Religious Leaders: Time to End Silence on Reproductive Justice

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/7528/religious_leaders__time_to_end_silence_on_reproductive_justice/

January 24, 2014
By HARRY KNOX

The Rev. Harry F. Knox is president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

We have recently observed the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision that ostensibly established a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. But in much of the country, that right is in retreat.



Religious and political leaders eager to have the tenets of their faith written into civil law have pushed through a wave of restrictive state laws, while pastors and politicians who believe women must be free to make their own decisions were either silent or ignored. President Obama can alter that dynamic in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night by calling upon Congress to end the ban on public funding of abortion and instructing the Justice Department to challenge the constitutionality of state laws the impede women’s access to reproductive health care.

This is a critical moment for the conversation about reproductive health, yet there is surprising ignorance about several key facts. At current rates, 30% of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45, and of those 60% are already mothers, 70% report a religious affiliation, and 25% have been to a service within the month before their abortion.

Women having abortions are far more numerous and much more similar to the rest of the population than most of us recognize. Yet, in the national debate on reproductive justice, conservative religious leaders command vast audiences, while the women who are affected by the harsh laws these leaders promote are almost invisible. Because they are invisible they are easy to stereotype, and once stereotyped, they are easy to punish.

Since 2010, at least 305 restrictions to safe abortion access—more than in the previous ten years combined—have been passed by primarily red state legislatures. Laws that claim to protect the health of a woman—by forcing clinics that can’t meet a hospital’s surgical standards to close—actually deny women the care that they need. Unnecessary trans-vaginal ultrasounds invade the body of a pregnant woman in an effort to shame and manipulate her decisions. A welter of state and federal legislation makes it difficult, if not impossible for poor women to afford either contraception or abortion.

more at link

[pinto]

1. Well done piece. Rev. Knox is right on point, imo.

[Brettongarcia]

2. Over-stressing Catholic opposition to birth control, denies Protestant churches which allow it

If a Protestant woman, whose church allows abortion, goes to Catholic hospital, and is denied birth control or abortion? Catholicism is denying her freedom of religion; many Protestant churches allow birth control and abortion.

This becomes serious, when the Catholic hospital is federally funded; now we have the state, supporting a specific religion.

SCOTUS well knows that over-stressing the rights of one group often attacks the rights of another.

What is "freedom" for one religion, is servitude, when inflicted on all others.