Speech by The Very Rev. Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale

Speech by

The Very Rev. Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale

Jane Fund Event, Worcester, MA
Jan. 24, 2010

Someone sent me an e-mail about this event saying that she was looking forward to being in a room with so many like-hearted people. I agree; it is very good to be here. But I must confess that I arrive angry and fed up.

It's the 37th anniversary of Roe. We should simply be celebrating: celebrating the women and men who had to fight to give women full access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; celebrating the gains women have made -- the things we have been able to accomplish -- in our families, our careers, our communities, and ministries -- once we were given access to adequate health care and freedom from slavery to our reproductive systems.

Or maybe we wouldn't be celebrating. Maybe by now we would take for granted such basic freedom, equality, and decency -- being unable really to remember or imagine when anyone could have suggested that heterosexual women must either deny their sexuality or take their chances -- that women's health and very lives could be a bargaining chip for some guy's political agenda.

That's where we should be 37 years later. Instead, we find ourselves watching decades of progress melt away like the blackened snow on our roadsides.

What happened?!

I'm afraid we helped do this to ourselves. Shortsighted political strategies have, in the long run, come back to bite us.

I want to say more about that, but allow me a minute to set the stage first.

Last March I was named President and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School -- and the international blogosphere, local press, and far-flung smaller presses went ballistic. The Board of Trustees and seminary community had been prepared for an uproar over my sexuality, but what they didn't realize is that homophobia is really just a byproduct of misogyny. There was some brouhaha about my being a lesbian. Fred Phelps and crew used all the alliterative pejoratives they could come up with when they came to protest. But the real issue -- the one that caught the headlines -- was my pro-choice work. One small paper headline read - "EDS Appoints Lying, Baby-Killing Witch." My staff at PRA had that one turned into a laminated nameplate for my new desk.

Shortly after EDS appointed me George Tiller was murdered. In the press, and at the service in Boston, I called him a saint and martyr. They grabbed hold of that, and a speech they found online in which I called abortion is a blessing, and went to town.

So, let's talk about those two things...

I said, in Birmingham Alabama, at a rally at the end of the successful clinic defense, that we do ourselves a self-destructive disservice when we talk about abortion as a tragedy.

When a woman gets pregnant against her will and wants an abortion -- it's the violence that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.
When a woman might want to bear and raise a child but fears she can't afford to because she doesn't have access to healthcare or daycare or enough income to provide a home -- it's the lack of justice that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.
When a woman has planned and provided for a pregnancy, decorated the nursery and chosen a name, and, in the last weeks, discovers that her fetus will not live to become a baby, that it has anomalies incompatible with life, and that preserving her own life and health, and sparing the fetus suffering, require a late-term abortion -- it's the loss of her hopes and dreams that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.
And, and here's one that really gets me in trouble, when a woman simply gets pregnant unintentionally and decides this is not a good time for her to bear and care for a child -- there is no tragedy. The ability to enjoy healthy sexuality without risking a pregnancy that could derail her education or career, the development or exercise of the gifts God has given her, is a blessing.

Now just in case there are any aspiring headline writers listening -- let me be clear -- motherhood also is a gift and a ministry and a blessing -- but not for everyone, and not always right now.

And while we're on the subject of the nature of blessing, let me say a word about the idiots who have responded to my assertion that abortion is a blessing by saying, "clearly I would, therefore, will not be satisfied until everyone has one -- perhaps everyone has many. Because, of course we all want to be richly blessed." One word comes to mind in response to this -- anesthesia. I don't do well with anesthesia. I wake up feeling really sick and I generally have an anesthesia hangover that lasts for days. A couple of months ago I had emergency gallbladder surgery. I hate anesthesia, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is a blessing. I hope never to have to have it again and I wouldn't wish it on anyone -- unless they need it; then, it's a blessing. Imagine the alternative.

Similarly, last week someone dear to me and my community died. Once he started to decline he went very quickly. Someone in his family mentioned to me what a blessing it was that he had gone so fast and so peacefully. I replied that it was, indeed, but that some blessings are hard to take.

Abortion is a blessing -- sometimes a joyful relief; sometimes a painful choice -- but a blessing still.

Why is that so hard to see? How can anyone not understand that unless women can control our reproductive lives we can't control our economic lives either, we can't be fully functioning members of the commonwealth or stewards of the gifts God has given us unless we can decide when or if to have children?

I have been stunned, since all the uproar, to hear self-described feminists -- feminists -- say, "oh, abortion is always a morally complex tragedy but it's sometimes a necessary evil and so must remain legal." Is it any surprise that people are becoming less and less willing to call themselves pro-choice if even feminists are lamenting a necessary evil rather than celebrating a means to our own liberation and empowerment?

How did this happen? I fear we did it to ourselves. In our quite understandable and commendable desire to build broad alliances that enable us to win the votes we need to keep abortion legal and accessible we've tried to be conciliatory. "We'll agree that abortion is a tragedy -- an evil even -- if you agree that it's sometimes the lesser of two evils and so help keep it legal." An effective short-term strategy, but potentially devastating in the long term.

Look, the only way abortion is a tragedy or an evil is if a fertilized egg is a baby. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that (and they're entitled to) but science doesn't, most theologies don't, and common sense doesn't. Why should we believe that? Yet every time we called abortion a tragedy we reiterate the position that a zygote is a human being of equal moral standing with a woman. We create an antiabortion climate and I fear it has come back to bite us.

It is only this that makes it possible for people to be as outraged as many have been by the characterization of George Tiller as a saint and martyr. Dr. Tiller -- like most if not all people who work in clinics that provide abortions -- did difficult, demanding, and dangerous work under constant threat, harassment, and terrorism. He did it even though he could make more money doing easier, and certainly safer, work. He did it because he believed it was the right thing to do. It was his ministry. He spent and gave his life on behalf of others. That's a saint and martyr. The only reason anyone could question that is if they thought abortion was a bad thing. The only way they can think that if they believe a fertilized egg is a baby. And we contribute to that when ever we try to compromise and be conciliatory by calling abortion a tragedy.

There is a not dissimilar dynamic at work in our LGBTQ rights struggle. We got a lot of political capital with the gay gene search and the "we can't help it. Who would choose this?" claim. Who would choose this? Me! In a New York minute, me! Would I become straight if I could? Not a chance! I can only hope my straight sisters and brothers are as happy with their place on the continuum as I am with mine. I'm not changing.

How about if instead of pleading that we can't help it and, therefore, should not be persecuted we instead assert that this is a good way of being, deserving of equal standing with other ways of being?

Our words matter. Our strategies matter -- not only in their short-term efficacy but in their long term consequences. We have to play hard and play smart.

We need to think farther down the road than the next bill in front of us. But that's hard to do. We see the suffering and we know that each, individual, bill we face has the potential to help -- to mitigate that suffering a bit -- to staunch the bleeding. But we must also keep the long view. Ultimately, our goal must be not better bandages but fewer injuries.

We must create a climate where to deny women life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness is unthinkable. We must create a climate where abortion is not only a legal, safe, accessible, affordable option for every woman but where she can take advantage of that option without risking socially imposed guilt.

It's time to be angry -- be fed up -- to refuse to be nice. To eschew conciliation. To refuse to bargain with evil in the hope it will agree to play fair and hurt us a little less. It won't. Every bit of ground we cede becomes its foothold for the next assault. Enough. It's time for moral outrage, righteous indignation -- paired with smart, long-view political strategizing.

These times demand our best.
The best care our providers can offer.
The best politics are strategists can coordinate.
The best grounding our ethicists philosophers, theologians, and visionaries can provide.
The combined strengths of every one of our voices -- refusing to allow women to be demeaned, trivialized, left to struggle, suffer, even die.

They demand our moral outrage.

Enough.

No more.