Before going any further, I want to offer my deepest gratitude to Carolyn, Hathaway, Dana, and Bill for contributing to this service today, sharing a bit of your story as part of this wider story of Reproductive Justice.

In preparation for this service, I have been most blown away by the stories, of real people acting bravely and insisting on caring for their communities, their families, and for themselves in the face of real barriers. We’ve heard from Carolyn and Bill this morning about the origins of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, beginning as the Clergy Consultation Services, a group of religious professionals building a network to help people in need to access abortions.

And have you heard about a group from the pre-Roe era called the Jane Collective, who went as far as training up a cohort of women to perform safer abortions in an attempt to prevent further death from self-managed abortions or at the hands of so-called “doctors” with bad track records?

And then there are the stories of people receiving abortions in order to cut ties with abusive partners, in order to better give of themselves to the children they do have, and in order to offer their families dignity when a very wanted pregnancy will not be able to result in a living, thriving child. These are stories of people making decisions about their reproductive lives as an act of commitment to, and faith in their future, a future where they and their families can flourish. These stories are humbling, and they are abundant.

It is these stories that have brought me here today, and have taught me that we all have stories to tell about our reproductive lives. We must talk about legal abortion and access to reproductive healthcare because they are facing tangible threats in our society, and have been for years now.

But reproductive justice is more, too! Reproductive Justice asserts that human agency must be treated as sacred, as an inalienable right, especially when it comes to choices about our own bodies, and how we create our families.

And it acknowledges that to assert our individual agency, is always happening within the context of our circumstances, within webs of relationships. To see Reproductive Justice at work in the world is healthcare access, yes, and it is to work on improving those circumstances, strengthening those relationships.

Because I am a millennial, who has benefitted from the privileges of class and sexuality education, and wonderful parents, I have grown up in a world where I have never had to worry much about accessing the reproductive care I’ve needed. I trusted my parents enough to help me access contraception when I was ready for it. I’ve trusted myself and my doctors to have all the information needed to make these decisions.

When I was living in Asheville, NC for college, and I didn’t have my own car to take me to my OBGYN office to get an IUD, my mom drove the four hours out to accompany me to the appointment.

And, in Boston, when I had a reproductive health scare that my regular doctor couldn’t diagnose, and I couldn’t afford any of the specialists they recommended, I knew I could go to Planned Parenthood. After passing through protestors and security guards, after spending hours in the waiting room, the clinicians there helped me, and with the utmost kindness.

But I’ve always known I got lucky. Even though I live in a world made better by generations of reproductive rights activists before me, we have a long way to go. Legality does not equal access. So there have also been times in my life of rallying in front of our nation’s Capitol, of late-night phone banks with pizza at Planned Parenthood.

And, I have been lucky enough to go through Our Whole Lives (or OWL), the UU sexuality education curriculum. Because of what OWL taught me, there have been years of accompanying my friends as they’ve made beautiful and brave sexual and reproductive decisions.

We all have stories to tell about our reproductive lives, and in sharing our stories, and listening to those of others, we are reminded of how interconnected we are.

When we can be humbled by another person’s vulnerability, by their bravery, by the way they come to know and trust their intuition, we can begin to see how no policymaker can be a replacement for someone’s conscience.

When we see pieces of ourselves in another, compassion softens us, guides us. May we work to build a world where our culture and our policies embody this compassion.

Humility and compassion. This is the title of my homily today because I believe these are the qualities of the spirit that the movement toward Reproductive Justice is asking us to cultivate. As people of faith, we must get clear on what our faith, in particular, is asking of us.

Though it may be tempting, we are not here to build our political platforms, roll out the statistics that will lead us to objective truth, to explain the medical facts of the situation, or build our best constitutional law arguments in the name of reproductive rights.

And, we are not even here just to be a counterbalance to all of the voices that claim religious authority to diminish reproductive rights in this country. This is part of it, but there is more.

We are here, to connect with each other and that Spirit of life that stirs within and among us in each new moment. To discern our truths with humility and compassion, listen to the truths of others, and move forward into a shared Beloved Community, made real in the world.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have a theology to articulate, good news to share that as humans we have worth and dignity, and are part of one another, and are loved. We dream of a world that honors these truths.

The Reverend Rob Keithan, a former intern minister here at First Unitarian and leader in the faith-based reproductive justice movement, has spoken about this too. He writes:

“What we have to offer is a theology of pluralism, a theology of love, a theology of liberation. Our theology says that all people have value and should be able to make decisions about what happens to their bodies. Our theology says that bodies are good, that knowledge is good, that sexuality is good. Our theology says that there is strength and beauty in imperfection; that diversity is a blessing, a part of God’s plan, even.”

This is what Carolyn was speaking about when she told us about the power of the Clergy Consultation Services, providing her a safe space to go to access abortion care, to support her later work of opening reproductive care clinics. Religious communities can speak to the moral grounding of this movement.

And, as Hathaway talked about with her experiences in OWL, religious communities can shape the way we talk about sex and sexuality, can teach us to trust one another to make good decisions for our bodies.

Our Unitarian Universalist living tradition grounds us in this way. Our eight principles call us as individuals to know our value, seek truth and meaning, practice democracy, justice, compassion, celebrate our interconnectedness, and work against oppression.

Reproductive Justice, too: we want to trust each other to practice bodily autonomy, and to trust our communities to affirm this, and provide the care that we need.

If someone asks you what your faith has to say about reproductive justice, I hope you will be ready to answer them.

We, people with different anatomy, with different stories about our reproductive lives, have a role as people of faith, to move into this calling. Reproductive rights are under assault in this country. And, we have as long a way to go as ever to embody the vision of reproductive justice. There are people in this country who are loud, who wield power, who are creating a world for us that denies the goodness of our bodies, the goodness of sexuality. They show us that we have a long way to go in building this Beloved Community.

And so we are called to take action, to proclaim publicly, humbly, and compassionately that God is love. Not only does a loving God not want to send us to hell, but a loving God also doesn’t want people to have to risk their safety, or their lives, to make necessary, complex, and good, decisions about their bodies.

We all have stories to tell about our reproductive lives, about moments we made decisions, or weren’t allowed to make decisions, that changed who we understood ourselves to be, shifted the course of our spiritual journeys. And we have so many stories to listen to.

And there is work to be done. Will you join me?

In our announcements this morning, Dana invited us to a gather-in for people interested in joining together for Reproductive Justice. It will be in the evening on Wednesday, February 9. We will offer spiritual grounding and a place to strategize about how we want to move in together, what this work will look like for us. If you’ve been part of this fight for a long time and have wisdom and energy to bring, I hope you’ll come. If you’ve been newly ignited more recently, I hope you’ll come.

We all have a role to play.

Topics: Accountability