One of the reasons I'm so excited about being involved with First Freedom First is because it's a campaign that supports reproductive justice. First Freedom First believes that all Americans must be free to make choices concerning their reproductive health in keeping with their personal beliefs.
Opponents of reproductive freedom often seek legislation based on their own religious doctrines. Creating laws that are grounded in religious belief, however, conflicts with the separation of church and state and compromises our religious liberty. We must be allowed to live our lives according to our own beliefs.
I’ve been a feminist all my life, and a feminist activist for more than two decades now. I’ve been on the front line at clinics defending a woman’s right to make this personal decision, and I can assure you that at no time have I ever witnessed an anti-abortion advocate waving a medical journal telling the women entering the clinics, or the doctors inside, that they are practicing bad medicine. They wave Bibles. They read scripture. They tell the women they are committing a sin against God. Opponents often, and regularly, couch their objections to abortion in religious language.
At the center of the abortion debate are important questions of ethics and beliefs. Such questions are sometimes difficult, and ultimately will be resolved by individuals in accordance with the dictates of their own conscience. In many cases, the dictates of a person’s conscience will be influenced by their religious beliefs. Religious liberty is a basic right guaranteed to all Americans by the First Amendment. To take away a woman’s right to make personal decisions about her body is to deny her basic right to religious freedom.
3 comments:
Bravo! You know how I feel, I believe you read and commented on my recent abortion post.
This is very well done and Roe v. Wade must not fall.
It is my body, my business. If I don't want to have an abortion, I do not have to.
If you want to, who am I to stop you?
And honestly, nothing I know after years of prayer and study have shown me a Jesus that would be standing in front of the clinic shaming and hurting people with words and accusations, let alone bombs and guns.
The sad thing is, these people who go in front of the clinics praying and yelling at the women going in, don't realize that the free women's clinics offer more than abortion. Many are poor women who have no insurance and that is the only place they can get a pap smear or birth control to keep them from getting pregnant in the first place. They judge every woman who walks in...and when they do that, they are hurting those who they profess to love.
I also saw a story where an anti abortion group sent plastic fetuses in the mail to women with a message about the anniversary of Roe vs.Wade. Can you imagine how devastating that would be to a woman after they've lost a child, either to abortion or miscarriage? What's wrong with these people?
So well said, BAC! I like how you tied this into our fundamental freedoms.
Post a Comment