Tag: vote

Why I Don’t Vote Only on the Issue of Abortion

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Let me begin by saying that my desire is for every baby conceived to be born healthy.

Growing up and throughout the first half of my twenties, I believed that anti-abortion legislation was the best and only significant way to do accomplish this. I also believed it was my duty as a Christian to advocate for those lives above all others. In the last six or so years, I have changed my mind on both counts. 

First, let’s talk about the effectiveness of anti-abortion legislation.

I want to thank everyone who responded to last week’s post, including those who corrected some of my errors. Your comments encouraged me to research further for this week’s post. One of the things I have learned is that the year before Roe V. Wade was passed, there were over 600,000 legal abortions in the US (not accounting for those performed by unlicensed doctors or attempted by the women themselves). The Supreme Court has had a majority of Republican justices for 49 of the past 50 years, including when Roe was decided, yet Roe has not been overturned during this time. Even if Roe was overturned, it’s estimated that it would only reduce abortions by 14% or so, and there’s no guarantee that even a full bench of Republican justices would ever choose to do this. Now, 14% of abortions is still a lot of lives. But at 14% efficacy, Roe V. Wade is not the lynchpin piece of legislation that both Republicans and Democrats portray it to be, and I also portrayed it to be last week.

Data tells us that fewer abortions are occurring now than at any point since 1973. A combination of factors are responsible, including comprehensive sex education, affordable contraceptives, widespread affordable healthcare, affordable childcare, paid maternity leave, reduced cost of adoptions, and other economic policies. These factors help reduce the number of abortions because women either don’t have an unplanned pregnancy (due to eduction and affordable contraception) or they feel financially and socially supported enough to care for the child they unexpectedly conceived (affordable healthcare and childcare, paid maternity leave). All of these factors help to significantly reduce the number of abortions, no “what ifs” of Supreme Court seats required. Yet most of these factors are not part of conservative platforms, which means a big piece of the puzzle to promoting life is left out of their anti-abortion strategies.

If you’d like to see how such factors reduced the number of abortions in 2 states, watch this clip from Skye Jethani:

Beginning at 7:37

Next, let’s talk about our responsibility to unborn lives.

A few years ago, my aunt and I were talking about the 2016 election over lunch. When I told her who I had voted for, she said “What about abortion?” I told her an abbreviated version of the above, and that I believed the Democratic party does more to reduce the number of abortions through their holistic approach than anti-abortion legislation from the Republican party. She shook her head and said, “I can’t do that. I just feel like God’s going to hold me accountable for all those unborn babies.”

I asked her to clarify: “You personally?” She said yes, then she said, “I believe God is going to hold me accountable for all those little babies who don’t have a voice.”

After a moment, I asked her, “What about the other children who don’t have a voice?” When she didn’t answer me, I said, “What about the children on a schoolbus in Yemen who were killed by a missile purchased from the US? Are you responsible for their deaths?”

She shook her head, bewildered. “I haven’t heard about that,” she said.

“Whether or not you’ve heard of it, your voting choices led to their deaths at least as directly as to the abortion of a fetus,” I said. “What about the children being kept in cages, separated from their parents, and not provided clean diapers or regular food or vaccinations? Some of them have died, and others are so traumatized that they don’t recognize their parents when they’re returned to them—are you responsible for that? They don’t have a voice, and neither do their parents because they’re in cages too.”

“Cages?” she asked, looking at me again.

“Yes,” I answered. “Cages. It’s been all over the news.” When she didn’t react, I said, “There was a little girl who was shot in the head by police officers while she was asleep on the couch in her living room. And Sandy Hook was full of children who were murdered in their classrooms. Do you believe God is going to hold you personally accountable for their deaths?”

After a minute, my aunt, a little lost sounding, said, “I haven’t thought about that.” She considered a few seconds longer, then repeated, “I’ve never thought about that.”

Maybe you haven’t either. 

Growing up, I was taught in my church that abortion is so heinous that is supersedes all other issues, which means that there was only one Christlike way to vote: for conservative candidates (Republicans) who support anti-abortion legislation. Also while I was growing up, I asked God to break my heart for what breaks God’s heart. In the years since I asked that of God, I have learned that yes, abortion breaks God’s heart, but much more breaks God’s heart than abortion alone. Many more people suffer and die than unborn children. So why would I vote as if those are the only lives God cares about? 

I’m not saying that we Christians as a whole or individually are not responsible for those unborn children who might be aborted in a clinic that remains open because of how we vote. I’m saying there are many other effective avenues for keeping a child from being aborted—more effective than what overturning Roe V. Wade (as uncertain as that possibility is) would maybe accomplish. I’m also saying that we are responsible for many other children’s deaths and traumas, too. I voted for Obama in 2012, and so I am responsible for the families harmed by the forced separation policy he enacted among immigrants. The cages and neglect, however, are new.

We as the Christian community in the United States are responsible for the children who will never be born because their mothers were forcibly sterilized while detained. We’re responsible for the children whose records were erased and their parents can no longer be found. We responsible for the children poisoned by the water in their taps. We’re responsible for the children in NYC who have lost a parent to COVID-19 (there are now more of them than there were who lost a parent on 9/11). We’re responsible for the children who have died in mass shootings. We’re responsible for children who face wildfires and rising oceans and food scarcity. 

Let’s recap. A single issue vote is intended to help elect a Republican president who may have the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court Justices, who might have a case come up which challenges Roe, and who may eventually be part of a majority that chooses to go against SCOTUS’s previous ruling to overturn Roe. As controversial as the law is, it has been federal law for 50 years. That’s a lot of “ifs” required to justify a vote based on the single issue of anti-abortion legislation. Meanwhile, a lot more can be done immediately to reduce the number of abortions through widespread access to healthcare, comprehensive sex education, and community support for crisis pregnancy centers and domestic violence shelters. Additionally, many more lives are at stake than the unborn who might be aborted. A lot more people are voiceless than just those children.

If you, like my aunt, have never considered how far your responsibility to love your neighbor as yourself reaches—how many lives you bear responsibility for—I hope you will before Nov. 3.

Is your choice the best and wisest choice to promote life, mercy, and justice, and to act out your love for God and for others? If you believe the answer is yes, go with God and vote in that way. But please, don’t cast your vote based on only one issue, on only one set of lives possibly being affected out of all those who are at risk.

Fear Then, Fear Now (Updated)

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Note: Based on some feedback I’ve received since posting, I realize that my initial goal in writing eight months ago and my ultimate goal in writing last week both got a bit lost in the proverbial weeds. I’ve tried to tighten this post to make my points and goals more explicit.

About 8 months back, I wrote the following.

***

I rarely sink into a rage among this group of friends. All are people who care very deeply and who I’ve known for months, if not years.

However, last week I found myself seething, forcing myself to sit silently in my chair and listen respectfully to person after person describe their fears. Now, I realize that fears make us feel highly vulnerable, and so they can be very difficult to share with a group, especially if you aren’t very close to every person there. I realize that many people probably have deep-seated fears that they would not ever share with another person, let alone this little group of nine Baptists. Instead, person after person talked about terrorism, “people over there” and “crazies”. Next, someone brought up the presidential candidates. One person confessed trepidation at the idea of ISIS gaining access to a nuclear weapon.

At least no one started talking about spiders.

I studied terrorism extensively in college, so I know I have a different viewpoint than most. And I don’t deny that ISIS is a serious problem, and a daily concern. But I wanted to talk about fear. The most recent time I felt fear was the previous evening. I went to a friend’s house to play board games, and as I was coming home I realized I was coming home to an empty house. My roommate was away for the weekend, my neighbors were all probably asleep, the dog wasn’t alive to bark, the light was on in the carport but I couldn’t see into the darkness past the gate or in my neighbor’s backyard. Before I got out of my car, I had my house key in my hand, angled so it could slide into the lock as quickly as possible. I scanned 360 degrees before I got out and again when I stood straight. I listened carefully for footsteps, breathing, anything amiss. I unlocked the door and still knew I wasn’t safe. Not until the door was shut and locked behind me. And maybe not even then.

I am far more likely to be killed because of someone else’s road rage than I am to be killed by a terrorist of any kind (and there are so many kinds). I am at a much higher risk of being followed into my house and raped than anyone in the world is at risk of dying from radiation exposure due to a nuclear attack by ISIS.

Of the seven of us in this conversation, five were men. Up to that point, only men had been talking. While trying to tamp down my rage at all these fears that have so little bearing on how I live my life and what I worry about, the other women in the group spoke up, describing the moral ambiguity rising in our society and expressing her worries and fears for what her children will have to face, what they will fear as they grow up, how they will be safe and happy and good people in a society like the one ours is becoming.

Finally, something practical.

I built off of my friend’s fears for her children, describing how, in our society,people don’t do right for the sake of right. Here, freedoms and rights are not preserved for many, many people. I pointed out that, as a single woman, I am a more vulnerable target to random violence (not the most vulnerable, certainly) than men who share so much with me, including religion, skin color, socio-economic status, and geographic region. I described my fear of making eye contact with another driver because he might decide on that alone to follow me, to harass me, to hurt me. (It’s happened to me before, and I thank God that he never got out of his car.) I mentioned choices I make every day because of fear, like avoiding filling up with gas at night, like not walking between large vehicles in parking lots, like not going to the neighborhood park alone without texting someone else to let them know where I am and when I’ll be back.

My fellow Christians heard me. Their eyes softened. There was a pause.

One of the men started resumed talking about the “moral decay of our country” and brought up a presidential candidate. And accompanying my rage this time was disappointment. Isolation. I wanted them to be honest about their daily fears, even if they were different from mine. But no one had mentioned cancer or car accidents. No one did.

[Before I go further, I want to point out that every single one of us was white. Every one. Every one, as far as I know, is heterosexual and abled and neuro-typical. We are draped in privilege, swaddled in it from birth. I have real fears related to being a woman, but my fears as a white woman are nothing compared to the fears of people of color, and specifically of women of color. People with disabilities have entirely different and entirely valid fears. And we weren’t even addressing those depths, just the gender discrepancy in the fears.]

I wanted to ask these men, “When was the last time you felt fear? Maybe it was over a news headline but did you ever consider what you would feel if you were a refugee who no one wants to help because they think you might be part of the same terrorist group you’re trying to escape?” I wanted to scream, “Are you thinking about other people’s lives? Are you really more worried about Hillary’s emails than whether someone is going to target you just for existing? Are you really more concerned about Sanders’ socialist policies than whether your father’s cancer will come up in you?”

I might have been letting my anger carry me a little ways, but I don’t think I was being unreasonable to want these Christians to be personal, to match vulnerability with vulnerability as we talked about our lives. Why else are we here, anyway, but to share and support one another as a community? That’s the kind of living Christ encourages.

Again, I don’t mean to imply that terrorism and politics aren’t important concerns, aren’t daily threats for many, many people. They are. These issues and these hurting people should be prayed over fervently. The fears my friends shared valid. And I know they care deeply about their loved ones, friends, and the state of our country and world.

But when I think about fear in the Bible, I think about a son dying, a sinking boat, a terrible storm, a troubling message, a dead spouse, a flood, and standing in the very presence of God. Were more people afraid of Caesar or of the single armed centurion? Of a mass conspiracy or of being recognized by a servant in the firelight? All are worthy of fear, though we Christians are not called to fear but power, and yet I still feel frustrated, angry, disappointed by the way the conversation played out.

***

My relationship with fear has changed since I wrote this. I better understand now that people can take the words of their elected (and not-yet elected) leaders as license to do or say to you whatever they want. To threaten you. To hit you. To try to kiss you. And worse.

The people around me that day eight months ago were right to fear the election and the candidates, and I wish I had better understood the connection between these macro issues and individuals’ personal fears. I felt so frustrated then, but maybe my friends knew what they were talking about better than I did.

Yet I still find it disturbing that there was such a difference between what my female friend and I were willing to admit as daily fears and what the men were. I think this is a problem. But I’m most disturbed that, filled with so much anger, such frustration, I didn’t ask more questions. I didn’t say, “This is what I think you mean. Is that right?”

In the months since that conversation, let me tell you some of what I’ve been doing. I’ve been listening to marginalized people describe the harassment they face at rest stops and in restaurants and in the checkout line. I’ve been reporting Neo-Nazis who are photoshoping the faces of Jewish people into photos of gas chambers. I’ve been retweeting stories of brutality and terror. I’ve been sharing others’ words about how useless, worthless, hated, inhuman they’ve been made to feel. I’ve been sharing ways to support and help people being harassment in public. But I’ve been doing this almost exclusively on Twitter. Few people in my life are on Twitter, and if I see a problem in my reality, I need to address it in the places where my views might do some good. That includes Facebook. That includes a dinner out with friends.

I didn’t say what I was thinking then, but I’ve have eight months to think about it and to see the truth in my friends’ words, as well as realize some related truths.

I still fear the single centurion more than Caesar, but my fear of Caesar is greatly increased because of what people who think of themselves as centurions have done and said as a result of Caesar’s words and actions. They feel justified. And Caesar doesn’t have to deputize every such person to make him or them dangerous. That is the link between the macro and the personal.

Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and that the second greatest commandment is to love others as we love ourselves. For most people like me (white, abled, heterosexual, etc.), our civil rights weren’t under threat this election. I wish I had urged my friends to listen to people who aren’t like us, to hear their fears and find the macro connections and meet their vulnerability with our own.

I wish I’d made my opinion more plain, so I’m doing so here: I believe that loving others means be afraid of what marginalized people are afraid of, then using your vote and voice to fight for their rights as if they were your rights. I believe that is a significant way we white, abled, heterosexual Christians need to love our neighbors. I believe that I have been failing miserably at loving other people.