“Things are not getting worse, they are being revealed…” -adrienne maree brown
The leaked Supreme Court opinion promising to overturn Roe v Wade sent shock waves through our community and progressive communities across the nation. The concreteness and the aggressiveness of the language left little question about the outcome.
Many of us feel this decision as a personal assault. For many it re-opens old wounds that we believed long healed. For most of us it raises fears of what will come next.
I am holding especially those whose life experience is touched most directly by this decision or will be.
But if you were surprised by this decision, you simply have not been paying attention. This decision has been decades in the making, the stacking of the Supreme Court in the last 6 years simply the culmination.
Life will not change in progressive states. Right away. Abortion care will continue to be available in Oregon after this Supreme Court decision is handed down. We can take some small comfort in that fact.
Spiritually, progressives and liberals have been able to believe in the possibility of progress, at least since the Warren Court. We need to be prepared for a time when the Supreme Court will be trying to push us backward.
The specifics will shift: voting rights one day, sexuality education another, Marriage Equality on a third, Critical Race Theory the next.
These challenges are in our future. And we must refuse to go back.
What we will need is faith that, together, we can overcome.
Reverses, which let me assure you are coming, will make that faith harder to sustain.
There are real consequences for our spirits and our activism. If the courts become adversary rather than ally, our attention must turn toward the elected branches of government.
Securing the right to vote and voter turn-out may well be the key to sustaining movement toward Beloved Community. I can make a good case that guaranteeing voting rights should have been the priority throughout the last year.
If the courts cannot protect what little progress we have made, it is time for the voice of the people to be heard, while there are still institutions that can listen and respond.
Unitarian Universalism has supported abortion care and reproductive justice since before there was a UUA, long before Roe v Wade. This is neither a new nor a casual commitment.
We cannot allow this nation to go back.
“Things are not getting worse, they are being uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”
Blessings,
Bill
Rev. Bill Sinkford
When the news came out about the Supreme Court leak, I was with a group of congregants having a conversation about sexual & reproductive shame in our culture and how to combat it.
This was the topic of our SACReD class this Monday night. SACReD stands for Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity, and is the name of a new curriculum that a cohort of us are piloting in order to activate as a community for Reproductive Justice. This past month, it has been a joy to facilitate this group alongside Dana, our Director of Social Justice Programs, and Nicole, our Associate Director of Family Ministries who brings her experience as an OWL teacher & trainer. And there is no group I would have rather been with when the news broke.
Dana got a text about it, and we shifted the night’s plans, we took time together to process. To be stunned, angry, to cry. And in the days since, I have shared space with many of you beyond this cohort, in a space of mourning.
We really should not be surprised, we say, but it still hurts. If they can do this to Roe, we say, what rights that we’ve taken for granted will be next?
Reproductive Justice is a movement that fights for and lives into a world that respects the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. We know that this country under Roe did not go far enough down the road to true Reproductive Justice. With so far yet to go, so much work to be done, it feels like an especially huge loss that we are moving backwards.
And it feels huge because it is so personal. It is our bodies, our flesh and bone, the dwelling place of our souls that will now be up for debate in state legislatures. Many elders among us have seen this world before. Those of us, like me, of younger generations, have heard the stories, and we’re scared. None of us are ready to cross this threshold. And yet, it seems that we may have to.
Still, we can resist. Still, we can move in solidarity with our siblings across state lines, and do everything in our power to help people access the reproductive healthcare they need. We can keep dreaming up and living into a world where Reproductive Justice is made real. This congregation is already in the work of taking faithful and collective action. We are in this together and you are invited.
If you want to join this work, please reach out, and look out for the Reproductive Dignity action planning session we will be having on May 23rd. More info can be found in the E-News.
I leave you with a quote from the ever-wise writer Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark. I hope it will serve as a blessing in favor of hope, even in a week like this one.
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”
Carter Smith, Intern Minister