Sermon

Safer

by the Rev. Christian Schmidt, shared with permission

She had been in an abusive relationship for some time. She had no money, no transportation, no job and no place to turn. 

But it wasn’t until she realized she was pregnant, with her abusive boyfriend’s child, that she realized she couldn’t stay there any longer. She didn’t really have anywhere to go, certainly didn’t have any way to support herself or the fetus growing inside her. And so, she made an incredibly difficult decision, one no one ever wants to have to make. She went to a nearby clinic and had an abortion.

This was the story we heard, several years ago, the congregation I then served in New Jersey. The clinic that young woman went to was across the street from the church.

She told her story as part of an event, held at that UU church, honoring the anniversary and the legacy of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that said all people should have access to safe, legal abortion. And also, that woman, a bit less young these days, works at that clinic helping others.

(And even four decades after that court decision, let me tell you something: that event at our church – it was not broadly advertised, lest people come to protest. We had security on site, lest someone come to do more than just protest. Our church, right next to the parsonage where our family lived at the time, volunteered its building even knowing the dangers.)

It’s not safe.

Now today, I need your help. Between my rage at this and events in our world, and pretty debilitating allergies at the moment, I think I need y’all to get through this. You ready? There are just two things I need you to remember from this sermon.

Can we practice. I’ll say the first, you say it back: Trust people! And support people!

I had planned on preaching to you today about safety, about how we try to keep people safe here at UUCB, about how safety is impossible in an unsafe world, but that we can work to make things safer. Not totally safe, but safer.

I had planned to talk to you about how we work to make sure no one is abused here: not physically, sexually, emotionally or otherwise, how we work to have a loving supportive community where we call each other out when we’re not acting right and then we do better. That we not only have intentions, but also policies and structures to make this real. In other words, we trust people – can you say it again for me? And support people.

I wanted to talk about Our Whole Lives, the sexuality education program our association created with our friends the United Church of Christ, we teach our children the real names of their body parts. I was moved by the Personal Theology lecture this morning by Dr. Victoria Lee, who urged us all to talk more about sex and sexuality.

Because it is safer, it is better, it is holy, to tell the truth. So keep calling it what you will, but let your children know the truth: it’s a penis, it’s a vulva, they’re labia, it’s a scrotum. Talk about sex -- and yes, in safer, age-appropriate ways. We know that telling our children, teaching our children, teaching ourselves … the truth, or at the very least the facts, is crucial to helping them stay safer, to living healthy and meaningful lives.

We trust people – trust people – to make good decisions about their own lives – and support people –– we give them the tools to help make those good decisions.

I wanted to talk about being safer. Well, friends, be careful what you wish for. Because as if on cue, legislatures across America picked this week to try to compete to see who can make the most punitive, oppressive, wanna-be abortion bans. States mostly in the South, though let’s not kid ourselves, this ain’t just a Southern issue. Abortion bans, now coming to a state near you.

Let me be clear: abortion bans, in name or in fact, make people less safe. Abortion bans don’t stop abortions; they stop safe, legal abortions. They push pregnant people into ever more desperate circumstances and decisions. They lead to the back alley, to horrors that most of us only have to read about; because, since 1973, abortion, safe, legal abortion has been more or less available. I say more or less because you know the stories: My home state of Texas does it’s damn best to make sure there’s no way to actually get a legal abortion even if it’s technically your right to do so.

And because we do things like teach about healthy sexuality, about our bodies, about facts and responsibilities and health, I can say this: My opinion does not belong in your vagina. Or uterus, womb, Fallopian tube, or ovaries. Your opinion belongs there. And, only in their role as a medical professional, the opinion of your doctor.

It’s become cliche, but no less disturbing, that the people most obsessed with regulating women’s bodies are men. Has this ever not been the case? The disdain that a cabal of elected legislators in some states have for people – and let’s be real, it’s especially for the bodies of women, and poor and black and brown and queer folk. If Alabama and Mississippi weren’t among the worst states in the nation in education, healthcare, maternal death rates, poverty, and hunger, it might be more believable when the supporters of this abortion ban say they value life. If they weren’t killing people through state-sanctioned executions, it might be credible. But we know that isn’t true. Their actions show us – if they cared about life, they would be passing real laws, not these pretend bans designed only to provoke a response.

The utter lack of trust, of belief, of goodwill involved in these bans sickens me. Have elected leaders ever shown such contempt for the people they are sworn to represent?

The lack of trust. What the hell?

This is a central tenet of Unitarian Universalism – maybe the central tenet. We Trust People – trust people – and support people. In theological circles I’ve often heard a criticism of UUs – if you don’t (all) believe in God, or even agree if God exists, if you’re following different wisdom, if some of you are Buddhists or atheists or Jews or not too much in particular, how do you do anything? How do you know anything? How do you agree on anything?!?

First of all, We have a lot of beliefs. And here might be the most important. We believe in people. Not in their goodness – because spirit knows that’s not always true – and not in their good intentions, much less their actions, but in their potential. We trust people , that they have enormous potential for good or bad, that we can make a huge difference in the world and for ourselves and for one another. And, because we know that people screw up – just look at the environment, or at nuclear war, or at the results of certain elections I won’t name right now! – we know that people need a lot of help. A lot. And so, yes, we trust people, and support people. And it’s that support thing. It’s the safety policy to make sure we make things safer – not safe, perhaps, but as close as we can get to that. It’s not merely making sure that safe and legal abortion is accessible, but working to make sure that we have done all we can to make abortions rarer and rarer, and that we have supported pregnant people and their families in whatever choice they make.

We aim to make people safe here, or at least safer. Not always comfortable, because real spiritual exploration and growth is not a comfortable endeavor.

Life is not a safe endeavor. There are dangers, challenges, and risks. But here’s the thing: I want you to be able to take risks, to make decisions about how much danger you are personally willing to engage. It’s not my decision to make for you, even if it is my calling and vocation to urge you to think about it.

So instead, I trust people , and I trust you. I support people. We need this, perhaps more than ever.

I don’t see a safe world coming to light soon. Not with immigrants fleeing death and poverty and destruction for the opportunities of a new land, only to have that place tear them from their babies, throw them in cages, and leave them to rot.

We know that Safety isn’t real. But it has to be safer than this, friends. It has to be.

I struggle to look for the hope in this challenging time. It’s perhaps some tiny comfort to know that none of these bans is likely to take effect – they’re not even really designed to, they’re just supposed to provoke the Supreme Court to take up a case that might overturn Roe v. Wade and thus end the right to legal abortion. None of that is certain.

I’m done waiting for my government, for the next election, for the Supreme Court to hold the line. I’m already inspired by the work of ordinary people, activists, concerned citizens, neighbors, across the South and across the country. The Yellowhammer project, the ACLU, the countless and so rarely-named doctors and social workers and just caring people who have helped 10s of millions of people access their right to safe, legal abortion.

I’m reminded of the stories my mother told me, about those underground networks who helped women get safe abortions before Roe v. Wade – about the Jane Collective, about coded language like being a “friend of Jane.” Our own ministerial colleagues, Unitarian Universalist and from other denominations, helped young women connect to friendly doctors.

This is not a drill. The 1950s and 1960s are back, and I don’t mean the good parts. Friends, get involved. Speak out. March in the streets. Write your legislator. Vote. Vote. Vote.

But most of all, and say it with me one more time. Trust people. Support people.