I am a pastor and I believe in abortion access. I believe in supporting the right to bodily and medical autonomy.
I believe that the issue of abortion is profoundly complicated and ultimately it is a decision to be handled between doctors and patients, not the government. I believe LGBTQ folks need to understand this issue far better than many of us currently do.
I know that there are folks – possibly even folks who attend my church – who will read this and be upset that I am speaking out about this issue. But those of us who support access to abortion need to speak out.
In the LGBTQ community, we already know that silence is deadly. We need to be educated about abortion. We need to use real words, not euphemisms. In the LGBTQ community, we need to understand that reproductive freedom is an LGBTQ issue, and the loss of abortion access is the loss of LGBTQ rights.
Personally, I have provided care and support for dear friends before, during and after their abortions. As a pastor, I have offered spiritual care for people making decisions about abortion and I continued providing care long after those decisions were made.
As a father of two young adults, I hope and pray that my children will never be in a situation where they must make the painful decision to terminate a pregnancy. But if ever they do need to make that choice, I want abortion to be safe and legal. I want my friends, my congregants and my children to know that I support their decisions.
If you care about LGBTQ people, if you care about economic justice, if you care about racial justice, then you already care about Roe v. Wade. I understand that there are many people in the LGBTQ community and who are against abortion access, even some who I know and love, but I believe in many instances they aren’t seeing this issue in its full complexity and depth.
This is beyond an “agree to disagree” issue or a conversation that we can ignore because so many of us aren’t facing the possibility of an unwanted or unviable pregnancy.
Abortion is far more common than many people realize. In fact, if you have posted on social media about this issue – whether in support of or in opposition to the right to choose – it has been seen by friends who have had abortions, whether you know that about them or not. The complicated grief around this topic is enormous and this is an issue that isn’t just fodder for academic debate.
It’s important to care about abortion access, even if it feels like it doesn’t impact us directly. This is a solidarity issue, and we are in a time that calls for solidarity. The potential overturning of Roe v. Wade calls into question the right to privacy, which was affirmed with Roe v. Wade, and is the underpinning of many of the basic rights we hold dear.
It wasn’t that long ago that gay sex was illegal in some parts of this country, and it is within the realm of possibility that we could end up back where we were before the Lawrence v. Texas 2003 ruling.
We are also now seeing a surge in the regulation of bodies and limits on medical autonomy. Trans young people are being limited in their access to medical care in multiple states. In the midst of this, if you believe that marriage equality is safe, I have some bad news for you. Overturning Roe v. Wade could possibly open the door for challenges to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling as well.
This is also a racial justice issue. The most recent CDC data on abortion shows that Black and Hispanic women have had the highest rates of abortion and white women have had the lowest. I can’t help but wonder if the regulating of Black and Brown bodies plays into this, even if it is an unconscious bias.
This is an economic justice issue. If abortion access is no longer federally protected and is instead handled on a state-by-state basis, middle class and wealthy people in states where abortion is banned in this country will have the ability to travel to places where they have access to abortion.
Poor people will not have that access. As we know from history, banning abortion does not stop abortion, it only stops safe abortion and quality medical care. Abortions will continue to happen in places where they are made illegal, and the results will be deadly for those who cannot afford to travel to places where there can safely access abortions.
People have asked me, as a pastor, how can I believe in abortion. I believe in it because I believe in healthcare access. I believe in the right to privacy. I believe in abortion because I believe in LGBTQ rights and women’s rights, and I believe in economic and racial justice.
I believe that a pregnant person knows more about their own body and needs than I do. I believe that, overall, the medical decisions of other people aren’t really my business. But it is the business of all of us to protect people’s basic rights to make informed decisions about their own bodies and healthcare.
Rev. Jakob Hero-Shaw is the Senior Pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Tampa, MCCTampa.com. He is a proud husband and father in a family that was legalized through marriage equality and adoption.
