Abbey Speaker Series: Faith and Abortion

the program for public discourse as you know strives to Foster constructive dialogue and debate around some of the most challenging and pressing issues facing Carolina and Beyond and tonight is no exception as we tackle the issue of abortion through the theme of faith and abortion and so the program for public discourse is proud to host some of the brightest and thoughtful Minds speaking today on this issue maharat Ruth Friedman is a member of the inaugural class of Yeshiva maharat which is the first institution to ordain Orthodox women as spiritual leaders she serves as clergy at ohev Shalom the national sagog in Washington DC where she performs all traditional rabbinic functions Lauren reliford uses her Advanced degree in social work and expertise in public in uh in in public and population Health to bridge the gap between social theory spirituality research and practice she currently serves as political director for sojourners an ecumenical Christian organization that seeks to discover the intersection of Faith politics and culture Leah labresco Sergeant is the author of arriving at amen and building the Benedict option she is a convert from atheism to Catholicism whose writing has appeared in the New York Times in first things among other outlets she is also the chief of staff of debate and public discourse at bravery Angels an organization that utilizes public discourse to help depolarize America our moderator Mara bookbinder is vice chair of the department of social science and the UNC school of medicine she's also Adjunct professor of anthropology and the author of several books including scripting death stories of assisted dying in America thanks again to our panelists for their willingness to share their wisdom with us and model constructive Dialogue on such a contentious issue before we begin I'd like to provide a bit of background to help set the stage for our conversation this evening on June 24th 2022 the U.S Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Dobbs V Jackson Women's Health Organization the dabs decision overturned to the constitutional right to an abortion established by Roe v Wade in 1973 and permitted individual states to severely restrict abortion or ban it outright in the ensuing weeks and months 14 States enacted legislation that prohibits abortion with and without limited exceptions in North Carolina abortion currently remains legal up to 20 weeks the New York Times reported on March 4th that North Carolina has had a 37 percent rise in abortions since the Dobb's decision was issued due to a large influx of patients traveling here from other states in the south this is an evolving issue North Carolina Republican legislative leaders are reported to have discussed bans at 6 or 13 weeks meanwhile North Carolina Healthcare Providers have strongly advocated against additional restrictions in order to protect Patients health and safety regardless of your views on abortion we are living in a high-stakes time due to the uncertain legal landscape for many this is also a very scary time as rights to bodily autonomy for a major sector of our population hang in the balance so why are we here tonight many might say that we shouldn't be having a conversation about faith and abortion right now in fact some of my colleagues and friends did say so in the weeks leading up to this panel their concern is that we don't have the luxury of debating competing ethical Frameworks in a time when the law itself is under siege I very much understand and acknowledge this perspective but given our pluralist and increasingly polarizing Society I also think that it's now more important than ever to understand the complex relationships between Faith politics and culture in the United States the relationship between religion and views on abortion is nuanced on the one hand Gallup polls demonstrate a strong correlation between religiosity and views on abortion about 10 percent of Americans who seldom or never attend religious Services say that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances this number jumps to 19 to 23 among those who attend once a month or almost every week and to 40 among those who attend Services weekly these numbers look similar for the percentage of Americans who think abortion is morally wrong the point here is that how religious Americans are is more predictive of their views on abortion than is the religious identity more generally on the other hand these Trends are driven primarily by the three largest religious subgroups in the U.S today Protestants Christians and people who claim no religious identity at all public narratives that frame the anti-abortion movement as a religious one and Reproductive Rights movements as secular Overlook our country's religious pluralism as well as a long history of religious activism to expand access to abortion in fact religious leaders have filed multiple lawsuits in recent months opposing restrictive abortion legislation these are some of the nuanced perspectives that I hope we'll explore tonight to be clear we're not here to debate the legality of abortion we're here to listen to the perspectives from three engaged and reflective people who have spent a lot of time considering these issues and have come to different conclusions and we're here I hope to learn something new and perhaps to have some of our preconceived ideas challenged in some way we don't often get the opportunity to do this and get beyond the media sound bites particularly when it comes to abortion I want to note as well that tonight's discussion will offer unnecessarily limited snapshot of faith and abortion there are many positions left out of this panel including religious views outside of the judeo-christian tradition as well as more secular views this is just one of many concern this is just one of many conversations about abortion happening on and off campus and I hope that you'll be a part of others taking place this year before we get started I want to let everyone know that we'll be answering audience questions around 6 30 PM if you're online you can start submitting them as early as you like using zoom's q a tool for people in our audience a note card can be found at your seat please feel free to write your questions down and a staff member will collect them later in the in the program so with that I'd like to begin our conversation by asking each of our panelists to please tell us a little bit about your background and how your faith informs your thinking on abortion and I think we can start with Leah and then go down the line absolutely thank you for bringing me out here and it's really been a pleasure to meet my fellow panelists in our chats prior to this event I grew up as an atheist a pro-choice atheist on Long Island um and I grew up not knowing any pro-lifers uh as individuals I knew them as a political force um and as people who were on TV and I imagine some of you are here tonight with the same perspective that I had growing up which is that the pro-life movement is primarily about policing women and sexuality not about advocating for babies that was the perspective I had until College when I met people who were pro-life and as much as I disagreed with them about the moral valence of a child in utero I didn't I trusted that they were in good faith in their arguments I believe that we really disagreed on the matter and they weren't doing this instrumentally over time in arguments with them in other kinds of arguments I eventually became Catholic ascending to the church's position on the legality and permissibility of abortion but that kind of was the beginning of my changing view on it where for me a lot of this turns around how we respond to the people who are most vulnerable and most needy and I don't see abortion as a different issue than how we care for the elderly how we care for the disabled how we care for the poor but I see it as part and parcel with how we respond to people whose need makes us fear them especially when we're afraid we can't meet their need and then we're tempted to get rid of the person to escape the burden of their need sorry I just had to sit with that and I hope you guys can hear me because that was I don't need to brown nose my nose is already Brown enough so I just really appreciate what you said um Lauren relaford social worker political director um and I too am a Catholic but I like to joke that I'm more of a Pope John Paul Catholic than like a PJ Pichu Catholic or uh Benedict Catholic um and that I tend to be a lot more Progressive in My Views um and I am probably not in line with the church on a lot of things um but I think part of that is also because I grew up in a single family home my parents were divorced and so coming from a divorced household you already are on the outside of the church um there were often times when my family was often not welcome in churches because it was clear that this woman is here with her two kids and no man so where is she and so I think some of my position on I will say that my position on um the choice of having an abortion um because I'm not pro-abortion in any way shape or form didn't really start to form uh until I was actually in middle school or high school because that was not an issue that we really spoke about when it came to Faith my faith was more focused on and growing my faith growing up was more focused on what it meant to actually be a Christian and how that you as a Christian are then responsible to others so I would say that at least my responsibility to another individual and their ability to thrive not just survive but really Thrive is sort of couched in that theological framework and then once I started having these debates in middle school because I found myself in audiences where those things were happening I went to high school with George Bush's niece so that's sort of the George Bush the president uh I just realized I feel really old I don't know how many of you guys remember over the bush two years or the bush one year it's in the news it's the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War one the other day was like oh you were born in the 1900s don't ever do that to me um and so I would say that my when it comes to my understanding of abortion it really I'm really more focused on the choice and how sacred and difficult that choice is um because whether you decide to have an abortion whether you decide to adopt or whether it's time to keep ultimately there's still a life that we're talking about and it's not just the life of a child it's a life of a mother and so I think what I really get stuck in the abortion debate is really just focuses on the baby without focusing on the parents um the mother the birthing person and whether she's going to have the resources after the baby is born to make sure that that child can then drive especially those first zero to three so I'm really excited to hear from both you guys and thank you guys so much for having me and I also wanted to say I know um today is the beginning of Ramadan so Ramadan Mubarak and I'm very excited for folks to be able to break fast and eat after this thank you um hi everyone my name is Ruth I have first of all can you hear me okay so I should start with um so I am a the rabbi at an Orthodox Jewish synagogue and um we tend to be sort of like brought over generalization of the spectrum of Jewish practice the most um smallsy conservative and so we don't use um electricity on the Sabbath so I actually have no experience using a microphone and everything so I might be shouting into a microphone because I'm used to just shouting so um just give me a little nudge if I'm being awkward um anyway so uh so yeah I like I said I I'm a member of a new I was in the first graduating class let's say that um of a program to train Orthodox Jewish women to be rabbis in communities um in a variety of capacities until that point um women did not serve in um religious leadership roles like that or weren't rabbis um of synagogues or other roles because it's a very traditional part of Judaism and that was just considered one of the traditional components there's much more going on there in terms of how Faith informs my views on abortion the answer is yes and no um and I say that because I grew up in Evanston Illinois home of Northwestern University um raised always in very liberal politically areas um by some very strong feminists to the way Generations shake out like Roe Wade was really just considered like a massive accomplishment and something that if you threaten that you know that's like the worst thing you could possibly do um and so it was certainly I think raised and frankly it's still in my blood um that that abortion is a sacred right that no one should take away now that's kind of just like how it was raised as a person now how does faith come into that um so one of the reasons I'm really excited to be here tonight just because I think that some um we as you said we might often group different um religions you know religious members of different religions together um but the perspectives really are quite different um Judaism Jewish law certainly uh does not it it we um abortion is permitted under many of these circumstances and so I would say in terms of how Faith infused in I'll speak more about this later but how about how Faith informs my views on abortion um it's partially like Jewish thought on this but frankly it's also being a religious minority in America um where I really believe in you know preserving our right by our I mean the Jewish right of course everyone else is too um but from if our religion dictates that or abortion is permitted under many circumstances that's something that I feel should be protected for us and therefore for everybody thank you um I guess one thing I I want to sort of pick up on there are so many threads here that I want to pull through but um Leah started to talk a little bit about how how you thought the pro life movement was misunderstood um how I specifically misunderstood it it's fair how you uh as a person misunderstood it I'm curious um Ruth and Lauren as well if you have thoughts about how your own faith communities views have been misunderstood on this issue um I think quickly I think one there's just a lack of recognition of the diversity of thought around the issue of abortion within Christian communities in general I think even amongst Catholics like there's literally a whole group called Catholics for choice and right around the Dobbs decision they were projecting images on the Basilica which is one of the largest Catholic buildings in the country so it's very visible um and I think that that is just one thing that I want to dispel the myth is that there's diversity of thought and diversity of understanding within Christian communities but then I think also just um decoupling this notion that if you are not pro-life you're somehow pro-abortion and You Were Somehow anti-life I think that just does a huge disservice to our ability to have a discussion not even a debate right because when you say debate you automatically assume y'all are going to go head to head just have a discussion about what it means to go through that process um and I think also just who is for life right I think that a lot of people who are pro-choice again aren't pro-abortion but they're looking at not just the life of the child but they're looking at the life of the mother and understanding that that decision is a lot more complex than just saying you know looking at it from a deontological position but they understand that there's sort of this other third grade murky area and so that is the one thing that I'm really hoping that we can do as we move forward is one just sort of decouple this notion that uh you know this is the Christian position or even this is the Catholic position on that and then also decouple this notion that if you are not pro-life that you somehow hate babies and hate children and you don't have the same concerns about life and the same passion for um and desire to ensure that all people thrive and so I that's a purely public policy standpoint as well because you get that you go in there and they automatically assume that and so that becomes very difficult to make any Headway um when you're trying to have a discussion on these issues so I my sense is that within the public sphere um there would be a strong narrative that Jews and they say just plain Jews um are pro-choice let's say even though I agree I can't stand these terms um they're just um but however and because there's a lot of like active active um let's say um left-wing um groups within Judaism um there's a lot of pro-choice activism Etc um I do think and I have no idea like how far this spreads um but that within Orthodox Judaism The Narrative as of late has I should say somehow about I'll explain how I think how um become that Jews are let's say again pro-life um the in more in alignment with some Christian groups and the reason um and I'm not just the only person who thinks this I've heard other you know people speculate this as well is that in the past let's say like 20 years or so um the Orthodox Jewish Community has been aligning itself more and more with the Republican party and um different groups within like let's say I I said this on our introductory call forgive me like this the Christian right which I know is a complete over generalization but this that the sense that group um that also by the way is very support of Israel and I think that the communities therefore have often found themselves working together in the political sphere and aligning more and more and I think part of that what's happened is that certain voices within that group um Jewish voice orthox Jewish voices have started to voice opinions that are more in line with what you might hear um in a more traditional pro-life position and frankly people there are many Orthodox Jews who we're looking at we're seeing what they're saying oh that Judaism is absolutely anti-abortion um you know we're totally pro-life under all circumstances Etc and we're like what I have no idea where you got that or what you're talking about right it's strictly mystifying and I've heard that from very well known you know no like very very knowledgeable rabbis I've never sat down and talked to them because I don't know them personally but I cannot understand where they're coming from other than sort of wanting to I think kind of romanticize and align the relationship between these two communities as much as possible and so I don't know how many people follow that ultimately um but to me it's very important to be a voice of saying actually no even within the most religious areas um of Judaism being the Orthodox though that's a broad label within itself um there are absolutely many times that abortion is um allowed and even sometimes mandated and I'll throw out one other kind of confusion that I think obstructs our ability to have a productive conversation which is I think many Americans on both sides of the issue are deeply confused about what the state of the law is so for example Dobbs didn't overturn Roe it overturned Casey Casey had already supplanted Roe by the time you know Dobbs had come around and we've moved over time in terms of what the law of abortion law in the U.S is from Rose tremest trimester framework of no abortions in the third trimester mostly some abortions permissible in the second sorry yeah no abortions of the third trimester some permitted in the second trimester mostly permitted to make abortion restriction not corrected to make abortion restrictions in the first trimester to Casey which established the viability standard that people now kind of translate backwards to Roe so Casey said before viability it's all right to make a number of restrictions after viability you know their more restrictions are open but they can't place an undue burden Casey didn't Define what an undue burden was which is left kind of that barrage of cases coming back and back to the court because Casey established a standard that no one could quite articulate what it meant after all the point of the restrictions was to burden someone um so at what point how many discouraged or non-permitted abortions became an undue burden and the viability line itself kind of became a moving Target where with every medical Advance the viability line moved backwards so over the past 60 or 70 years we've gone from JFK losing his son when he was delivered early around 34 32 weeks to a point where every doctor would expect there's no other complicating factor to be able to save that baby now to the point where are you about a quarter of children who are born at 22 weeks survive but having viability be the governing standard from Casey up till now has left people in an awkward position where every medical advance that could save a wanted baby is a setback for the pro-choice movement so I see we have kind of gotten into the thick of the the policy discussion um which is great but I wanna I wanna maybe take a step back from some of the specifics that you're getting into here Leah and just sort of ask more generally to what extent do you all think that um that Faith should inform public policy [Music] well as someone whose job is to inform public policy from a face framework I guess I'll be the first one to take a swing at that um for me when I talk about faith I'm talking about an ethical moral values-based framework and so I think if it's not faith that needs to be something grounded in some common morality which I believe that we have regardless of Faith regardless of belief systems because you can still be an atheist and be a good person you can still be you know a Flying Spaghetti Monster Rastafarian and still do good things and so I think that there are just some core human values that can translate outside of Faith um I think from at least my Christian faith perspective I think what we add to public policy is hopefully this respect for life and really not just life but really going to those that are the most needy the most vulnerable um the consistently disenfranchised and the unintentionally under invested communities and that is where our faith says those are the people that you're supposed to go to right um my faith is very clear I believe my faith is very clear about when one suffers we all suffer when one rejoices we all share in the joy and so to the extent to which you can then translate to public policy that focuses more on the lived experiences the everyday experiences of human beings and is crafted in a way that honors their inherent dignity and worth their god-given inherent dignity and worth that to me is at least the core of how Faith informs politics but I think there should also be a distinction between faith and religion because I think oftentimes people assume that faith is attached to a particular denomination or an institution and that's not and so I also be one of it want to be very clear that when I talk about faith I'm talking about my own spiritual understanding of Christianity not my Catholic understanding of Christianity not um you know not any other piece and so from there I think it is a really great way to influence policy because that is just our sort of theory of understanding of humanity and how we tend to it and then we hope that policy is reflective of that but without adopting you know Catholic teaching or um you know Protestant teaching so religion makes a truth Claim about the world the same way as science does the same way as philosophy does and each discipline uses different methods to try and sift through which truth claims are correct and which ones are false you know we we disagree so much about what Catholicism claims and what it compels us and the one guarantee is we're we can't both be right at least one of us is wrong and it's possible we're both an error um yeah and the goal is for us to live fully in the truth and for our difference to be a Spur especially the more we like each other yeah we kind of sift the difference and try and get to the heart and for one or both of us to be converted to live more fully in the truth politics forces us to confront differences in beliefs about what's true in the world that we might otherwise slip by because it gives our neighbor power over us um and that forces us not just to to kind of give ourselves fully over to uh Live and Let Live libertarianism but a certain kind of caution love fear that you know when my neighbor votes and when my neighbor disagrees with me out the world I can't just say well they can raise their children however they want everyone makes their own choice they're reflecting how I raise my children and when that goes badly we have intense fear division hatred of each other the best thing America can do is force many different claims in the world into civil discussion with each other we don't do it well all the time but politics is informed by religion the same way it's informed by philosophy that during covid when hospitals are making decisions about who to put on ventilators whether to make them first come first serve whether to ration them on the basis of age whether to disqualify the disabled from receiving help when Hospital administrators felt their quality of life was lower than someone without a disability and therefore less worth saving when they couldn't save everyone that's a debate about religion and philosophy and it's not solely a matter of taste it's a question about what's true about the world and how we value each other's lives so politics is messy it can be unpleasant it doesn't always result in ever and feeling we worked our way through to the truth and we found it um some of us it just resolves in a kind of detaunt or a compromise to put the issue on Ice until we have a better way of dealing with it but the truth matters a lot and the best thing politics can do is force us to confront a rival truth claim that we otherwise might have let pass by and when we're wrong to submit to it and live a fuller life in the truth I'm I'm sort of puzzling of that that was fascinating Leah but I'm sort of puzzling over this idea that one of you and Lauren yeah is wrong about Catholic at least one at least one right um so I'm I'm Jewish I'm not as um learned as Ruth is so I want to turn to you in a second Ruth but um in my understanding of Judaism there are multiple different interpretations and there is not necessarily a single truth that can be gleaned from um from these teachings and so I I'm curious what you would say to that Ruth and sort of how you would look at this idea it's it's funny because I went to an Orthodox Jewish High School um and a rabbi I had for two years unfortunately recently passed away um was you know very right-wing Orthodox and I remember him clearly in class one day saying if you believe that what you believe is true then and right then what if another person believes differently then there you have to believe that they're wrong um and I think he was trying to help you know like Forge our identity um and think about the world not necessarily in terms of black and white but but not just um I think you know sort of enter into that like sort of post-modern space of you know everything for everyone whatever um and then when I was in college or shortly after college I met um a northax rabbi who actually I think website my high school who wrote a book called you don't have to be wrong for me to be right um which was of course the exact opposite um and I think you know I think um to some extent both are true there are things that Judaism Judaism where we say don't say Judaism says because as you said there is no Judaism um but uh but that there are some things that are wrong right to so to say for example that um a fetus has no sanctity of life would be an incorrect statement from a Jewish perspective however there are rabbis who believe and this is a major disagreement especially um as more recent as medical you know processes for for In Utero um Medical Care get better and better we know more and more about what's going on in utero um that there are some rabbis who believe that if um someone terminates a pregnancy that that is murder um no that doesn't necessarily mean therefore that you never do it um but it does mean that it is killing someone and then there's another perspective and I think this one's become more dominant that um it's really just a part of the mother and in that sense it's causing some injury and so you don't injure someone just for fun um but you can injure someone okay these are broad terms I don't want you to think I mean like you can walk up to someone and punch them that's not what we're talking about but it seems that the the the the pregnancy simply is an extension of the mother's body um and that that then provides us two different Frameworks for how to think about than abortion and how it's um situated within that and I just I want just to answer the other question briefly about like faith and politics um I I certainly I I see within um the way I think about it is that when Faith Can inform the expansion of the rights of a group of people um I think Faith should play a role in politics um when Faith would limit the rights of a certain group of of people I think Faith should stay out of politics or at least religion I guess you could say that distinction also um because like I said earlier I think that in that case a religious community should have the humility to say that you know what I believe might be true for me going back to that other question about black and white um but it's not my place to impose that on anybody else and I'll say I'm more skeptical of a fully rights-based framework in part because there are conflicting rights claims and I don't believe all of them right like the the claim for abortion is that women have the right to not have a child when they choose not to um and then the claim that men can make is don't I have a similar right right like don't I have the right to not be a father if I don't want to be and our country actually States pretty definitively you do not have that right you know men who father a child have a responsibility to that child it's a different responsibility of a different degree all the state can extract his money um and it doesn't do a great job at doing that but we have these conflicting questions of do does anyone male or female have an absolute right to say when I give life to a child I have the right to decline to be that child's parent and to walk away completely and in some ways abortion is an attempt to catch up to you know what's not been given to men as a right but it's certainly something they find easier to do to walk away from some someone who depends on them and to give women a way to catch up to do that too I actually just wanted to ask for two points of clarification and this is for me one what I'm hearing you at least in response to what I said was that you do see uh religion and Faith as synonymous or is that a mischaracterization I think you know the words are defined a lot of ways in different contexts you know faith is used both as like which Faith do you belong to or what is your relationship to God um so I guess the question is which sense are you asking me about so I I mean I'm just in a basic like for me when I tell people this is my faith belief I just I espouse basic Christian views when I say this is my religion that's when I add sort of this is what the Catholic Church teaches um and this is how it's layered on to my understanding of that so I I just yeah then I guess I see them as synonymous okay so that is one point of difference I think another thing is that um I have a very unique relationship with the Catholic church and that um as a black person they do not have a really good trap record with us the church was very wrong on that um uh they have done enormous damage to Native and Indigenous populations the church is very wrong for that um their stance on women they are very wrong on that and so then when I look at the church's positions on other things I already have in my head this is the same church that's telling me that they're right on this issue when they have been so wrong on so many other things and so when it comes to seeing then the Catholic Church as the ultimate truth um one for me that's almost a little bit heretical because the church isn't the truth God is the truth and Jesus is the truth the church is are intermediary between there and so I guess and I love this we talked a bit about lunches then like what does that mean for who is right and who was wrong and I quite frankly am perfectly okay with being the wrong person in this situation because I'm gonna have to square up with God regardless so he's gonna tell me if I'm right or wrong um and so I guess I'm wondering and now I've discussed but would love to continue talking about how you arrived to the truth knowing that philosophers and theologians have been trying to find the truth for decades but for me like being able to fully understand something is not attainable because we're not omnipresent we're not God so I think that that is also where some of that differs is my like where I see the church and where I see God are completely different and so the church can say something God can say another also the Catholic Health Association interestingly enough in the 90s made it very clear that their position on abortion was that we will not force like we are practitioners and in our you know Catholic Hospitals we will not do this because this is our faith however we have no problem or we will not punish or prevent other individuals who are operating literally and figuratively outside of our Spectrum to do what they do and so when I read that and I was like oh this is the 90s I also felt like this is the Catholic Church saying kind of what you're saying is we have this position do not force us to do anything that's against our religious right however we recognize that not everyone has the same position and so we are not in a position to then impose our beliefs writ large across an entire population of individuals so that's kind of yeah sorry that's just what you bubbled up in my in my ADHD brain I'm going to jump in here because I think we could spend a lot of time how we can arrive at truth but I wanted to actually go back to something that Ruth said about um how Faith should inform public policy and the difference between expanding rights or protecting rights and I want to ask specifically about um jobs and religious Liberties and the extent to which um you all think that jobs does or does not infringe on religious liberties who I I don't know who whoever wants to start yeah so um yeah I think that it created um a big problem for Jewish communities um and in fact actually a couple of Jewish communities in different states have actually sued the government um saying that that the content of the case is that by Banning abortion or at least if a state is Banning abortion under certain circumstances then it is actually prohibiting um me as a Jew um from being able to fulfill my religious what's the word it's not that obligation right but for me being able to practice My Religion freely um because as I said earlier abortion is allowed in many circumstances under Jewish law but it is also mandated at certain times um because Jewish law always prioritizes the life of the mother and so um there you could conceivably have a situation where a woman would need to get an abortion from a Jewish perspective um and it would not be allowed from a legal perspective so so you know you could debate well who's legal rights but certainly for the Jewish Community um that was the other seen as as an issue and you know I think that even um it was amazing to see I think that even as I mentioned earlier parts of the more right-wing Orthodox Community there were some organizations that released statements championing this this decision um you know this is great this is a victory for religion or whatever I was like what are you talking about but also there was a lot of naivety I think in in what they were saying because it was sort of there was a side note of like but in the piece of the health of a mother of course you know we still think abortion is is you know should be legal and all this stuff and and I I think that there was I I was very concerned to see that um because I I think that it takes for granted that different religious communities understand different pieces just using different framework right and to me that showed so clearly that the the Jewish framework is one that still is existing within a Jewish space and and there isn't really enough cross conversation um to to really understand that um and I just a quick anecdote um I don't want to get into the details of the case it's been discussed um anonymously in different places before but I have a good friend who needed um a late-term abortion under very very tragic horrible circumstances and um this was before New York um legalized them and the rabbi who she was Consulting with said yes it's okay you can get you can terminate this pregnancy um not even realizing that what he was recommending was actually illegal in the state that in which they both lived and to me that was a very powerful um story to share because he a very very knowledgeable Rabbi you know if it would visibly Orthodox Jew she's a visibly Orthodox Jew and it wasn't the like the the broader political context wasn't even fully understood um and I know that that's something that that they've shared but since then um as as an example and so you know I think ultimately just at the end of the day um we I think this is part of a good conversation that we need to make sure I think I've imagined that a lot of us are approaching it within the framework of what we know and not even fully understanding what other communities bring to the table I think one thing kind of in the framework of Rights expansion rights contraction um which you know isn't my primary framework but working within yours Dobbs is a rights contraction in some circumstances in that framework but it's also a massive rights expansion for children who live um whose rights are necessarily contracted in the world where it's legal to kill them well if you accept that framework yes yes but that is the claim right like even from a rights how can we help as many people Express and enjoy their rights as possible um that there are a massive number of people as the claim who are not receiving their due rights um and that they're not absent from that equation um and I don't think we just kind of tally up the rights on all sides and put them together right I do want to kind of I appreciate you giving a portrait of one of those hard cases I'd like to give a kind of portrait to lay alongside it because I think often when people talk about life of the mother exceptions it's framed as though you know you're against abortion in all circumstances and then you allow abortion in this circumstance I'd like to paint a different portrait um just to give a contrasting View when a mom develops eclampsia let's say 36 weeks there is no solution to help save her life except delivering the baby because it's a disorder that stems from the placenta and at 36 weeks people expect the baby is probably going to live would it be better for the baby to keep developing in utero yes if all things were equal but it isn't and there isn't a way to come to the mother's Aid or to help her ride out eclampsia for very long maybe doctors say we think we can Wing you 12 hours do you want to spend 12 hours on meds and supervision so we can give a steroid shot to help your baby's lungs develop and give them a better shot and many moms will say yes and the doctors really have to stay in the room and be careful because it's very dangerous and no one frames that as an abortion because you expect the baby's going to survive um you're delivering the baby early you know you're harming the overall health of the baby but you also know the mom can't go any further now if a mom develops eclampsia at 18 weeks you know you have to deliver the baby you don't expect the baby is going to survive and I'd say the contrast between this between delivering a child when you don't expect the child to make it but delivering them as a child thinking of them as a person the whole time versus an abortion at 18 weeks due to what eclampsia or as an elective abortion is that everyone in the room is rooting for the baby to live you know even though you know it's implausible whether you're kind of right near that line or not that an early delivery you know near the line of viability before the line of viability to save the mother's life is a moment where ideally the doctor comes in and goes look we we don't think you can make it any longer you know we have to deliver the baby to save your life we could maybe get you four hours if we were you know waiting out meds giving you antibiotics is there anyone you want to come to say goodbye to the baby with you having that same attentiveness to what it means to mourn a child there and approaching it as morning not as your baby is trying to kill you we're going to remove the tissue and that's why I don't see Life of the mother laws as laws about when do we allow abortion I see them as analogous to when do we deliver a baby in the case of eclampsia at any time and I see them as different because the question is how do we care for the mother as a mother how do we do everything possible for the baby and then if the baby is delivered and dies how do we respond to the Dignity of that child appropriately and I'll say one last thing here which is there's a Ministry by the Trappist of new malware Abbey to give coffins to parents who lose a child they build coffins to support their life and Community but they send them to free for parents who lose a child and what they found is often the parents who call after a still birth after a miscarriage you know what the hospital gave them was a trash bag that parents who lost a child before viability a wanted child not an abortion just a miscarriage the hospital said we know what this is this is tissue this is trash and then the monks would send them a coffin and when the hospital knew that was an option the nurses would start asking and making the call and that's the kind of shift I want to see I just want to jump in for a second I mean you're in you're sharing a really powerful perspective here Leah um and I I just sort of want to share with my researcher and Anthropologist hat on um that I think you know I it's a it's a powerful ideal the problem is that what happens in trying to operationalize this um is that the laws inhibit Physicians from at times offering that care before it's too late or before you know the the mother has already suffered irrevocably I think that's the future of the fact that our doctors don't treat mothers with respect when they're delivering babies with no complications right that's not a problem that's unique to abortion you know Serena Williams shouldn't have had to climb off her hospital bed to re-explain her medical conditions to her doctors after birth and save her own life by advocating for an MRI that wasn't a question about abortion that was a question about treating women along with babies like trash and particularly treating vulnerable women like trash so I do agree it's hard to go in with trust to a medical system that looks at women who are vulnerable when they're in labor when they're pregnant and doesn't listen to them or be attentive to their health particularly women who are poor women who are non-white but that problem isn't unique to abortion it's something I want to fight on every front but I don't want to shortchange the babies while I'm advocating for the moms too so when I would say that just to go back to the original question I think that Dobbs was a huge infringement on religious Liberties Point Blank period because again you're taking a very narrow understanding of Christian thought and applying it to an entire country that to me is just not right it's not acceptable and I think what was very hard for me in addition to my office being down the street from the Supreme Court when that decision was made was being on the phone with colleagues from organizations like Catholics for Choice National Council for Jewish women Muslim Health Association and the impact emotional impact that that had on them and just feeling like once again we our beliefs the things that we bring to the country the ways in which we live are not being recognized or respected by a body who was again trying to make this country into a white Christian Nation and I think also um what for me has been really problematic is the assumption that a lot of people are coming from a really good place like you are when it comes to abortion and unfortunately that's not the case um Herbert Gans in 1972 wrote a really fascinating article that's still topical it's called the 15 functions of poverty and I remember it was all my syllabus and it absolutely pissed me off because I was like how can poverty serve any function ever and in this article he discusses how capitalism in order for capitalism to survive you need a body of individuals who are constantly poor who will constantly work low labor jobs and will essentially help feed the upper echelons of society and he even went in on social workers right social workers to a certain extent we do perpetuate a lot of the same systems that continue to impoverish people and oppress people and prevent them from being their true self so everyone went on skates and I'm going to be very honest here is that there are some people that I have talked to whether they're Paul policy makers or who individuals who honestly believe that banning abortion helps to serve that capitalist function of ensuring that you have a group of children who are born into families that may not have the resources needed to help them survive and they're not voting to ensure that those resources are there to help them to survive and so they know that if this child is born in this situation or if this mother has Health complications if this or this happens then this is the outcome of the child and good now we have that and so for me I think that's also part of I guess going back to what I really want people to decouple this notion is that not everyone is coming from at the abortion from a really fuzzy place the systems that we have need to be perpetuated by individuals and those individuals are there and so I think that that's also something a hard truth that some people really need to swallow is that some people want kids to be born destitute because people need those people to fill jobs that they'll never do it's a really hard fact it's really from a faith perspective it's very hard to swallow because how could you ever treat a human being that way but that's the reality of the situation and so I think that is part of the problem here is that we're assuming that everyone really is coming at it from a place of care for the child child because a lot of people who say that they're pro-life are not pro-life course and they stop caring once the baby is there and they are actively doing things like cutting snap trying to make it difficult to access Medicaid making sure that there are no you know Family Planning resources for women who may know that they have high risk pregnancies to ensure that they don't have to deliver early and so I think that that is [Music] um it's a religious liberty issue even for Christians in and of itself because it's again it's saying this is the Christian thought on this and this is how this country is going to operate and that's just not the case it also takes again a very de-ontological approach to an issue that has teleological aspects of it it's you either do this it's either black or white deontology is there's a right and a wrong teleological so for example someone steals that's wrong you go to jail you're a thief you're not supposed to steal someone is stealing diapers and formula for their child because the U.S government refuses to expand the child tax credit refuses to ensure that people have adequate housing refuses to ensure that people are making living wage and so in order to keep this baby that they now have that they are unable to support because the child has needs and they did not really have the resources they needed or the supports regardless of socioeconomic strata like how is that being pro-life like how is that protecting a child because you know the more that they're exposed to these things the outcomes are going to be bad and that's not a life that anyone should leave and so I think really what we would do better as a country is if we focused and this is what Pope John Paul said is if we recognize the fact that life through all subsequent stages conception to death is sacred and until we as a country actually act like that we cannot say that we have a religious Christian perspective on things because we're not following the religious Christian understanding of the sanctity of life from birth to death from conception to death um and so that's kind of what I just wanted to add in that piece um and to answer that original question and just also honor the fact that you and I have very differing views but I really get the sense and I understand that your passion is for the actionable child and I appreciate that and I genuinely wish that there were more people that had that same passion because our current system for maternal newborn Child Care would be completely different there we strongly agree right and that's your more pro-life course than pro-life and I appreciate that and I think that is also a huge distinction that we need to start making in this country this is great and unfortunately we're sort of coming to the end of our time um I I don't want to dip into the Q a time too much because I know we have a lot of good questions lined up so I want to ask sort of by way of closing if you could reflect a little bit on what people of Faith should be doing in this critical moment to support women and pregnant people and maybe we'll start with Ruth well yes I agree with everything that you've said um I believe that people have faith should always be involved in supporting other humans and Justice causes and causes that as you said we respect more life um I also don't want people of Faith to sort of operate under I think I think it's sometimes people who have been an idealistic we all do this over different things like an idealistic perspective on something and say well you know yeah because we we should absolutely you know never allow abortion because every child should be cared for completely by the state by the government um I'm the I'm the sort of the cynic I guess who pushes back my friend once said that's my job is to kind of look at things and poke holes in it um and says okay but we don't live in that Ideal World yet um and so I I what role faith has I mean I think Faith should always be involved um in Justice causes but I think Faith should also um advocate for the vulnerable and I think we probably have extremely different definitions of who the vulnerable are in those case um in yeah um and I think ensure I I guess what I'm trying to say is I think that Faith members to me most importantly should keep themselves in check frankly yeah so from an advocacy standpoint doing some journalist advocacy so we can do this together I'm just kidding that was horrible but my job really would love me to plug our faith-rooted Advocates network but I think it's be engaged like don't I think be curious do this have these debates have these discussions um and also try to understand that your lived experience um especially if you're a male is going to be vastly different than the lived experience of a woman which is also going to be vastly different than the experience of a black woman of a native woman of a Hispanic woman of a Latino woman I think that people of Faith what they really need to be doing right now is because Dobbs has decided there's like you know we certainly have legislation but it's not going to pass in probably the next five to ten years based on the current makeup so we really need to be focusing again on sharing up our maternal newborn and Child Care Systems now that abortion is you know not the law of the land at least federally and it's really truly become a state's rights issue how are you pushing your States how are you getting involved in your state and local governments and your National governments to look at maternal care if anyone is in Mississippi or Alabama y'all need to be emailing you'll need to be calling your members and asking why have you not expanded Medicaid in my state and they're rural hospitals that are closing which is undoubtedly going to kill a bunch of children so don't sit here and tell me that you're pro-life if you're not willing to create the systems that are actually going to create life in there and so the extent to which we can then again follow or at least really honor that first zero to three and create systems of care that are going to do that that's great I would also really get engaged in the current debate right now because we are facing massive cuts to programs that individuals rely on Snap Medicaid hey we don't even have paid family leave right to the extent to which you guys can again Lobby your state and local legislators your National members of Congress and say okay bet we don't have jobs this is what we need is going to be incredibly effective and you speak to it from a face space be like if you want to talk about honoring life if you want to be about it then do it don't again Serena Williams the fact that she was almost died because of inadequate care and she had to Advocate herself and there's a lot of racial undertones in that because our Medical Apartheid system is very dangerous for black and brown people like that should not be a thing and so pay attention to what is actually happening with women also understand that as a woman or as a primary caregiver that zero to three child is entirely dependent on you so stop assuming that it's just child care and maternal care and think about again the Continuum of Care between the person and create those systems and demand those systems for individuals um so that way again if we want to talk about being pro-life then we actually are a pro-life country regardless of faith belief I really like that last point because of course a child isn't viable when it's born nothing magically happens and they're incredibly dependent on their family they can't survive they can't eat they can't talk they can't advocate for themselves like no a child is no less connected to their mother and father after they're born than they were before and they require an intense outpouring support during pregnancy and afterwards because of that dependency and need on the policy level I'm Pro direct Universal unconditional cash transfers to parents um with as few bureaucratic hurdles as possible because the more kind of barriers you put up to qualify the more the people who are neediest are the ones who can't get over them and the people like me who have the Leisure Time and the privilege to get over them are the ones who get the benefits on the interpersonal level no I think it's hard to build a society that responds with love to the needs of others when we're ashamed of being needy so one thing I try and do is that when I'm with someone else you know who's a Christian or someone else who's religious of any other Faith who I think would be open to it is I try not to part from the friend without asking and is there anything I can pray for for you and it's really surprising I can spend an hour with a friend talking about our lives and only hear the thing that's most important to them at the end when I ask because we're ashamed of telling people things we struggle with that we think they can't help with and it's only when the door is open to prayer that we say well actually you know my mom's going in for a second mammogram and I don't know what's going to happen or you know I'm failing this class or I'm afraid of something and it's because we kind of know it can be turned over to God we're able to bring it to our friend and I'd really encourage you to share something that you need that you're a little ashamed of needing with someone because we have a culture that doesn't trust need that despises the needy that's afraid of having someone depend on us if we can't support them and therefore wants them to go away and you know I'm just saying that times a few weeks ago there was a story about a man whose wife was in hospice care and he's out in California during the big snows and he couldn't dig out of his driveway and he visited her every day till the Snows and he spent two days digging till his hands bled before he posted to ask for help for anyone else to take him out and when he did he said he was ashamed that he had to ask we can't have a culture that values babies if we have a culture where men think that by asking for help to see their dying wife they've revealed that they're not a man or that there's something wrong with them and that kind of testimony comes person to person revealing your own need and seeing that as making you more connected to your friend rather than a bad friend to them any more than a child is a bad child for needing something of their mother wow thank you all so much I I just learned so much from the three of you and I'm sure the audience did as well I think we have some questions cued out yes we have quite a few questions this is from somebody in the room um this person wants to know for all of the panelists when do you think Life Begins they were like they're getting along too well that's so I guess I'll take it because um this is actually a complicated question because I see like there's a scientific explanation and then for me there's a spiritual explanation um I actually happen even though I mean I guess you would brand me pro-choice and I need to make it clear that that is not necessarily the position of my organization what I have said is all Lauren and only Lauren so don't get me fired um I honestly think that life begins at conception from a spiritual perspective because well God has created this moment and he has planned this person to be alive and so this has happened life is there from a scientific perspective I understand that there is some distinction between a zygote and an actual fetus however for me once normally get technical once the egg and the sperm come together and they form this new mass of cells this is a living cell body it might not necessarily be a life but it is a living cell body and so this for me is very complicated when you talk about abortion because um I I don't want to use the term murder but you are ending a life right um and so that I realize that it's a bit complicated and I'm sure people can be like you are talking crazy but that is just my very own personal um position that I've made based on my own sort of research and yeah this is where we're more in sync I'm also going to say at conception you know it's the first moment when the child is distinct a distinct person um not a part of the mother and the father as they were as an egg in a particular sperm cell and one thing that I found pretty powerful is I'd heard a lot of pro-life arguments while I was per choice that kind of were framed through well when does the child look like a person um you know what is it when the baby goes from having kind of flipper hands to distinct Fingers um is it when the child can hear is it a certain capacity and I heard someone else make a different argument which is you know at six weeks at eight weeks it's not the child has gotten closer to looking human that's what a human looks like at six weeks old that's what a human looks like at eight weeks old at some point as we wrap up my daughter's going to come back who's one year old she looks different than me she has capacities that are different than mine and she's not getting close enough to be human to be rounded up she looks like what a one-year-old looks like and a psycho looks like what a person looks like when they're a zygote's age so um it's funny because I on the one hand I agree life begins at conception um I have two caveats to that the one the first is well what's being conceived um I mean we've talked a little bit about this and we're maybe going to share I've conceived four pregnancies that resulted in miscarriage um and we're never viable um you know we tested one of them it was a whole Gobbledy book of chromosomes as a disaster right but I was pregnant for a couple weeks well was it alive I mean I don't think so it was just going through an automatic process of cell division until my body accurately said this isn't going anywhere um and and did the pregnancy was that life no I don't think so uh certainly know how I think of it and I think that one thing we have to be so careful about is we've gone to equate a pregnancy with life um and I think women who have miscarried especially those of us repeatedly like it's just not true I mean there I've been pregnant many times when I just roll my eyes I'm like okay waiting for this one you know like getting in a month it'll be done don't worry there's more to talk about there but like um but but you know yeah I I so I think it's very problematic I think also the distinction however that is required for a Jewish perspective is it's not a question just about life but about life that is equal to human life especially um in comparison to the mother so I'll give an example there's a mishnah which is a text that's 2 000 years old that says if a woman is in labor and struggling in her life is at risk you can go in I mean whether or not this is realistic is a different story but there's a lot of their discussions were more hypothetical theoretical let's say and chop up the baby limb by limb and remove it in order to save her life however once that baby's head has emerged from her then even if it's just the head or some say the majority of the body then all bets are off they're both equal life at that point now you could argue well what if that's a matter of an hour and of course in modern day like you know there's no real distinction because of course we can just you know have um emergency C-sections and what have you but I think what the rabbis here are really trying to tease out is that they weren't really sure exactly when a embryo a fetus becomes a independent human being um and so I think that that you know so so this whole the oversimplification of what when does Life begin life begins at conception if it's a healthy fetus um it's a healthy set of genes however it is not from at least a Jewish perspective a human life on equivalent and at the same level of Holiness and dignity as a pre-existing human until it can prove until it emerges into the actual physical world and I you know I pity the soul of the person who has to argue that in court but um you know because that's complicated but I think that that's that you know that's important but I think you have an ally on that on Peter Singer right because his argument is until a person can prove that their independent healthy can develop you know they don't have the presumption of dignity and that's why he argues that it should be legal for parents to kill their children up to four months after birth if they're disabled because these argument is that there isn't that proof right there you go that if we judge human life by that proof of worth that's not a given and it shouldn't be a given after birth so how do you how do you kind of weigh that kind of argument from him well I would have to think about that a lot more let's try to get a few more questions in here before we spend the whole time um to the points of class in the abortion debate revealed the limits of pluralist democracy at the end of the day don't we need a firm line on whether abortion is murder or not and I think I take that as asking you know we can have a civil disagreement but at the end of the day policy needs to be made and somebody's going to lose and can people get along with each other afterward foreign yes we do right because the stakes are High um and because the thing that I've kind of come to believe on both sides is that people are mostly arguing in good faith and trying to defend someone whose worth they think is threatened um and if I'm wrong about what a baby is then you should stop me right because then I'm endangering people who are actual people for the sake of people who aren't and if you're wrong about who people are then I should stop you um because you're endangering people who are actually people and lying to their parents about who their children are and the stakes of their decision they're making this isn't an easy difference to live alongside each other in a pluralistic society when you do the polls is there probably National support for a ban after the first trimester with certain exceptions yes would anyone be very happy with that even if you could Cobble together a coalition no this is something where we have to really work through the specific philosophical questions till we can conquer each other by both submitting to the truth there's a there's an early Christian martyr who talks about his gratitude for having been defeated in debate because it's by being conquered that he is the Victor and it's only by coming to know and live in the truth whichever it is and whichever of us needs to lose that we can live a full human life and I think what I really trust among everyone in this panel is that everyone here has a real heart for the vulnerable and the way I feel about like my previous donations to Planned Parenthood is that I made a wrong choice right I did something with good intentions that hurt people um and I'm grateful for folks who tried to stop me from a purely political science um standpoint I think that the current debate on abortion is exactly the function of what a pluralist democracy is like so what we're doing here is like I don't say like it was all designed but like this is exactly how it's supposed to work out and I think that in the case of abortion because we're not just talking about you know an allocation of resources or programs we're again talking about people's lives um it's it's going to be a lot sticky I don't I quite frankly I don't know if we as a country will ever um come to a general consensus on on this because again as we've shown views are so different however I will say that I think that um if we are a society um are going to be a society where abortion is a reality that there should be at least some restrictions and not to prevent abortion but to ensure that the health of the mother and the child is always protected and that medically the procedures are ethical and that people are not um yeah that's that's a good one but I just I for me it's just kind of a function of our democracy would I love the law to be different right now yes but it's part of the game right and I think every time a law is overturned or every time changes in society are made some people see that as a step back but I think almost yours you can take two steps back and ten steps forward and I think what we're doing now is having going back to some of these similar debates and having the same discussions that folks are having um when Roe was decided and I think we're trying to understand as a country what it means to Value life and then what that then means in policy and so I think that this is just a natural inflection point in pluralist democracy it's a function of it and I think it's how it continues to perpetuate because we're consistently talking about ideas and consistently ensuring that no one super majority or no one minority group has is making choices for the majority all right um the church has throughout its history focused on charity it views the poor the marginalized as just as human as the well-off does it line up with this aspect of church teaching to end the life of a human just because it may be a difficult life I think this question is getting at abortion in cases of financial difficulty if Christianity values the poor then is it right to end a life just because it might be poor yeah no that's and I don't I guess maybe I'm feeling a bit of transference because I feel like I may have misstated something I do not believe actually I'm gonna take a breath does anyone else want to answer that one my answer is yeah I'm not Christian yeah that's a hard one you mind actually repeating that um the question is if the church has a history of being focused on charity and valuing the poor um is it right to end a life or determinate a pregnancy just because of financial difficulty yeah um no and that's just my personal opinion no you should not I mean and that is where again why are people being put in a position to make that choice so that it takes away from all these people are doing this because they just want a baby and they're irresponsible to what are all of the factors that are going into that and that is again gets to the fact that um making that choice about pregnancy and your reproductive health and abortion is a very individual personal choice that's contextual and situational and so but no you should not abort a child because you don't have the resources and as a society we should do better that way people aren't put in that position all right this is from somebody on Zoom um the question is should men get a vote on abortion or maybe should men be part of the discussion maybe that's on us for how we compose the panel they already are yeah I think they shouldn't get a vote on it because it shouldn't happen right um but I think there's a real I think there's a real danger for men specifically we talk about why is this a men's issue as well as a woman's issue aside from the fact that some babies are men um you know I think it's a real tragedy that men who you know have passing relationships including in college right including you know on this campus will father children without knowing that they're fathers and we'll maybe learn later in life that they lost a child without ever knowing that child while they were alive I think men dominate the debate already I mean look at the makeup of Congress look at the makeup of our Supreme Court the decision was largely made by older white males who will never get pregnant who have probably gotten someone pregnant and told them to not have that baby as well that definitely happens because some of the largest some of the loudest pro-life voices in at least high school we were having this debate would also then talk about all the abortions that they'd had so you know there I think in this debate we should lean more on women because it is our lived experience and so when it comes to defining a problem and finding the solutions it's best to look to the people with that actual lived experience and I think the debate is very I mean it's very clearly about males because we don't even talk about how much pregnancy is actually a trauma to the body and we talk about that in global Health we say labor delivery and pregnancy is a trauma to the body people make pregnancy out to be like this great thing and it is amazing but your your organs are shifting up things are changing people have have broken hips in the middle of delivery people have permanent disabilities because of delivery and so I think you're not going to ever get that perspective if you don't ever have to go through that and I'm quite frankly I'm probably not even qualified because to my knowledge I've never been pregnant and I certainly have never given birth so there's limitations on my ability to put input because I would put those who have children who have gone through that experience before my own as really sort of the test case as to what should be happening I think everybody should be part of the debate um I I don't see this as being exclusively a women's issue at all um and I think that everyone needs to just be informed um I've seen plenty of men and I'm sure women toss around terms like I don't know late term abortion or this or that that they don't even know what they mean or what they're talking about um and just make all the kinds of just like ridiculous assumptions but I don't think that like if you're a woman you're automatically like know how to talk about if your man you automatically are not to me that's just more of an issue of um hopefully generational male entitlement of knowledge okay well we have a hard question at the end um this is from a zoom panelist um they were curious what the panel thinks about abortion in the case of pregnancies resulting from rape I can start that one I feel like okay yeah um so so like I said earlier the what's become I think more of the the dominant line of thinking within Jewish law is that if it is for the sake of the health of the mother abortion is permissible um not required right that would be like well I'll get to that in a second required to be like a very a more tangible thing and I think we tend to associate more tangible Health threats with physical health as opposed to mental health um also hopefully one day that will change but for now that's where we are um but the definition of meant the women's um health is pretty expansive does include physical health and also does include mental health um I'm sure there are rabbis out there who would say that in the case of rainbow woman should not terminate um but I believe and know that there are many who would and that's certainly something I would support I have been raped twice in high school actually After High School I would have loved to at least have had the choice to make a decision because of caring my rapist child is unbearable it's unbearable and not only that I don't think people really think about what that does to a child to process that that is your origin story and not only that what does that do to that child but what does that do to family members I know someone who's very close to me whose mother was raped when she was 15. and it resulted in a pregnancy typical Catholic household in the 70s anyway so Roe was a little murky so she had the baby her as a 15 year old like just being pregnant and a conservative household was hell in and of itself and then she had the child okay and having that child was able she never stopped being a mom even though she gave the child up for adoption and then you think about that the other children that she had and how that knowledge what that knowledge has done to them and then knowing that they have a sibling out there that they may or may not ever meet and there's a hesitancy to even reach out to that sibling because what if that person does not know so then that person's life is impacted because they may want to know someone but they can't and then there's also just that other just there's just so much I think women should have that choice regardless of what I think because it's carrying something for a child for 10 months and it's constant knowledge God forbid any of you all have ever been raped those memories don't go away they don't stop and they're bottom have you ever heard of trauma keeps the score there are moments sometimes when I'm in certain situations where I may have a flashback I am 38 this happened when I was 18. you have to think about what you are doing to people not just physically but psychologically emotionally and you have to understand it it's not just a choice for them it's a choice that impacts their families and impacts any children that they may have it impacts future Generations and so yes in that moment should a woman have the right to choose for herself and for other people absolutely absolutely because she didn't have a choice when the incident happened to her so damn it give her some agency over her body in this moment and give her the opportunity to feel like she has everything that she needs to survive and thrive after this because I will tell you just because you have an abortion doesn't mean that you're a heartless person that will also live and stick with you forever because every year and I'm not saying the system I've never had an abortion myself but every year when you talk to women they're women that still have birthdays for their child it doesn't mean that they never wanted the child it just means that their circumstances were too great for me to understand in my seat and so they made that choice for themselves so absolutely yes absolutely yes yes yes why would you condemn a woman to carry a child from someone who forced themselves on why hey and why would you want that child to live with that knowledge of this is how I came to be do you understand the psychological damage that I can do to someone they could have all the thriving and all the amazing life but that one thing is going to be in their head and God forbid them they ever find their father think about that like life is not black and white life is complex people make hard decisions every day abortion is a hard decision so in that case why would you make someone's life even harder than it has to be give them the option to have a choice a choice yeah sorry I just learned how to cry in therapy I didn't do it for a long time so now the Waterworks are like oh can you teach me next then I really appreciate you making the gift of telling us that when that's a really hard thing and I'm so sorry um I think you know in a world where we believe a baby is a child where people believe that very strongly it's a less compelling choice in the case of rape um and I'll give an example of a different way of experiencing it but you know I think this is the case where the law is hardest um and where part of the question is what does it take to person to person have a conversation about the baby and the choice and what kind of Remedy is possible after such because I think what you're absolutely right on is it is a ongoing hardship right to to know intimately that you're connected to that person not just in the moment but through the child what I'll give is a a world that might be in the world I prefer is the one where people don't commit sexual people at all obviously but Amy Murphy who leads for humanized international conceived a child through rape and her rapist threatened her and said you know if you don't get rid of that I'll kill you and she said that was the moment she'd been trying to weigh what she wanted right like where she just thought I don't want my body to be a sight of violence anymore and I can't go back and stop that one um but I do have the power to stop this one and even if he hurt me then I'd be different from him um and I would have taken a chance for this child and I I don't expect that's a universally compelling pitch right but I think the question is where can we make a turn away from violence and where can we make it possible to heal and to meet people in their need after they've experienced severe violence is that it Nora do we want to do motion like just to wrap it up or it's up to you I how about one final question um is there what's your favorite food then I'd totally like I would just if there's only one way to interpret Faith how will we ever know what is the right way to think about abortion like how do you know if you were right about this decision can we know I think that this is also where it gets complicated because I believe that Jesus is savior I believe that God is God um very clear but I also can feed I could die and all of this could just be absolutely bull and I think that that is probably not a position a lot of people have um but it's just like you know I yeah there's no like it's just all like I everything that I could believe in like I could die and did Flying Spaghetti Monster could be real and I was totally wrong on that um but I think that's also just goes to the way in which I was taught I remember father Tucker um when I was in my catechism class said you know if you look around there's all different kinds of people there's Hindus there's Buddhists there's Jewish people there's Muslims there's atheists and don't you think in God's infinite wisdom that none of that is an accident who are you to say that all of these other individuals were created or weren't created for a reason and when he said that I was like oh one you're gonna get transferred out of this Parish so quickly bro and he was but it first father Tucker was not there next week but that for me father Tucker wherever you are I loved you you were awesome um but I think that for me was really transformational because it it changed my view that there is one right Faith or one right religion and opened me up to believe that maybe God is working through others for reasons that I'll never understand because I can't even get up out of bed on time so who am I to understand god um so I think that that's also informs my position on abortion is because I realize that again I have these very strong faith beliefs but I could be wrong and I also realized that God has created diversity for a reason so who am I to say that your faith beliefs are wrong when God made you that way I often see this as analogous to the other Transcendent source of Truth outside religion which is of course mathematics there are questions in mathematics that we don't have settled at the moment which doesn't mean that it's not the case already before or not we construct the proof that the Riemann hypothesis either is or is not true what we don't have yet is our bridge to find out like from here from what we know now how we figure out what is true so we can be uncertain or divided from each other but what's true is true without our knowing it or having reached it yet it's what we're building towards and then for the question of how do we sort out what's true when we feel conflict within ourselves or when we have conflict with others I think one of the best things to do is to find a friend who you disagree with but you trust in their good faith and read and talk together and go back to your own sources um and I think what's also helpful to kind of translate back and forth from you know the specific pace you're fighting over and look at other kind of related questions and keep sifting as though you're going okay well you know if we change it this way does that flip what do you think yo okay well I care about the vulnerable in this way but not here okay well I don't how do I reconcile these two things and for me that's a large part of what informs my understanding here because I look around at the way we respond to vulnerability weakness lack of capacity and I see allies in many places on the pro-choice side who look at pressure for euthanasia for the disabled who look at you know shoddy care in nursing homes for the elderly who speak up for women because women are disabled by pregnancy just like you were saying and I say well look like we're very close to agreement in some ways and we've got to push a little harder on what makes this case different which of us is wrong is the vulnerability of a baby like the vulnerability of someone who's elderly or is it different is you know just taking away or ending the life of someone whose quality of life you're not sure of merciful or eugenicist let's push on these examples both in our present day and I I guess my actual piece of uh advice is it's really helpful to read outside your time it's helpful to read debates from outside your time and see kind of how people have handled these questions at a lot of different times it can help you get out of a rut where you're going through the same arguments again and again Moment by moment with a friend now and you can start to have a different argument and Jog something loose and to read outside your time on this issue I'd recommend Defenders Of The Unborn a history of the pro-life movement before Roe because I think it kind of scrambles the sides in many ways of people who we'd expect if they were born today would take a different perspective than they did then and it's a good place to start a conversation about how did each of us end up on opposite sides now so I think that's a good place to oh sorry Ruth finally that's final pick words okay very quick um so I think that um as a the only way in this country that I'm a minority is religious um and uh because I have white skin privilege and socioeconomic privilege um I think that this this the events of the past year have really made me feel in the first time in this country um that I could not be safe um I don't mean safe like you know walk outside but safe like go to a hospital not be able to be cared for in a way that would save my life um and that to me is an indicator of a society that's doing something wrong the end I want to thank all of our panelists for for your candor this evening it's been a really wonderful discussion I really appreciate um everything that you've shared um I have a couple of quick announcements before we close I want to let you know that a recording of tonight's event will be made available on the PPD YouTube channel in the next few days um so look there if you'd like to catch it and if you have an unused note card please give it to a staff member on your way out finally there will be pizza for students on the patio thank you

Channel: UNC Program for Public Discourse

Views: 298

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Id: N9G8baDzEOY

Length: 90min 13sec (5413 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023