Icon viewers:
I admire my friends and neighbors in Northwest Ohio for being so passionate about abortion during this election season. Many people feel so strongly about making abortion illegal that they were willing to vote for Romney for that issue alone. Now that the election is over, I want to offer an invitation to all of us who want to see an end to abortion. It is up to each of us to act on our passion as individuals and as religious institutions. Fortunately, there are many strategies that will help end abortion, and we can start working for them immediately.
1. We can support pregnant women by making sure that they have food, shelter, respect, can continue education and can have financial means to care for themselves and their children. To end abortion, we need to make sure that working women are never threatened with being fired if they get pregnant. They must be reassured that their jobs are guaranteed and that they will have the maternity leave and pay that they need in order to make a pregnancy and birth possible for them. This needs to include women of all strata of society, from fast food workers to corporate executives.
2. Men must stop raping women. Men who are against abortion must speak out to their friends and to other men and ensure that pressure to have sex with women ends, and that rape is unacceptable in any situation, including rape within a marriage or relationship. Men must make sure that other men are held accountable for the welfare of any woman that they impregnate and any child that they father, through financial support and also through their unending presence, protection, respectful love and fidelity for the rest of that woman and child’s life. Men and women must say no to a culture which dehumanizes women’s bodies into objects of sexual desire alone. Men must stop abortion by ending pornography, prostitution and belittlement of women. Only men can stop rape, and men who hate abortion must work tirelessly to make sure that rape is abolished forever.
3. Women must have access to and use birth control to protect them at all times. Men must have access to and use birth control at all times. Men must abstain from any kind of sex that could lead to a pregnancy that he and his partner do not want. This would make most all abortions stop effectively and immediately.
4. The empowerment of women will end abortion. When women are empowered and safe, they will only have children when and how they choose and will never feel the desperation that causes abortion. We must educate girls and women to say no to any kind of sexual subjugation at all times in their lives. Men must educate their sons, students and friends to end an expectation of violence against women and to discourage a sexuality of conquest or domination that can lead to sexual abuse or assault. All people need to be loved and be respected and cared for, and a relationship of love and respect is what our children need to grow and thrive.
How can we do these things? Ending abortion requires that we transform our culture. So, ending abortion must become a priority in the small details of ways that we think and talk, the things that we buy or support financially, and through our actions and daily decisions.
No woman wants to kill a baby. No woman wants to have a painful and traumatic surgery which can lead to years of regret and grief. No woman wants to feel so alone and desperate in her pregnancy that she sees abortion as the solution to her troubles. Outlawing abortion will not make it stop; men and women working together to change our world will end it. Let’s do it now.
Sincerely,
Wendy Chappell-Dick
