On Being Number Fifty-One

Recalling my growing-up years in Baltimore, I can’t ever remember hearing the subject of abortion talked about in my home. We talked about a lot of subjects, and I overheard more conversations than my parents were aware of, but abortion was not mentioned.

 Fishing around in my tangled memory—that place where events and sequences of events are often as jumbled as a pile of neatly stacked papers blown hither and yon by a fierce wind—I can only recall the words “back-alley abortion.”

 There was an ally behind 5436 Jonquil Avenue, but the only thing I knew that went on back there was the movement of garbage trucks and the noise of kids emerging from their backyards to disappear into the adjacent woods.

 I don’t know if girls in those days knew more than I did about this subterranean subject (I suspect they did), but the connection between sex and babies was far from obvious to me. That connection would have to wait for a less hormonally intense moment for me to recognize the connection between sexuality and creation.

Youthfully obsessed by the mysterious opposite sex, boy-talk was about “babes” not babies. Talk-among-boys, in those days, was obsessively focused on what went into a girl, not what went on inside of her, or what was capable of coming out of her—a baby.

Stuck in my mind like a fossil in limestone, however, is a recollection of a newspaper story (I suspect in the sensationalist Hearst Baltimore News American). The details of the story have rolled out to sea like a wave that’s had its moment of shoreline glory, but I do remember it involved a doctor sentenced to prison for performing an abortion.

Youthful moral outrage made it easy to pass judgment on any woman who would go to the “back alley” to prevent a birth, and condemn a doctor who was labeled as an “abortionist.”

The Bible talks about the refiner’s fire, God’s own blaze, capable of burning away the dross—the fluff and rubbish—so that gold can emerge from the molten mass. In like manner, God has a way of tempering human beings in the fire of life so that we become richer, more insightful and wiser.

Forty years of ordained ministry have been the refiner’s fire that has burned away and tempered any easy judgments once made by me around the subject of abortion. It has been women who have come into my life over the years who have refined and tempered me. 

In April of 1971, I was invited to fly to Charleston to attend a meeting of about a dozen clergy from a variety of denominations around West Virginia. The purpose of the gathering was to meet the Reverend Howard Moody from Judson Memorial Church in New York City. Moody was the chairman of the Clergy Consultation Service, an organization of Christian ministers and Jewish rabbis that assisted pregnant women considering abortion as an option.

West Virginia Clergy Consultation Service was formed that day, with clergy serving as contact persons in fifteen areas of the State for women seeking consultation and abortion assistance.

Over the next few months the number of clergy grew to 23. Each was given a number. My number was 51. When a woman came to see me seeking an abortion, I would refer her to a not-for-profit facility in New York City—Women’s Services—where she could get a legal abortion. (This was prior to Roe v. Wade and at a time when a legal abortion was available in New York).

In talking with women in those days, I made sure they had considered and understood all options. If they said they wanted help with adoption or pastoral counseling around delivering and keeping the child, I was able to refer them to agencies other than Women’s Services. If not, they left my office with directions to New York, a list of places to say, and a full set of information forms which included the number 51.

In those days it was illegal in West Virginia for a doctor to render abortion services at any time unless it was to save the woman’s life. In all cases of rape, incest, genetic defects, mental illness, or mental retardation, abortion was illegal.

Approximately 25% of all pregnancies were unwanted. Only 3 ½ % of West Virginia’s indigent women received any contraceptive services.

What motivated me to add number 51 to my list of numbers?

First: Because of what I had learned from women caught in the trap of an unwanted pregnancy, I knew that the decision to abort, no matter how painful, was the woman’s decision to make. It was also a matter of privacy—a privacy shared only with a doctor, and those with whom she cared to draw into her circle of decision and support. In my heart, I knew that a woman could not relinquish or have taken from her the option of abortion.

Second: Since abortion would take place in this world no matter what anyone said, it was the job of the state to protect that right, and to protect the life of the woman. What I knew, through parish experience, was that women with money and connections could get a quiet and safe abortion. It was never called an abortion; it was a D&C (dilation and curettage). Poor women were denied that option.

Third: One might argue over when life begins, but I could not equate the life of the fetus equally with the life of the woman. Having seen religious conviction which dictated taking the life of the mother over the life of the child in a delivery, when such a decision had to be made, I chose to stand with the woman as she sought safe, legal and responsible options to childbirth.

Fourth, women were denied information not only about their own bodies, but they were also denied birth control information and education and, therefore, had to bear the consequences of an unintended pregnancy. This was not only unfair, it was clear to me that it was rooted in a sexism that had roots in law, medicine and religion.

Finally, the Gospel message of Jesus was convincingly clear to me. Jesus wept over the people of Jerusalem. Life there was not as it was intended by God. Sin was clearly reflected in the lives of the people, in the way they lived at one another’s expense. Time and time again, Jesus stood with, and reached out to, people trapped with no choices about their own health. On countless occasions he shocked people by reaching out to women living under the domination of male structures. For me, that was justification enough to stand with women as they chose, for numerous reasons, not to bring an unwanted child into the world.

After the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down by the Supreme Court, I was able to mothball number 51—store it away in a file now turned yellow with age.

Just recently, I dug that file out and decided to update it. Once again, people of faith will have to address the Religious Right’s efforts to unite the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in an assault on women’s reproductive rights.
The Refiner’s Fire & The Women In Charleston
  In 1974 I left Martinsburg and came south to Charleston to become the minister in charge of St. John’s Church located one block from First Presbyterian Church, the site of the 1971 meeting with Howard Moody and the formation of the West Virginia Clergy Consultation Service.

St. John’s was to be another place where the refiner’s fire would blaze. Immediately, upon my arrival, another remarkable woman greeted me. Her name was Jane McCabe. She was on my doorstep requesting church office space for a Planned Parenthood sponsored effort to begin a women’s health center.

Given an office down the hall from my office, a board was formed made up of dedicated women, some from St. John’s, and a director of the project was hired. What these women understood was that health care for women had had a long history of being crafted by men, and for male convenience. Historically, little attention had been directed toward problems women faced, particularly in the area of gynecology and obstetrics. 

A good example of what I am talking about can be seen in comments made by Horatio Storer, a nineteenth century Harvard professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and influential anti-abortion writer and spokesperson. Storer acknowledged that men had certain justifiable sexual urges. His counsel to them was to be benevolent to women by tempering male sexual “rights” lest the women in their lives seek abortions because of too frequent pregnancies.

Storer’s words give credence to the patronizing and sexist attitudes that shaped medicine in the early years of our history as a nation. “I am no advocate for unwomanly women,” he wrote. “I would not transplant them, from their proper and God-given sphere, to the pulpit, the forum, or the cares of state, nor would I repeat the experiment, so patiently tried by myself, and at last so emphatically condemned—of females attempting the practice of the medical profession.”

The American Medical Association, greatly influenced by Horatio Storer, was an early-on opponent of abortion, and, in fact, crafted their campaign against a woman’s right to abortion in order to build their own credibility as a profession. Women, treated as if they were children, were denied basic human rights, the most important right of all being the right to make decisions about their own bodies.

While the women planned the opening of what would in1976 become the Women’s Health Center, yours truly had an experience not covered in seminary preaching classes.

It seems that a Charleston man, in the tradition of Horatio Storer, and prefiguring Randall Terry and Religious Right pro-life activists, discovered what was taking place down the hall from my office. When he also discovered that I was scheduled to be the guest preacher in his church, Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, located right across the street from St. John’s, he announced in a newspaper article that he would bodily remove me from the pulpit.

The fresh air of Vatican II still present, the Roman Catholic Bishop of West Virginia refused to withdraw the invitation to preach. (I doubt, given the present posture of Rome, that permission would be granted today.) And true to his promise, I was pulled from the pulpit and escorted out of the church by this zealous opponent of abortion. Arrested outside the church (charges later were dropped), I left this man’s clutches and finish my sermon inside Sacred Heart.

A friend later named this event the “Sacred Heart attack.”

Today I see the Women’s Health Center still serving women with a broad range of affordable, high-quality reproductive health services. Offering wellness education, Women’s Health Center continues to meet the special needs of women and teenage girls, regardless of their income, by providing a comprehensive system of health care. Most importantly, this center continues to be an advocate for a woman’s reproductive freedom. 

Roe v. Wade could well be overturned by upcoming Supreme Court appointments. Gains made in the area of women’s reproductive rights could be obliterated. Given that imminent possibility, it is imperative for people of faith, like those women who met me in 1974, to meet this threat and join with those organizing to keep reproductive freedom, and the privacy women need when making reproductive decisions.

Here in West Virginia, I have become a part of an organization just formed—Clergy & Laity: Pro-Faith, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice. We have already developed a mission statement, publicly announced our presence, joined with other active pro-choice organizations, engaged state legislators regarding proposed legislation, and recruited over 300 people of faith from across West Virginia.

The Refiner’s Fire & Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun

I’ve just finished a most engaging and important new book, Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey. It is written by Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times.

Greenhouse was the first reporter given access to the huge collection of Justice Blackmun’s papers. Blackmun kept extensive notes throughout his life, and they help make this a most enjoyable and informative read for many reasons.

On a personal level, the book documents Blackmun’s long friendship with Warren Burger. Growing up together in Minnesota, their close relationship as young men (they claimed the baseball team name—the “Minnesota Twins”) and later as justices in the Supreme Court, bound them together as soul-brothers even though they differed in personality traits and various opinions.

Appointed by President Nixon as a conservative judge, Blackmun was destined for the refiner’s fire. Over his 24 year tenure on the Supreme Court, Blackmun participated in thousands of cases and wrote numerous opinions. His positions on the death penalty over the years are a study in themselves. During his tenure on the Court, he moved from the position that the death penalty could be applied fairly, to a position where he wrote, “I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.”

But it was the Roe v. Wade decision that finally defined Blackmun in the public eye. Writing the majority opinion for Roe v. Wade, Blackmun held firm to the belief that abortion was a matter of a woman’s health and should be a matter of privacy between a woman and her doctor. Before he died, the refiner’s fire once again reshaped his view. He came to see that abortion was even more than a doctor-patient issue, it was a women’s right’s issue.

Justice Blackmun was astounded by the hatred unleashed on him by pro-life advocates. One note said they wished his Mom had had an abortion. Another said, “I hope it is all of your heirs that get aborted.” He was also affected by the loss of his friendship with Warren Burger. As Blackmun made changes in his views, and Burger’s lack of leadership led to chaos on the Supreme Court, their lifelong friendship came to an end.

As early as 1989, Blackmun anticipated the pro-life threats to Roe v. Wade and right-to-choice for women. He wrote: “I fear for the future. I fear for the liberty and the equality of the millions of women who have lived and come of age in the16 years since Roe was decided.” I share that fear 32 years after Roe v. Wade.

The best testimony to the power of the refiner’s fire which burns dross so as to produce gold, can be seen in Justice Blackmun’s remarkable life. A portion of the Memorial to Harry A. Blackmun delivered by the Supreme Court after his death sums it up: “If some men are old at a younger age than others, Justice Blackmun remained young to an older age, retaining until he died the intellectual curiosity, passion for hard work, and openness to new ideas and people that had been the hallmark of his life.”  
 

Nations will hammer swords into plows, their spears into sickles, there shall be no more training for war. Each person will sit under his or her fig tree in peace.
Micah 4:3 - 4

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