*this is a post from a WHITE MALE TEXAN who is also a PASTOR (albeit in blue Austin, and a Presbyterian!), yet in the spirit of let’s take our wins wherever and from whoever we can get them, I share it with you. That said, Pastor Jim, I am pro-abortion. One in five pregnancies ends in a miscarriage, many of which require abortion care – and miscarriage is among the many, many reasons why abortion care is and must simply be a part of healthcare. Period. End of story. No restrictions. No questions asked.
Pastor Jim Rigby: I saw a sign yesterday on I-35 that read, “Save the Babies!.” I assumed the sign would be a call to strip pregnant women of control over their own bodies, but it was an ad for a milk bank “How strange,” I thought, “to see a sign that’s about saving actual gestated babies and not about choosing fetuses and zygotes over the person who is pregnant.” “Saving the babies” means food, medical care and shelter for infants, not just doors slammed in the face of the pregnant.
We should never forget that women of the U.S. do not have the same constitutional protections over their own personhood as men. As much as MAGA talks about freedom, they consider the reproductive organs of women to be community property. What sense does it make to talk about liberty if one’s internal organs belong to the state?
Believing that women and transgender people who find themselves pregnant still own their own bodies and should make their own reproductive decisions is not one inch closer to the decision to seeking an abortion than it is to the decision to give birth. People equate being prochoice with being pro-abortion because that is the option we have had to fight to defend. Being pro-choice in no way implies that abortion is the right choice for someone to make.
When Ann Richards was elected I was invited to a gathering in her hotel room. As I walked through the lobby, I saw one of her closest friends crying . When I asked her what was wrong she said, “I just realized that, with abortion rights safe, we can now focus all our energies on preventing teen pregnancy.” If the right to choose were safe, I guarantee our efforts would move to preventing unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
Again, being pro-choice does not mean being pro-abortion. No one I know is pro-abortion any more than they are pro-root canal, but sometimes life comes with difficult choices. Being pro-choice means believing in the moral agency of women. It means believing that the person who is pregnant is the only one who can understand all the ethical implications involved. Being pro-choice means recognizing that the one who is pregnant can be trusted to do the right thing more than any government or religious sect arrogant enough to believe they should speak for us all.