Posted on 02/05/2006 10:34:42 AM PST by Incorrigible
BY CONNIE SCHULTZ
With the simplest of gestures, any woman in America can lay her hands on the battleground here at home.
It's beneath the soft flesh of her own body, the area nestled between her hips where babies are conceived or not, carried to term or not. By merely resting her hand across her abdomen, a woman can find the combustible intersection of politics and religion where the mighty turf war is being waged.
If you listen only to those who scream the loudest, you might think that most Americans of faith believe abortion is a sin against God. It's a common misperception, and one that deeply troubles the Rev. Dr. Carlton Veazey, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and founded its Black Church Initiative.
"The majority of religious people in this country support choice, but you wouldn't know it by the noise and ink in the media from the other side," says the 69-year-old Baptist minister. "People tend to identify religious people with anti-choice, but that is the opposite of reality."
Polling last summer by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life revealed that while a majority of Americans want more restrictions on abortion, they overwhelmingly want to keep it legal. Even among evangelicals who were polled, fewer than half favored overturning Roe v. Wade. Only 15 percent said abortion should be eliminated.
None of these findings surprise Veazey, nor does he find them inconsistent with religious faith.
"I was raised by my father, who was also a minister, to believe in the moral agency of individuals, that they had a right to make moral choices. Choice is a God-given right. To have a child can be a sacred choice. By the same token, to not have a child can be a sacred choice.
"The woman may not be prepared to bring a new life into the world. She may not be able to provide for a child. She may decide, `My life is not where it should be."'
The willingness to empathize with a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy is what brings many of us to support the right to reproductive freedom. Even those who are certain they could never abort a fetus under any circumstances can understand why someone else would, if only they start to imagine a whole different set of circumstances in their lives.
What if I were a teenager? Or completely alone? In a violent or abusive relationship? What would I do if I knew there was something genetically wrong with the fetus inside me? What if I were pregnant from a rape? What would I do if I were pregnant and poor?
"I keep thinking of what Joycelyn Elders told me," Veazey said, referring to the former U.S. surgeon general. "That 70 percent of poverty in the black community can be traced to teen pregnancy."
So Veazey has taken his sermon to the road. On that, he had no choice, especially in light of Samuel Alito's appointment to the Supreme Court.
"We are going to become a theocracy if we aren't going to be more outspoken as religious progressives. One thing I have to give the opposition: They're very skillful in working the media."
Some of them are also emotional terrorists.
Earlier this week, I spoke with a 65-year-old grandmother who recently started escorting patients into an abortion clinic. A devoted member of the United Church of Christ, she told me that navigating women past screaming protesters has bolstered her faith and made her fiercely pro-choice.
"These people taunt and abuse these women. They scream, `You're murderers!' They don't even know why some of these women are there. They may be coming for counseling or diagnostic tests, but the protesters attack them anyway, as if they have all the answers for everyone in the world, as if they alone have the pipeline for God."
They frighten her, which is why she didn't want me to use her name. They will not, however, scare her away.
"I did not know the pain inflicted on these women," she said. "Women have the moral integrity to make these decisions for themselves. It's terrorism on their hearts."
It's also just another tactic in the war over who controls a woman's womb.
Feb. 3, 2006
(Connie Schultz is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at cschultz@plaind.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
I don't know reverend...why don't you ask Mary, the mother of Christ. That example should be the one you let penetrate your heart and preach to your congregation.
This so-called minister is wresting the scriptiures and preaching an absolutely perverted, strong dillusion.
um...
it seems to me that...
IF we insist that a woman can decide, once pregnant, that she cannot afford to bring a babe into the world...
THEN we must simultaneously insist that that same woman can decide, before she gets pregnant, that she cannot afford to bring a babe into the world.
don't want to get pregnant?
don't screw.
very simple, and covers the majority of "unplanned" pregnancies now routinely aborted.
The one where you have to light candles and sacrifice a goat before opening.
What is it about these so called Xstian "ministers" that screams PAGANISM?
Also, the idea that Christians support Roe is idiotic. My 10,000 member church is rabidly pro-life. I would bet that not a single member supports Roe. Perhaps it is the lame brain liberal churches that harbor these vermin.
Sorry for the rant. This guy just struck a nerve with me.
WOW! That is an amazing picture.
That's what Sweetwater Post-Natal Abortion Clinic is for.
Of course they support "choice", but choice and abortion are two very different things, and they are linked only in an insideous way, as homosexula perversion is linked to the word "gay". It's pure b.s.
But what's really wrong with the statement is that Christians themselves have no right to determine for themselves what is moral and what is not. That's why God gave us the Church in the first place, to disseminate HIS word and HIS teachings, not our own.
Close, but not quite regarding that photo:
From Snopes.com: http://snopes.com/photos/thehand.asp
"What actually happened, as described in news reports of the surgery, was that: [J]ust as surgeon Dr. Joseph Bruner was closing the incision in Julie Armas' uterus, Samuel's thumbnail-sized hand flopped out. Bruner lifted it gently and tucked it back in."
and
"Some opponents of abortion have claimed that the baby reached through the womb and grabbed the doctor's hand.
Not true, Bruner says.
Samuel and his mother, Julie, were under anesthesia and could not move.
"The baby did not reach out," Bruner says. "The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on."
Satanic.
Wow! A picture is worth a 1000 words.
I'm with you! Pro-choice BEFORE conception, pro-LIFE after. Not very complicated.
What God’s Word Says About Abortion
By Lynn Copeland
God speaks very clearly in the Bible on the value of unborn children. God’s Word says that He personally made each one of us, and has a plan for each life:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart" (Jeremiah 1:5).
"Even before I was born, God had chosen me to be His" (Galatians 1:15).
"For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb . . . Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be" (Psalm 139:13, 16). "Your hands shaped me and made me . . . Did You not clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life" (Job 10:8–12).
"This is what the Lord says—He who made you, who formed you in the womb" (Isaiah 44:2).
"Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One form us both within our mothers?" (Job 31:15).
Because man is made in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27), each life is of great value to God: "Children are a gift from God" (Psalm 127:3). He even calls our children His own: "You took your sons and daughters whom you bore to Me and sacrificed them...You slaughtered My children" (Ezekiel 16:20,21). The Bible says of our Creator, "In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being" (Job 12:10). God, the giver of life, commands us not to take the life of an innocent person: "Do not shed innocent blood" (Jeremiah 7:6); "Cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person" (Deuteronomy 27:25). "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). Taking the life of the unborn is clearly murder—"He didn’t kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave" (Jeremiah 20:17)— and God vowed to punish those who "ripped open the women with child" (Amos 1:13).
The unborn child was granted equal protection in the law; if he lost his life, the one who caused his death must lose his own life: "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined . . .But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life" (Exodus 21:22,23). Life is a gift created by God, and is not to be taken away by abortion. God is "prochoice," but He tells us clearly the only acceptable choice to make: "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19).
""That 70 percent of poverty in the black community can be traced to teen pregnancy.""
Very good - let's evade the subject of absentee dads.
I'm sure the fatherless families have nothing to do with poverty at all.
"The woman may not be prepared to bring a new life into the world. She may not be able to provide for a child. She may decide, `My life is not where it should be."'
The Word according to followers of Christ Luke 1:38
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.The truth is plain. The lie is not.
The ignorance and illogic of the author and the so-called Reverend are exceeded only by their evil.
Thats ok i trust my eye's not Snope's snoops
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