, and sometimes terminating pregnancy is more responsible. As author Mary Gordon observes, “In real life we act knowing that the birth of a child is not always a good thing, but this is a difficult truth to tell.”

As moral agents, women make their choices as most people typically make important life decisions, by doing the best they can under less than ideal circumstances and, when they’re fortunate, after receiving the understanding, support and blessing of their families, friends and faith communities. In my judgment, the very best of both civic and religious values encourage us to oppose efforts aimed at reproductive coercion, no matter whether the coercion comes in the form of forced pregnancies or forced abortions and no matter whether the party doing the coercing is another person or the state.

Why gratitude? Because denial of reproductive freedom has such negative consequences, including significant risks to women’s health and their very lives. I’m grateful because I can remember what life was like when women were denied the freedom to plan their families. Fear, desperation and shame created untold misery for women and their loved ones. Thousands died because of poor-quality abortion practices in back alleys or because of botched efforts undertaken in kitchens and bathrooms throughout suburbia, as well as inner cities.

Added to injury, however, was severe insult. Forbidding women options, especially when early abortion has become medically safe (statistically 11 times safer than childbirth), and denying them decision-making freedom is monumentally disrespectful of women’s humanity. Denial of choice-in-birthing undermines women’s dignity as persons and foments social injustice, especially when poor women and rural women are consistently denied access to affordable, reliable family planning services. Coercion in pregnancy and childbirth turns women into objects and renders them instruments of other people’s values. That’s simply and unequivocally wrong.

And what’s the cause for alarm? A new president, his nominee for attorney general, and other government officials are publicly on record as anti-choice and now poised to dismantle the legal, social and economic conditions that protect reproductive freedom for women and families in this country. With this incoming Washington administration, we face the likelihood of new federal restrictions, including the notorious gag rule that would prohibit medical providers at federally funded family planning clinic from even discussing abortion as a legal medical option available to pregnant women.

Pressure will be reasserted to pass anti-choice federal legislation, including efforts to outlaw so-called “partial birth” abortions. Maine’s senators, both moderate Republicans who have bravely supported women’s legal rights to reproductive freedom, will be under enormous pressure to buckle under.

In the Maine Legislature, more than 20 bills have been introduced in this session that would chip away at women’s access to reproductive health services, including mandatory 24- to 48-hour waiting periods and measures that would limit sexuality education to “abstinence only” curricula. Women’s reproductive health and freedom are, once again, in jeopardy.

January is the month of the Roe vs. Wade anniversary, as well as the inauguration of a conservative, anti-choice U.S. president. It is also the month in which we celebrate the birth and remarkable life of Martin Luther King Jr., whose ministry and public advocacy for justice exhibited, time and again, how a strong faith makes it possible to “keep on keeping on” against incredible odds. King knew well the wisdom of not getting lost in mourning, but of organizing and staying in the struggle.

Rest assured, the struggle that really counts is not for “compassionate conservatism” but rather for a comprehensive justice with compassion for all. And “when a people stand up for justice,” King reminded us, “no matter what happens, they can never fail.”

The Rev. Marvin M. Ellison is on the faculty of Bangor Theological Seminary and co-chairs the Maine Interfaith Council for Reproductive Choices.