The following is a piece that a friend wrote last year in response to a spate of anti-choice legislation. She and I went to seminary together; she’s now seeking ordination in the United Church of Christ.
I posted it with her permission on Daily Kos last year. It seems pertinent again with the recent open attacks on birth control, and women’s reproductive freedom generally.
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them.” Genesis 1:26-28
I would like to know, in your mind, when I become expendable. I would like to know when the value of my person ceases. We were created in the image of God and I would like to know when, in your mind, I no longer reflect that image. At what point am I no longer a part of God’s creation? Is it when an egg is fertilized inside my body and begins a journey that has a less than 50% chance of ultimate success? Is it when that fertilized egg has a heart beat? Or, did my life become expendable when, long ago in my mother’s body, I became XX instead of XY, and my genetic coding programmed me for breasts, a uterus, a vagina, estrogen and progesterone. Did my expendability, my non-value, begin for you then? How, in your mind, is it conscionable to claim that a hospital is ethically within its rights to deny me care if a pregnancy is killing me or ravaging my body? Why is it your place to mandate what the value of my life might be? If life is life “from conception to natural death”, why is my death preferable to that of the unborn? If my pregnancy is in crisis, or where medical advice dictates that the baby is endangering my life in some way – why is my life expendable to you? When I present at an emergency room bleeding, in so much pain that I am raking my nails across my face, with depleted iron and a dying child, why is my life and well being so worthless in the eyes of God that I should be denied needed medical care? When exactly did the spirit of God leave me?I hope you do not have daughters. If you do, have you looked them in the eye and told them that your wish for them is to live in a world where their lives are expendable, where it is ethical and God’s will to allow them to die in a situation where they could be saved? How dare you play God with the lives of women and girls? If this is not about hating women, please point out a medical scenario involving a man where it would be ethical not to do anything to save his life if it were possible. Can you look me in the eye and tell me at which point my right to live is null and void? And, please explain why.
Please show me the new evidence obtained by the Georgia legislature that proves when life begins. I don’t think that “life” as God created it means that a woman or girl should suffer sexual slavery and then further harm by being forced to carry a child to term – particularly if the pregnancy is a threat to her physical safety, and these circumstances will destroy her emotional well being. We should all be careful about claiming to be God or claiming that God rests only in our view. The spirit of God rests in all girls and women (and men). Existence is not life. If we believe that God’s spirit lives in women then we must fight for their lives as well. Conception itself does not guarantee life. Pregnancy IS a medical condition and even the most healthy pregnancies strain the body of the mother. I don’t believe that the presence of God’s spirit leaves a mother when she becomes pregnant so that her life is subordinate to a potential life. And I will never subscribe to a vision of God that allows woman to suffer a life of despondency because she was raped and became pregnant.
A woman who has had a miscarriage is suffering physical, emotional and psychological trauma. She probably blames herself because most women do. This does not mean she was responsible. Her hormones are imbalanced from the pregnancy and from the loss of the pregnancy. Her mental state is not balanced. To require this woman to register this miscarriage and prove that she didn’t cause it is inhumane and un-Christian. To require a criminal investigation for a natural condition is disgusting. Especially when fully 1-5 pregnancies end in the first trimester – often before a woman even knew she was pregnant. Are you claiming that, due to the biology of our bodies, we are inherently murderers? Is this why your bill contains language that will dissuade hospitals from saving the life of women whose pregnancies are killing them? What is murder is allowing a woman to die because she needs one. What is torture is to allow a woman to be denied an abortion because the fetus is dead or will die at birth. What is unconscionable is degrading the lives of women and girls such that we equate reproductive and gynecological health care with abortion, and decide it is not worth funding. People who have been born have value, and that value is not negated if they are pregnant.
12 comments