Testimonials, Personal Reflections and Theologies

Reproductive Justice, Rights, and Health Work Today

Remarks delivered by Rev. Darcy Roake at First Unitarian Society Public Forum on Reproductive Rights - January 26, 2018. Shared with permission.

In thinking about our discussion today, particularly in speaking with a primarily Unitarian Universalist audience – I ended up going back to some of my previous sermons around Reproductive Rights, Health & Justice – a deep and abiding Ministry of mine for several years now. While there were many to choose from – it’s a thing with me - it was a particularly helpful experience for me theologically as a Unitarian Universalist to take a Sermon on Reproductive Justice I wrote two years ago, almost to the day, and recognize the ways in which my understandings of myself and the Reproductive Rights, Health & Justice movements that we UU’s are a part (or not) a part of has evolved. Because a deeply faithful piece that we can bring as religious people to this sacred work is our understanding that our spiritual lives are ever-evolving and new understandings, intellectually, emotionally and physically can and should influence the way we are in the world, how we see issues, how we organize, how we collaborate and when and why we fight – sometimes standing up for justice, and sometimes turning on each other. So I’m going to interrupt my own sermon at times and include some questions I, and in my experience some other UU’s are grappling with – recognizing that I am an expert in my life and experience, not in anyone else’s. And I’m most interested in us having a dialogue afterward – hearing from y’all as well and your experiences of our faithful work in a particularly fraught time.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ...And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

In the beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh was with God, and the Flesh was God....And the Flesh became word and lived among us, and we have seen her glory, the glory as of a parent’s only child, full of grace and truth. From her fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

One of these is not like the other. One is sacred scripture from the Christian tradition. The other a reinterpretation, wholly woman-made. The first is tradition and poetry and patriarchy. The second is audacity (who am I to re-write a sacred text?) AND possibility (I can re-imagine a sacred text). And the second embraces the spirit of what we will be exploring today - the philosophy, theology and pragmatism of Reproductive Justice.

The term Reproductive Justice was coined by women of color, primarily black women, in the early 1990’s to provide a larger framework beyond “choice” – often focused solely on abortion access. As the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade is now in its 37th year we recognize its historic significance to the health and lives of women around this Country. It must be noted, too, that we Unitarian Universalists have a historical piece in this narrative. A group of women in the Dallas Unitarian Church came together to study abortion in the 1970’s and out of those meetings helped bring the Roe V. Wade case to the Supreme Court.

However, after this historic Supreme Court decision “choice” still seemed to be reserved for white, wealthier woman. What “choice” do you have if there is no accessible clinic? What “choice” do you have if your reproductive decision-making is dictated by your dire financial straits rather than what you want or need? What “choice” do you have if you live in a State that was slowly rolling back full healthcare for women and your white women “allies” were ignoring your calls for solidarity. And so women of color, those most deeply impacted by the ways in which racism, classicism, sexism and capitalism prey upon all types of Reproductive Challenges created a Revolutionary new intersectional framework – Reproductive Justice. Reproductive Justice, while wide-ranging, at its core begins with these foundational rights:

1) The right of women to have children.

2) The right of women to not have children and

3) The right of women to raise their children in safe and healthy environments.

As the movement has evolved, under the leadership of women of color, the right of women to health and self-determination regarding their bodies and sexuality, free from oppression and shame, has been added as well. And as a white woman Minister with a son (and another one on the way), I have had my own evolution in understanding Reproductive Justice.

It was only during my pregnancy that my consistent support for the full range of healthcare for women, including abortion, shifted from theoretical and academic to theological and lived. As my body moved and grew and transformed to accommodate my pregnancy I became an even more fierce advocate for women’s decision-making around their healthcare. I could not imagine what it would be like, after experiencing pregnancy, to not have control of my own body and healthcare. Make no mistake a child was growing inside of me AND at no point was it not my body doing that growing. This is what began my journey – starting at 7 months pregnant preaching on the Louisiana State Capitol Steps, with my Planned Parenthood shirt, my stole and my big pregnant belly, in support of Reproductive Choice (boy was I confusing to those Senators!) I was living into – at the very cellular level – my Reproductive journey.

The idea that another person’s reproductive journey might be forced or coerced, particularly by a government that does shockingly little to support families once a child is born, was horrific to me. But that is only half the story. Because the more I became involved in this sacred work as a parent and a person of faith the more I came to meet leaders in the Reproductive Justice movement that were doing the REAL grassroots work to address an entire system that tries to take away women’s voices, agency and rights, rather than only a symptom of such a system, such as a law to restrict abortion access. Reproductive Justice leaders taught me to see with a new lens in each situation I walked into – whether it be offering childcare or child-friendly spaces in meetings or checking my assumptions about how or why people decide to parent or not parent. Reproductive Justice has taught me time and time again about the power and pragmatism of the harder, longer, relationship-based organizing work that most often comes from communities of color most deeply impacted by harmful government policies.

And here is where I interrupt to say that, truly, Reproductive Justice saved my life. Less than six months after I gave this sermon I found myself, on Mother’s Day 2018, bleeding, in enormous pain. Having just taken a test confirming I was pregnant, I was justifiably worried and called the doctor. I was told multiple times - no one could see me, it wasn’t a big deal, I was exaggerating. There was a part of me that simply thought to be quiet – not make a fuss. I had never not been believed around medical issues before as a white, able-bodied person growing up in California. So I had no background to trust my own instincts over medical professionals. But there was also now a part of me informed by the HIVE I was a part of, an 18-month fellowship for Louisiana Reproductive Justice, Rights & Health women leaders. This part of me absorbed the stories I had heard in the HIVE from women, particularly black women, whose pain was not believed. Many of these women spoke of the importance of advocating for yourself, because no one else was going to do it for you within that system. I can pull up the facts around the appalling statistics of black maternal mortality but for now I will say that I believed and trusted black women in their stories and leadership. Knowing that I needed to advocate for myself, in a system that was built on bad Louisiana law and State policy which targets women’s reproductive health services – from abortion access to birth control to much more – saved my life. When I did demand to be seen it was discovered that I had an ectopic pregnancy that had progressed to life-threatening internal bleeding. It was only in having these conversations around the WHOLE of women’s Reproductive Lives that Reproductive Justice entails – rather than the choice only as the central tenet of the movement – that saved my life.

Reproductive Justice asks us to think holistically and theologically and morally. To see women, and men and individuals who identify as both or beyond gender binaries, in their fullness and complicated choices, restrictions, joys and sorrows; to re-imagine what it is to “birth” something or someone into this world and to never forget our inherent worth and dignity as well as the power and need for community, biological and chosen. Reproductive Justice, at its core calls us to the simplest and yet seemingly most difficult task – seeing each other, really and truly, and being asked to be seen in all our complexity.

And this too is where our Unitarian Universalist theology can be a place of faithful connection in the movement. Our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of each individual directly connects to our seventh – the interconnected web of which we are all a part. Our individual selves, whether we like it or not, are interconnected, in relationships, policy, the very survival of our planet. That connection can be symbiotic and beautiful OR we, as a faith community, can sometimes do damage when we center our needs and our needs alone within a larger community or movement context. In the last several years, I have witnessed women of color reproductive justice leaders dismissed by well-meaning, mainly white UU’s. For example, often in discussion spaces including Reproductive Justice, Rights & Health leaders, abortion cases in the Supreme Court become the only focus for our movement together – and those RJ leaders who bring up other issues – from comprehensive sex education, to supporting individuals who are parenting – are told that their advocacy is not important or urgent enough. Now let me say – OF course these abortion cases are important – I am happy to talk more in-depth about the Louisiana case – June v. McGee – that will be coming before the Supreme Court in June that may well put the Roe v. Wade decision at risk; keeping in mind that abortion care has always been more accessible in states like California and New York than Louisiana where abortion rights have already been eroded. BUT if we look at our faithful advocacy through the organizing lens of Reproductive Justice – interconnected with Immigrant Justice, Environmental Justice, Racial Justice, and so much more – then there is no real end point. Where the Supreme Court rules and we say – ok, all fixed or we lost everything! Our UU commitment to inherent worth and dignity of all people, in spaces around Reproductive Justice, whether in advocacy for abortion rights or combatting trans-phobia or reducing maternal mortality, is ongoing. Which may at first may seem exhausting. But it’s also life-giving. Because amidst all the ways that the choice movement may think like it’s “losing”; Reproductive Justice engages our full selves to find ways we are becoming more life-affirming each day – to ourselves, to our communities, to our partnerships - from HIV advocacy to comprehensive sex-ed to increased attention to rising maternal mortality rates. Again, our theology tells us that we are a faith that engages in the lifelong work of spiritual and moral growth – there is no endpoint. Yet we live and learn, hopefully sometimes joyfully, in the moment too. Reproductive Justice work encompasses that celebration and lifelong work as a framework for our lives. We are never done. We defy a patriarchal culture by our learning, our joy, our deeper and more authentic connection to and support for the work of Reproductive Justice movements and leaders.

In John Chapter 1 the Word is the message of salvation through the person of Jesus – the Word made flesh. As Unitarian Universalists, the person of Jesus is what calls to us – his model and example rather than the Word of Christian salvation. The Jesus with organs and flesh and bones lived in poverty, he hung out with people of all economic means, of all races and genders and life circumstances. The Jesus in the flesh was radical and called for a re-ordering of society wherein “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the poor, the peacemakers, the persecuted” will lead. When the “Word” was made flesh in Jesus, it could not be dictated or controlled. After Jesus physical death, the end of his flesh, the “Word” - Christianity in the sense we know today - grew in political and social power. In the growth of that particular type of power, that Word, without the physical reminder of how we live and love and learn in our flesh, our physical bodies, mainline Christianity ignored, dismissed and then targeted the bodies of those most affected by society’s inequities. And though we as UU’s may not ascribe to the values of the modern Christian right, who have made legislating women’s bodies a theological and organizing principle above all else, we are still theological cousins. We are still a most American faith, tangled with a deep Puritanism, wherein our bodies are often demonized as the site of original sin instead of heralded as the site of original birth.

And so how do we turn the Word back to the flesh? Or, perhaps more importantly, how do we follow the lead of Reproductive Justice leaders when they ask that the flesh – our very lived experiences – become the Word? That our narratives as human beings in all our diversity be seen and heard. That the academic and theoretical be made real – in our lives, in our laws, in our organizing and in our faith? When we have the right to lead our lives and move in our bodies without fear – our flesh becomes word. In Reproductive Justice we not only push back but also build when lawmakers attempt to erase the real people behind the inhumane policy. Laws that willfully ignore the very real family that will be torn apart if a father is deported under draconian immigration policy. That punish women for taking agency in their lives by restricting healthcare options. That disregard the poor through unjust tax laws. So Reproductive Justice has taught me to not only trust my own experience but to also trust the leadership of those most impacted, often women of color, whose insight about the ways in which our culture minimizes and targets people runs far deeper than my own. Reproductive Justice asks us to consider how our bodies might speak and how we might listen to and follow the lead of others. As the poet Rayna Momen writes of lawmakers divorcing person from policy - “If my body could speak, it would say; who do you think you are?; to fondle the folds of my flesh with your articles; to penetrate my right with the stroke of your pen.”

Reproductive Justice asks us to speak our truths, which I have been doing here today, and to recognize that our lived experience is not the only and final truth. That your very self, your very flesh, is part of a physical community of bodies that live in this world with different experiences, understandings and priorities. And if we can consistently work to expand our understandings of how racism, classism and sexism all work to stifle our spirits and our minds, then perhaps we, as Unitarian Universalists, might do the sacred work of learning, advocating, and becoming more deeply enmeshed with both the word AND the Flesh.

OK, Reverend Darcy, you say. That’s all well and good but, say, for example, I’m a man in my 70’s – what does this have to do with me? I’m all for it but I’m just going to take a few minutes and play candy crush on my phone. And to this I say – as human beings and as Unitarian Universalists this has EVERYTHING to do with you. One of the reasons that Reproductive Justice resonates is that it is firmly centered in the leadership and experience of women of color, who as a group are most disproportionately affected by horrific policy outcomes AND, in doing so, it provides the foundation for one of the most inclusive justice-centered movements. As Loretta Ross, one of the founders of the Reproductive Justice movement writes in her work “Reproductive Justice: An Introduction”, RJ “was founded by and is led by women of color...This does not signify that reproductive justice is a concept and a movement exclusively for persons of color. On the contrary, reproductive justice expresses the requirements that all persons have when they strive to achieve sexual and reproductive health, safety, and dignity for themselves and their communities. Pressed by historical oppressions and animated by extraordinary creativity and determination, women of color have been the pioneers..These pioneers & their collective activity represent a model and a roadmap for us all.”

In worship, education and advocacy how might we, and how do we already as Unitarian Universalists, follow that roadmap of Reproductive Justice, live into our flesh made word? For a recent example - arising out of my relationships with HIVE leaders, I have been supporting their work in reaching out to faith communities across Louisiana as they advocate for beyond abstinence-only education. And, amazingly, a very conservative Northern Louisiana area’s school system parish has taken up the mantle of offering medically accurate sexual education – a huge step that also explodes some of our myths around the intractability of issues of some of the issues of Reproductive Health in certain communities. However, it wasn’t all-encompassing. Deemed “too controversial” homosexuality and trans identities are virtually ignored in the curriculum they chose. A huge issue for a State where the suicide rate for homosexual and trans youth is so high. So, coming together with even more partners we decided to have conversations about offering the LGBTQ-affirming Our Whole Lives, our UU comprehensive sexuality education curriculum, to the larger New Orleans Community as a first step. Part of that work included brainstorming with my partners in the project – women of color living and working in communities across New Orleans - around how to meaningfully find ways to make the curriculum more accessible, culturally relevant and out of the UU Church’s hands into the hands of the Communities that find it useful. That’s a longer process that means checking my own suppositions, thinking through a lot of factors and staying in relationship. And it has been a process that has brought us “OWL-out” (i.e. outside exclusively UU Communities) possibilities at the Mayor’s Office, charter schools, juvenile detention facilities, libraries, summer camps and more. There was no roadmap to this work – just a willingness to stay walking towards a shared goal, even when it veered or got rocky.

This sacred work isn’t easy. It asks us to partake in a cultural, theological, and political shift from the status quo. It asks us to not only question our current systems but to actively work against them to build something holistic, healthy and divine. We are quite literally re-writing scripture – from the Word being made flesh to making the flesh word. Doing the real RJ work of moving us all toward a world that values the right for ALL to have children, to not have children, to raise the children we do have in safe and healthy environments and to value health and self-determination. We may call it the building of a beloved community or we may, as Sister Joan Chittister writes, call it a moral world – “one whose societies realize that none of us can manage alone, without a lift up along the way, without the help of those who really believe that my life is as important as their own.”

A RJ-centered world is possible – I have seen it, in smallest of glimpses. I’ve seen it in the organizing of the Congress of Day Laborers – an immigrant rights groups led by directly impacted folks in New Orleans, who create child-friendly spaces in their meetings so that all voices can be heard. I have seen it at Women with A Vision in New Orleans, that makes connections in the RJ movement between sex workers rights, the fight for a fair wage, HIV advocacy and more. I have seen it in the work of the leaders in my HIVE fellowship – from Lift LA advocating to stop the shackling of pregnant woman in LA prisons during birth to Sista Midwife, a network of black doulas, centering their community’s birth needs. And to this list I will add another...

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a Compassionate Faith Training, at the very same Dallas Unitarian Church where the seeds of the Roe vs Wade Court case were planted. In this training I learned as a clergy person, how I can be present, truly see and hear people, as they navigate Reproductive challenges in their lives – infertility, abortion, adoption, stillbirth and more. Due to my outspoken support of Reproductive Justice as well as my role on the Planned Parenthood Clergy Advocacy Board, I am often a pastoral presence, a connector to resources, even a confessor for Clergy who support RJ but feel they cannot be public about it. But what was spoken previously in hushed tones should now be shouted. Several years ago I made clear to my Congregation that whatever challenges, joys or sorrow that they brought to me - I would hear them, see them, support them. With resources, with compassion and with love. I pledged to live out our UU theology and the holistic tenets of Reproductive Justice. In looking back at this pledge - I don’t do it perfectly but I try as best I can.

And we, all of us, can take what has been unspoken and speak it – our truths, our bodies, our experience. And in speaking may we be seen– as whole, as human, as living into our skin and body and tendons and heart. Finally, in this may we too see others - open ourselves to perspectives and sacred work that we never thought possible. Because whether any of us birth children or not – we can all birth something greater than ourselves into existence. So let us go forth and make the Flesh Word.

So thus ends my talk but not our discussion. Because I’m interested in what pulls you into this sacred work, what resonates with you, what if anything is challenging. I’m wondering if we might take a couple of minutes to turn to your neighbor to talk about where you are in your journey with Reproductive Rights, Health & Justice Advocacy. What feels particularly difficult at this moment in time and also, where you see some hope, some moments of connection. Then perhaps we can open up the conversation from there...