This one has been cooking inside me for a while. If you’re inclined to different views, politically or spiritually, I’d ask you to read what follows as an experience, my experience, rather than an argument. As always, much love.
- Lindsey
A midrash on Genesis 1:
In the beginning, God created the day and the night, and the beautiful non-binary twilight times of sunrise and sunset – the both and the neither of darkness and light; and God created the land and the sea and the dreamy non-binary beaches and salt marshes and wetlands – the both and the neither of the wet and the dry; and God created human beings in God’s image, male and female God created them, God created us. Male. And Female. And Male and Female. The glorious non-binary of all who are both and neither. God created us in their image. And God saw all that God had created and God called it good. Very good.
We start with the imago dei because it is the most important thing. To honor each human being as a bearer of the divine. To honor and trust each human being as holding true, valid, and authoritative information about their own embodied experience. As I near forty, it still surprises me (though less and less) how infrequently women and all people with uteruses are honored and trusted without having a cis man cosign their ideas, especially concerning our own bodies. Being a woman and/or being a person in the world with a uterus is a bloody business. Both literally and figuratively. I lament the fact that my own religious tradition has so often been a culprit in painting women as weak and untrustworthy and scapegoating us for the downfall of men. Women are clearly strong as hell. Jesus loved and trusted women. He taught nothing concerning abortion.
I think part of what is so galling about the current rhetoric and political climate concerning abortion is that it treats the ineffable and unknowable as though it is black and white. And it treats the teaching of certain religious sects as authoritative for a pluralist nation. As though there is agreement about how and when that divine image enters a body. And in the midst of this theoretical posturing, fully formed and ensouled people are dying for want of care.
I am not a scholar of religions, but I know that for much of Judaism, Genesis 2 is the authority on when life begins. Verse 7, in particular: then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. For people in this tradition of story and belief, life begins with breath, not before. When a being breathes in the Spirit of God. To treat a developing embryo (the proper term for the being developing up through 8 weeks of gestation) or fetus (the being developing during gestational weeks 9 through 40) on equal footing, with equal personhood as the woman, child, or person whose life makes the potential of its life possible is anathema.
Even Catholic teaching on the subject of abortion has evolved over time. It wasn’t until 1965 that “abortion was condemned as the taking of life rather than as a sexual sin.”1 In 1230 CE, Thomas Aquinas declared that a pre-quickening fetus has a “vegetative soul” and that the “rational soul” only came later once the body was fully developed. This became the Catholic Church’s position for hundreds of years. Abortion might be condemned as a potential sign of sex outside of marriage, but it was not equated with murder. That was an invention of the last third of the 20th century.
Let’s linger for a minute on the idea of sexual immorality or impropriety or even “sin.” Knowing that this is where the roots of anti-abortion sentiments come from, it is not hard to see the present crusade against abortion as a way to try to put women and all people with uteruses back “in our place.” To shame and punish and police our bodies. Because when options for contraception and reproductive healthcare are curtailed, women’s bodies, bodies with uteruses are the ones that bear the signs, the responsibility, and the consequences for sex. Whether consensual or not. Bodies with uteruses bear this responsibility. Not bodies with penises. And there has always been stigma and shame associated with this.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I learned that the medical term for a miscarriage is a “spontaneous abortion.” This surprised and even shocked me because up until that point, miscarriage and abortion had existed as two very separate categories in my mind. Miscarriage was the sad way wanted pregnancies ended. Abortion was the sad way unwanted pregnancies ended.
Even growing up in a Planned Parenthood supporting household that held with Elizabeth Dole that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” there was a definite emphasis on the rare part. And there was always the quiet and unspoken sense that abortion meant someone had failed, usually the woman (or girl) for not keeping her legs closed or being wiser about contraception. Even with a righteous sense of how unfair it was that boys and men didn’t bear the same physical consequences and responsibility for their sexual activity, this quiet sense of failure and shame persisted. And it attached itself to individuals, not the system of patriarchy that taught girls how to be pleasing and compliant without much thought to enthusiastic and continual consent.
When (and where) I grew up, you did not have to be Catholic or an Evangelical to be influenced by the messaging put forth by church and para-church organizations about sex and abortion. I remember sitting in the junior high/high school cafeteria, hearing from Catholic friends about their visit to the traveling abortion mobile. This was not a mobile abortion clinic, but a mobile propaganda unit, decrying the evil and murderous practice of abortion. The visceral feeling I have when remembering my friends’ descriptions make it sound akin to walking through a gory haunted house on Halloween.
In all my years of education, I never remember hearing or learning about abortion as important and often necessary in the full scope of reproductive healthcare. Necessary healthcare to honor the lives, dreams, and potential of women. I never remember hearing or learning that the outcomes of pregnancy are not binary. That abortion is often the needed medication or procedure to help a body complete a miscarriage. That women and people with uteruses who did “everything right” might still find themselves in need of medical care that could help save their lives or grant mercy to a fetus with abnormalities incompatible with life or save reproductive organs to make the lives of future children possible or to make other worthy dreams and calls that had nothing to do with bearing children or parenthood possible.
As a pastor and woman of a certain age, I have walked alongside friends, family, and congregants who have had to enter into the soup of abortion as necessary healthcare when scans didn’t show what they hoped for, when fetal abnormalities were incompatible with life, when partners returned to old addictions that were incompatible with life as a family. And that’s just the planned and wanted pregnancies. The stigma so often associated with abortion did not make these necessary decisions easier.
The older I get, the clearer I get: pregnancy should never be a punishment—not for pleasure and certainly not for violence done and bodily autonomy stolen. Trusting women and all people with uteruses with their own bodily autonomy should be our baseline.
But it’s simply not. After the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs in June, throwing out years of precedent and overturning Roe, many states have already enacted near total bans on abortion. There are already twelve states that ban abortion at conception. (A point that has very little meaning as medical providers do not use conception as the way to count pregnancy but last menstrual period or LMP.) Some of these complete abortion bans are without exception for cases of rape or incest. I remember hearing a Missouri prosecutor speak about the meanness of the Missouri law with a tremor in her voice. After years in which part of her work was as a victims’ advocate, prosecuting perpetrators or rape and incest; and with the deep knowledge that comes with that work, knowing that because incest is repeated and perpetrated by a family member that it both takes longer to report and is more likely to result in the pregnancy of a child, she was indignant that such a child now has no recourse and that her job would now be to prosecute such a child should they seek abortion as healthcare.
Georgia has a six-week ban which is almost non-sense if you know anything about how pregnancy is calculated, and a handful of other states have similar laws that have been enjoined by the courts. Here in Iowa, abortion is still legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. But it won’t be for long if Governor Reynolds has her way. She is suing to have a law passed in 2018 take effect, even though it was subsequently ruled unconstitutional. Known as a fetal heartbeat bill, it makes abortion illegal once a fetal “heartbeat” can be detected. “Heartbeat” is in quotes here because embryos do not have developed hearts at this gestational stage and the “heartbeat” is actually a measure of electrical impulses.2 The size of an embryo at six weeks gestation, approximately four weeks after conception, is roughly that of a baked bean. Miraculous to be sure. But when unplanned and unwanted, does it truly have the same right to personhood as the living, breathing, fully ensouled person carrying it?
It's also worth noting that most obstetricians will not even do ultrasounds or schedule first OB visits for people seeking pregnancy care before 8-10 weeks gestation. The risk of miscarriage up to this point is too high, and frankly, there’s nothing to see. The only way you get an ultrasound sooner is if you’re seeking an abortion. Also worth noting is that just because abortion remains legal in many states doesn’t mean it remains accessible. The need to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, the requirement of an ultrasound followed by a 24-48 hour waiting period before the procedure, biased counseling—all of these measures put the onus on the person seeking care and make it more difficult to receive the care needed.
In the middle days of our journey with infertility, I started to think of my body as a box and pregnancy as Schrodinger’s cat. It both was and wasn’t all at the same time. I did not know until we started trying to get pregnant that Week One begins the day I start to bleed. We had been tracking ovulation and we had advanced beyond baby roulette. We were trying to hit the bullseye and I thought maybe we had. It was after lunch and I felt queasy, so I googled “week one pregnancy symptoms”. You can imagine my surprise to learn that symptoms during week one of pregnancy include a regular menstrual cycle. I needed to advance to Week Three.
I was not pregnant then. But by the time I knew for sure, I would be entering Week Five. Pregnancy: it both is and isn’t, all at the same time. Learning this strange bit of reproductive calculus elicited more than queasiness. It elicited rage.
Six Week abortion bans? They are for the connected, privileged, knowledgeable, and flexible. Who even knows they’re pregnant at Week Six? People who are trying to get pregnant. Or trying desperately not to.
We want so badly to conceive a child. To bring life into the world. To show them what is beautiful and good and true. And yet I wonder at what point their life becomes more important than mine. I know it’s not a zero-sum game, their life or mine. My life, well-lived and cared for, is essential to their potential thriving. And yet our culture tells a different story. Is it in those weeks where they are not just ineffable, but impossible, is it then that, to our culture, they become more important? Is it then that it becomes clear that I cannot be trusted?
Some experiences with medicine and politics point to yes. That one pap smear with an irregularity that required follow-up. I had not had a partner in years. I made that clear to my providers. There was no way I could be pregnant. But my word was not worth trust. I had the privilege of paying out of pocket for a medical grade pregnancy test to assure that a closer look at my cervix would not disturb any gestating cells.
Another time, my doctor ordered a mammogram. There’s a family history of breast cancer and she wanted a baseline before I was pregnant. I got the soonest appointment I could, went to the lab, put my clothes in a locker, felt vulnerable half naked under a cape that barely reached my sternum. Only then did they ask if it was possible that I could be pregnant. Of course it was possible. If you’re trying, at least half of all the days it is possible. I stood half naked and vulnerable, under my cape, while the technician went away for a long time only to return and refuse to perform the exam. I persisted. “It was my OB/GYN who ordered the test,” I argued. She knew my cycle and our attempts. This was health care for me, not about some cells that may have but likely hadn’t implanted in my uterus, no matter how much we hoped they were there. It took some doing, but eventually they squished and squeezed and imaged my breasts that day. I will continue to advocate for care that keeps me well. If I don’t survive, how can any child of mine live?
And what happens if I become pregnant and, God forbid, need abortion care? Will I have to prove my case in court or to my legislators before getting the care I need? Will a judge have to approve the decision I make in consultation with my partner and my doctor? Will there be care providers available who are skilled in this chilled and hateful climate? When I talked with my reproductive endocrinologist in the days after the SCOTUS decision on Roe was leaked, I asked if anything in the practice would change. “Not for now,” she said. But she intimated that if legal changes to the idea of when life begins continued, advanced reproductive care through in vitro fertilization could become illegal in the future. A frightening thought.
In the month after month of trying and unknown pregnancy status, I learned to answer questions from providers outside my fertility team less truthfully and less literally. No one wants to know about Weeks Two through Four. They want no part in the uncertainty and mystery that may or may not be growing in my body. The uncertainty and practical mystery that coexist with being a person with a uterus most days of the week. They only want to know when I know for sure. To regulate and legislate. My faith teaches me that to carry life is a sacred gift. But what does it become when that ability is coerced? When bodily autonomy is lost?
Even God waited for Mary’s consent.
U.S. National Library of Medicine. (n.d.). PubMed. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Retrieved November 2, 2022, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12178868/#:~:text=In%201930%2C%20therapeutic%20abortions%20were,a%20consistent%20ethic%20of%20life
Pitt, D. (2022, October 28). Iowa governor's lawyer pushes for 6-week abortion ban. AP NEWS. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://apnews.com/article/abortion-iowa-kim-reynolds-des-moines-68e049cb2d09588096b57e6a23d18df7
Love this. You have beautifully woven your views with your personal journey.
The kicker....the ending line. IT - IS - POWERFUL!
Love, love, love the language, clarity, expression, and passion of your writing. It resonates deeply with me as a woman of the 70's and as your mom. Thank you for sharing these important thoughts.