Testimonials, Personal Reflections and Theologies

Freedom to Flourish

Rev. Joan Javier-Duval, Minister, The Unitarian Church of Montpelier, VT. Adapted from remarks made at the Vermont Reproductive Freedom Speak Out, May 2019. Shared with permission.

I am here as someone who exists in a body that conceived a pregnancy.

I am here as someone who exists in a body that conceived and, by luck and grace and good fortune, carried a pregnancy to full-term.

I am here as someone who exists in a body that conceived and carried a pregnancy to full-term that was delivered by c-section and that beautiful baby made me a mother.

I am here as someone who exists in a body that conceived and carried another pregnancy.

That pregnancy, though, after eight weeks, by the mysterious workings of the human body, stopped growing. And I did not carry that embryo through its development. 

Instead, by luck and grace of living where I do, I was able to use my own sacred conscience, the consultation of my doctor and spouse, and the stirrings of my own heart to make the painful decision to have that miscarried pregnancy removed from my body.

How grateful I am that I had that choice as heart-breaking as it was to make.

As a Unitarian Universalist minister, my faith loudly declares that life is sacred and that all people - including and especially those whose bodies can carry pregnancies - have sacred and holy agency and sovereignty over their bodies. 

My faith - and I know other faith traditions do as well - loudly declares that all people have the inherent right to make ethical and moral decisions about their bodies - as painful as these decisions are at times. 

I believe and my faith asserts that the direct, personal experience of our own lives is a sacred source of authority in choosing our own path and future.

To use religious dogma that proclaims the sanctity of life as a guise for restricting personal agency and legislating other people’s bodies is bad theology.

It is bad theology to claim a concern for the sanctity of life on the one hand while ignoring children dying at the border, trans women murdered on the streets, the continued defunding of public education, and fossil-fuel-induced ecological catastrophe on the other.

We all want freedom:

The freedom to live and love without fear or condemnation.

The freedom to be well and whole in body, mind, and spirit.

The freedom to flourish in the brief but grace-filled lives we are so blessed to have on this precious Earth.

Our reproductive freedom is a necessary part of the wellness and flourishing that we all desire and that we all deserve.