“Sacred Choices: 33 Years after Roe v. Wade”
Reverend James Kubal-Komoto
Saltwater Unitarian Univeralist Church
Des Moines, Washington
January 22, 2006
I want to begin this morning with a story.
This story is about a twenty-something-year-old woman in the 1960s, living in Houston, Texas, and working as a public school teacher.
One night she was date raped by a drunken acquaintance at a party and a short time later she discovered that she was pregnant.
Of course, this woman had never heard the words “date rape” because the concept that a woman could be sexually assaulted by anyone but a stranger did yet exist in many people’s minds in the 1960s.
All she knew was that she needed to make a decision about her pregnancy.
If she made the decision to continue her pregnancy and keep the baby, she would be limited to low-paying, second class jobs and the stigma of being a single mother. She also wasn’t ready to be a mother yet. There were still other things that she wanted to experience in life.
Even if she made the decision to continue her pregnancy but put the child up for adoption, she certainly would lose her job. Unwed, pregnant school teachers still sometime lose their jobs today, and they certainly did in the 1960s in Texas. She knew she might have difficulty ever finding another teaching job. She probably would be disowned by her parents. They were strict, controlling, intolerant people, but they were also the only parents she had.
So she made the decision to end her pregnancy, to have an abortion.
Of course, abortion was illegal in the State of Texas, and it was difficult if not impossible to find a doctor who would perform one. But a friend knew somebody who knew somebody.
Unfortunately, the person who performed the abortion had no medical training and botched the job. The young woman experienced complications. Luckily, she found a doctor who would treat her and not ask too many questions. If she hadn’t, she might have died or lost the ability to have children in the future.
A few years later this woman met a man, fell in love, and got married. Together, they had four, healthy children, and she rejoiced at the birth of each one, because at this time in her life she was ready to be a mother. While the family sometime struggled financially, it certainly didn’t struggle as much as she would have if she had been a single mother. She was able to stay home and be a full-time mother for most of her children’s growing up years. She and her husband were able to give their children opportunities, educational and otherwise, that she mostly likely wouldn’t have been able to give a child if she had become a mother earlier in her life.
Because abortion was available to her, though hers was neither legal nor safe, she and the four children to whom she gave birth most likely had a much better life than she and any other children she might have had would have had otherwise.
This woman chose to have an abortion, but she also chose life - - a better life for herself and her future children.
I am thankful she did, because the woman in this story is my mother, and I am the oldest of the four children to whom she gave birth.
I tell you this story with my mother’s explicit permission, and I tell if this morning for a specific reason.
I have never before spoken from the pulpit about my views about either the legality or morality of abortion, but as the minister of this congregation, it seems like it’s something that you as a congregation have a right to know about me.
What do I believe?
In a perfect world, there would be no problem pregnancies and no need for abortion, but we do not live in a perfect world, and in an imperfect world, making moral choices is rarely about blindly adhering to moral absolutes and often about make difficult, even heart-wrenching choices between options which are all less than ideal, and in the imperfect world in which live, I believe that abortion can be a moral choice. I believe it can even be a sacred choice because by “sacred” I mean something that ultimately honors life.
So I believe that when a woman decides to end a pregnancy because she is not physically, emotionally, or financially ready for motherhood, that can be a moral, even sacred choice.
I believe that when a woman decides to end a pregnancy because she already has several children and she doubts whether she can take care of another child, that can be a moral, even sacred choice.
I believe that when a woman decides to end a pregnancy because she has doubts about her future relationship with the father, that can be a moral, even sacred choice.
I believe that when a woman decides to end a pregnancy because she has been sexually assaulted, that can be a moral, even sacred choice.
I believe when a woman decides to end a pregnancy when she discovers that the fetus suffers from birth defects or disease, that can be a moral, even sacred choice.
In other words, not only do I strongly believe that a woman should have the legal right to chose whether to continue or end a pregnancy, but I also believe that in some circumstances, it is the morally best decision to make.
I also realize that not everyone agrees with me. Some people in this country believe that abortion should be legal but is immoral, and some people believe that it should be illegal in most or all circumstances.
Some of you may disagree with me, and that’s okay. In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, unlike in many other religious traditions, there is freedom of the pulpit and freedom of the pew, which means that I have the right to speak from my conscience but that none of you are required to agree with what I say.
Abortion is one of the most divisive, if not the most divisive issues this country faces. It seems to dominate and divide the political life of this country more than any issue since slavery, and the debate over abortion if far from over.
Today is the 33rd anniversary of Roe. v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in this country, but with the nomination and likely confirmation of Samuel Alito as a justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, I believe that the future of Roe v. Wade is in serious jeopardy. I hope I am wrong, but I believe it is more likely than ever now that that Roe v. Wade will be overturned.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, I expect we will see the debate over abortion intensify as we have never seen before. I can imagine things getting very polarized and very ugly, even more polarized and uglier than they are now.
This leads me to the question I want to explore this morning: Does it have to be this way? Does it have to be so ugly and polarized? Or would it be possible to find some common ground on the question of abortion between those who call themselves pro-choice and those who call themselves pro-life? Would it be possible to find some common ground that perhaps many Americans could agree on? If so, what would that look like? This morning I’d like to share with you my ideas about what that common ground might look like.
First, perhaps many Americans, whether they describe themselves as pro-choice or pro-life, could come to agree that abortion is always a sad, unfortunate choice.
What do I mean?
When I was still preparing for ministry, I worked as a chaplain at a large hospital in Chicago, and as chaplain, I witnessed many people die, standing by their bedsides, often with their families, as they took their last breaths.
There is something about the experience of watching another human being die that I don’t know whether I can put into words. One moment a person was alive and the next moment the person was not, and there was a difference. There was also a feeling that the world had been irrevocably changed, diminished even.
Being a witness to death further instilled in me, to use Albert Schweitzer’s phrase, a reverence for life, a belief that all life is precious, even sacred, even unborn life.
You see, sometimes during my work as a chaplain I was paged to the “Labor and Delivery” floor, and when I was, it was usually because a woman had suffered a miscarriage or because a fetus had died in a woman’s womb.
In my training as a chaplain, I was taught to treat these deaths like any other deaths, and I did. I witnessed the grief that mothers and fathers experienced, even when a miscarriage happened very early in a pregnancy. These men and women grieved for themselves, but they also grieved for the life that had been lost.
Was it a human life that had been lost?
It was at the very least a potential human life, a potential human being who might have some day laughed and cried. And it was sad when that potential life ended. The world was somehow diminished when that potential human life was no longer a part of it.
Did my experiences as a chaplain change my opinions on the morality or legality of abortion? No, they absolutely did not.
However, before my work as a chaplain, I tended to see abortion more neutrally, as no different than having one’s gall bladder removed. I tended to see those who opposed abortion as merely right wing religious fanatics obsessed with taking away women’s rights - - as indeed, at least some of them are.
While I still strongly believed that abortion should be legal and believed that is was sometimes the best moral choice a woman could make, what changed for me is that I came to see it as a sadder, more difficult choice than I had before.
The New York Times recently reported that two analyses published in the same peer-reviewed medical journal, using the same data, came to opposite conclusions about whether women who have abortions suffer more depression than women who give birth after unwanted pregnancies.
I don’t know which of these studies is right. I do know that many women - - and men - - grieve their unborn children even if the women do not regret their decision to end their pregnancies.
I recently asked my mother whether she ever regretted her decision. No, she said, but even after 40 years, it lingers with her.
Perhaps we as a country will never agree when life begins, if that’s even a useful question to ask at all. Perhaps, we as a country will never agree whether abortion is a moral choice, but perhaps we could agree, that abortion is a sad, even tragic choice for many women.
This leads to another possible area of common ground…perhaps many Americans could come to agree that there are too many abortions in this country.
There are about 1.3 million abortions in the U.S every year. Another way to think about that is that about 22 out of every 1,0000 women of child bearing age, or one out of every 45, have an abortion every year. Another way to think about that is that half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended and that half of these end in abortion. In other words, 1 out of every four pregnancies end in abortion. Another way to think about that is that one out of every three women will have an abortion by the time she is 45.
I believe that any woman who faces the decision of whether to continue a pregnancy deserves our compassion and our support, not our judgment, but I also believe that it is a judgment on the society in which we live that so many women do find themselves in a situation where they have to make what is often a sad, difficult choice, because I believe it doesn’t have to be this way.
What would help reduce the number of abortions in this country?
This leads me to another possible area of common ground….perhaps many Americans could come to agree that criminalizing abortion would do little to reduce the number of abortions, but would make abortion more dangerous.
Here it may be helpful to compare the United States to some other countries. Which countries in the world have the highest rates of abortion in the world? In South American countries such as Peru, Brazil, Chile and Colombia, where abortion is restricted by law, the abortion rate is about 50 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, more than twice the rate in the United States. Which countries have the lowest abortion rates in the world? Belgium and the Netherlands, where abortion is not only legal but covered by national health insurance.
If Roe v. Wade was overturned in this country and abortion became illegal in many states, it would do little to reduce the number of abortions. Women from rich or even middle class families would travel to another state or even out of the country for an abortion. Poor women would continue to have abortions, but they just wouldn’t be safe or legal, and not all of them would be as lucky as my mother. (One thing that’s often forgotten, even more than being a women’s issue, abortion is a class issue.) The result would be that more women would become sick or die. According to the World Health Organization, 200,000 women die every year from illegal, unsafe abortions.
So if criminalizing abortion won’t help, what would? Information about and access to birth control definitely needs to be part of the answer, but it’s not the whole answer. Perhaps many Americans could come to understand that the number of abortions in this country is influenced, more than anything else by educational and economic opportunities for women.
Consider the following facts:
Two third of women who abort a pregnancy say they cannot afford a child, or another child, and for the past 30 years, abortion rates have moved roughly in tandem with women’s unemployment rates. Women who become pregnant also worry about having health care for themselves and their children. The number of people without health insurance is growing, and women of child-bearing age are over-represented in this figure.
If this country is ever to become serious about reducing the number of abortions, there are several things that could help: having a minimum wage indexed for inflation and more tax credits for the working poor, having health insurance for all mothers and babies; having economic support for mothers and babies, and having adequate, low-cost childcare are just a few possibilities.
The simple fact of the matter is that countries who do a better job of taking care of mothers and their children have lower abortion rates.
This leads to another possible area of common ground…Perhaps man Americans could agree to stop giving a free ride to political leaders who only give lip service to being pro-life or against abortion.
What do I mean?
As Senator Barney Frank once said, there are too many people in this country who are only pro-life for the first nine months.
For any politician who claims to be pro-life, we need to ask that person to be more consistent in his or her positions. Yes, it’s true that more than 3,0000 abortions take place in the U.S. everyday. But 9,000 people die each day of AIDS. And 30,000 children die every day because of hunger and preventable diseases. And most years, as many as 500,000 people die in international conflicts and wars. Even if we can’t agree on whether a fetus is a person, we should be able to agree that a six-year-old child is a person, and deserving of our compassion and our care.
For any politician who claims to be against abortion, we need to ask that person to support policies that actually reduce the number of abortions in this country.
There is some irony that the U.S. presidential administrations that have made abortion one their biggest issues are also the administrations that have enacted policies that have led to an increase in abortions.
During the 1980s during the Regan administration when programs to help the poor were cut, the abortion rate remained steady. During the 1990s during the Clinton administrations, the abortion rate dropped precipitously as the unemployment rate also dropped. In recent years, under the Bush administrations, the abortion rate has increased again with the rise in unemployment and a reduction in programs that help the most vulnerable among us.
As the progressive evangelical Jim Wallis has said, many so-called pro-life politicians “win elections of the basis of their anti-abortion position and then proceed to ignore the issue…by doing nothing to reduce the number of abortions.”
And one final point…
I want to suggest that we as Unitarian Universalists could have a very special role to play in forging this common ground.
What do I mean?
You see, way back in 1969 there was a group of women at the First Unitarian Chuch in Dallas who decided to study the issue of abortion because they thought it was the most important issue of their time. They became so involved in studying the issue and believed it was so important, they decided to form a group that was officially separate from the church, and the purpose of the group would be to reform the existing law in the state of Texas. Soon, they realized, however, that the law not only needed to be reformed but repealed. This group of women from the First Unitarian Church in Dallas was the one that raised both awareness and money from the surrounding community so that allowed young Dallas woman named Norma McCorvey who had been denied an abortion and Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee - - two young lawyers recently graduated from the University of Texas - - to bring a lawsuit named Roe v. Wade all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. You see, it all started in the basement of a Unitarian Universalist church.
Unitarian Universalists were there when it started. If and when it’s overturned, we need to be there too.