Q Panel Discusses Contraception and Abortion

Julia Polese
June 27, 2012

National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson has come under criticism for accepting a reported $1 million grant from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which is itself funded by the pro-choice Hewlett Foundation. Funding from this grant facilitated an NAE panel on reducing abortion at the April 2012 “Q” forum in Washington, D.C. for mostly young evangelicals. Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign, was one of four panelists. Almost the entire discussion focused on providing contraceptives.  Afterwards a well-publicized poll of “Q” participants showed nearly two thirds affirming the church should approve contraceptives for unmarried people. The panel is transcribed below.

Reducing Abortion – Q Panel

Rebekah Lyons, Moderator

Jenell Williams Paris, Professor of Anthropology, Messiah College

Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Angie Weszely, President of Caris, a faith-based nonprofit providing support to all women facing unplanned pregnancies

Johnny Carr, National Director of Church Partnerships for Bethany Christian Services

LYONS: Good morning. Thank you so much for taking the time. This is such a big topic right now and I’m so grateful for you guys being here. We want to just kind of set the stage for this is where we sit today, 2012. Just this morning in the USA Today [sic] Sarah Brown is quoted that teenage pregnancies that come to term at birth are at an all-time low so this issue is not a teenage pregnancy issue. It has become a young professional issue. In their twenties and it’s happening in our churches so as we see almost one-third of unplanned pregnancies in our churches are ending in abortion so what do we do with that? So we’re going to go ahead start with a brief intro of each person and their work and then we’re going to start with some questions. Go ahead, Jenell.

PARIS: Good morning, I’m Jenell Paris. I’m a professor at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I used to be a fertility awareness instructor, I wrote a book about birth control. Most recently, I wrote a book about sexual identity called The End of Sexual Identity. So gender and sexuality are big issues for me and abortion is part of that.

BROWN: Good morning, my name is Sarah Brown. I’m the co-founder and current CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Our group is about 15 years old and we have focused on these issues of teenagers getting pregnant and young adult women as well and I appreciate, Rebekah, your pointing out that the teen birthrate has gone down 44% since the early nineties, so I thank everybody whose helped in that campaign and the teens of America, in particular, who are making extraordinary progress in this area.

WESZLEY: Hi, I’m Angie Weszely. I’m president of Caris which is a Christian pregnancy counseling agency in Chicago and we’ve really been on a journey of changing the way we think about why women have abortions. Through social science research we’ve learned that really the emotional driver behind so many abortions is the stigma and the shame around the unplanned pregnancy and so we’ve redeveloped our programs to be all about providing acceptance and support to women which we’re finding is what gives them hope and just recently we have begun testing some resources and programs for churches to be able do the same.

CARR: I’m Johnny Carr. I’m the National Director of Church Partnerships at Bethany Christian Services. We are the largest adoption agency in the United States.  We have offices in 85 cities. We also do a lot of pregnancy counseling locally in all of our offices. My wife and I have two children born to us and three that were adopted. I’ve also served as a pastor. Going through this adoption process has really helped me to refocus and relook at this whole issue of abortion and unplanned pregnancies.

LYONS: Great, so, thank you guys so much for being here. We’re going to start with prevention and care and the first two questions are kind of going to be more along the lines of prevention and then we’re going to talk about care and we’re going to come back around. Jenell, you’ve spent countless hours on this topic. Your recent book, The End of Sexual Identity. Where do you think the church’s role fits in where we sit right now and how they can engage this topic?

PARIS: So I’ve taught fertility awareness. I’ve also written about birth control. But I also have three children so I think pregnancy is great. Preventing it? Also great. And that’s key to reducing abortion. I think this cultural moment calls for a both/and moment that I think can be challenging for churches. Both lift up the ideal of premarital chastity and support people who do otherwise with knowledge and resources that can help them prevent pregnancy. If that sounds like a compromise, it is, kind of, but consider the word compromise. “Com” means with: community, communion. To promise. So compromise means to promise or agree or make a deal with another person. If you want to be alone and be right, go ahead, but your promises won’t mean much. To promise or agree or work with another, that’s compromise. It’s not that bad. The bigger picture though is a renewed theology of sex in the church. What could that mean? It could mean pausing to consider this both/and approach; both uplift perfect ideals and incarnate God’s love in the real, complex lives that we’re living. Or thinking about celibacy, abstinence and repentance as something more than just an absence or a void or a not doing. Think about the bodies of knowledge and the robust practices that we should honor that are part of celibacy or abstinence. The morality and legality of abortion will continue to be areas of disagreement among Christians but abortion reduction is a huge arena of common ground. It’s the work of reconciliation. And it’s why I partner with the Generation Forum on this work. Because in a pluralist society, working together on common ground is a beautiful, holy and productive path.

LYONS: Thanks. Sarah, expounding on this with contraception in the church in this discussion this is a highly debatable issue. Why do you think contraception is a pivotal part of reducing abortion?

BROWN: Well, I appreciate the question. Let’s start by reviewing of what we know about the women in America who obtain abortions. We have about 1.2 million abortions each year in this country, about 85% of these are to unmarried women. Note this also means a 15% are to married women, and fewere than 20% are to teens. This is largely a problem of young adults, about 20 to 30, unmarried. Virtually all of these abortions – these 1.2 – are sought by women who will tell you that at the time they became pregnant, they didn’t want to. We call these unplanned or unintended pregnancies. So if we want to prevent abortion, reduce abortion, which absolutely is a widely shared value in this country, we have to focus in on unmarried young women and their partners, about 19 or 20 to about 30. That’s the target group. We have to focus on the ones who are having sex because they’re the ones who are getting pregnant, to your question. [Laughter] I always say the numerator here is the people who are having sex and not using contraception carefully. That’s who’s contributing to this large pool. So there’re really only two ways then to go about this in sort of a biological sense, not that that’s all that’s of concern, but let’s just get the facts straight. We can indeed focus on encouraging these young women and their partners who are unmarried to not have premarital sex. It’s sort of the less sex approach. But please understand that about three quarters of young evangelical Christians report that they have had premarital sex. This is not 2% or 8%, it’s about three quarters. Sort of depends which survey and how you ask the question but the majority, it is safe to say, easily, of unmarried evangelical Christians in their twenties, men and women, have had premarital sex. So we could probably get that number down a bit through your work [Angie] and through that of others. It’s a tough culture, but it is possible. The other approach is for those who are having sex, for them to not get pregnant and that requires use of contraception or some method – and there are many, there are about 18 different methods of contraception – in some sort of biological sense. Those are the two ways we can go about it. Now I suspect – last comment – I think I’m safe in saying in this room the vast majority of you prefer the first approach: reducing premarital sex. I think that’s a very good idea. It has a lot of support. For those who are having sex and are unavailable to that message, we have to talk about contraception. I understand that might be choice number two not one but here’s the thought experiment. Here’s the question. Isn’t it better for unmarried, sexually active young people to use contraception than to not use it, experience a distressing pregnancy, and elect abortion? It’s a difficult choice, it’s a difficult question, but I think that’s what we have to ask ourselves.

LYONS: Sarah, thanks. I think the tension that many of us feel in the church especially is so goes the culture, the narrative, it’s more compelling, it’s more sexy so then we, as believers, still follow that and we still find that and we see that the trending of unplanned pregnancies is still following the narrative that is happening in culture. And so, as a pastor I can imagine, don’t people in their twenties if they choose to have sex outside of marriage, don’t they know about contraception, what is the church’s responsibility even to engage that. That would be the question.

BROWN: Well, you know we, there’s actually been quite a bit of research done on what young adults do know about contraception. I’ve been working in this field for over forty years now, I’m a dinosaur now. It’s remarkable how little we know about it. I mean, young adults – I’m not talking about 14 year olds –but young adults who are 23, 28 they’re very, very confused about contraception. And part of the reason I think is that as a culture we don’t talk much about it. Family planning is confused with abortion. Prevention is confused with intervention. People are immensely afraid of contraception. They know more about side effects than they do about benefits. So we have an entire culture that, as you point out, is highly sexualized, but, in fact, quite ignorant about consequences, prevention, risks and so forth. And I think all of us who have worked in this field do wish that the culture were less crude and certainly do wish that there were less multiple sexual partners in your twenties, bar scene, and so forth, but we, in the face of this have been unable to talk about contraception in a very straightforward, useful way. Remember, 15% of abortions are to married women. This is not just young adults. This is a large problem in the culture. One half of pregnancies in the US – there are about 6 million a year – one half, women themselves say were unexpected, unplanned and unintended. This is higher than any other developed country in the world.

LYONS: Thanks, Sarah. Let’s move on to care. OK, so the church’s role in addressing the issue that this is happening and then when it is out that they are pregnant how are we caring for them as a church, how are we raising the bar on that? Angie, could you start with your work and then I want to move on to Johnny.

WESZELY: Sure, and that’s the population we serve: women who are already facing an unplanned pregnancy and we wanted to know how we could reduce abortion in a way that was very respectful and Christ-like. So we did this social science research and the results surprised even our research firm when it came back. This overwhelming sense of “My life is over, I’m not the person I thought I was,” a complete identity shift that really helped us understand that, you know, we as Christians have a wonderful answer to that in our grace theology. And so, If we will provide this acceptance and support – we’ve been testing this about three years – what happens is the vast majority of women decide on their own to continue their pregnancy regardless of if they were considering abortion before so that had us thinking we’re one small organization, you know, we’re seeing these great results, but what’s really going to change is if the whole Christian community, if our churches, could begin to have that type of outreach. And so that’s what we’ve begun testing recently, actually kind of a two streams to that, what churches can do. The first is to look at our culture, create a culture within our churches that is all about acceptance and support if you’re facing an unplanned pregnancy and we’ve asked our clients “would you go to a group at a church?” cause that sounds like a great idea and they’re like “absolutely not I know how those people think of me. I know how they feel about me. That’s the last place I’d go.” So first having resources for our leadership to say “Are we safe and welcoming? Do we have a grace theology around unplanned pregnancy and abortion?” And then secondly, from there, having actual programs that we can do that we’re figuring out how can we reach out to women who are facing an unplanned pregnancy and let them know they’re welcome and have programs and groups that will support them not just while they’re making a decision but far beyond which we all know having a child is life-changing for a long time.

LYONS: Johnny, thanks for bearing with all the women on this stage. Representing the men you’ve done so much to normalize adoption in the Christian community, especially, your work is just especially in the last few years. Tell me how you see just the normalization of adoption helping decrease the number of abortions.

CARR: Well, we’ve been seeing some exciting things happen in the church. You hit the right word there, “normalize.” When I was a kid I had two cousins who were adopted. They knew they were adopted we knew they were adopted but God forbid if we ever said it, you know, to anybody at Christmas or anything like that. We just never talked about it. Last night, we were out getting ice cream and the lady serving our ice cream said “Are your kids adopted?” And I said “Well yes they are!” Of course they don’t look like me and so it’s kind of obvious, but it’s celebrated now. And that’s the culture change that’s seen happening in the church with this adoption and orphan care movement that’s really moving through churches right now. And as I said earlier, even through my experience of adoption and going through that, ours was not through private adoption here in the United States – one was foster care, the other two were international  – but even going through that has helped change my perspective and has changed  my view of unintended pregnancies and unplanned pregnancies even as a pastor. And so, we’ve seen that as the water has risen all the ships rise and we’re watching now people have more concern and more care and want to reach out because we know, exactly as you [Angie] have said, women have come- they don’t want to come to their church, and that’s a sad thing.

LYONS: And so, what studies are showing right now is that 18,000 children are placed in adoption while there are 1.2 million abortions. So this is a vast expanse. What do you see the role for the church, the responsibility, the charge that we have before us knowing these numbers?

CARR: Yeah, well, we’ve got to take the shame factor out somehow. In our fight against abortion as evangelicals we created a culture within our churches that has made it so unwelcoming. I’m working on a book right now and I have a chapter on abortion and how it relates to adoption and the publisher was giving me some pushback because I was being so critical of the church. So I called about our eight long time Bethany workers in different cities from California to New York to Florida and I asked them “If you had ten Christian women come to you with an unplanned pregnancy, how many of them would feel welcomed in their churches?” And they all agreed it would be between one, two, or maybe three. Most of them said one or two. And so, in teaching this theology of grace – we teach theology of adoption, but then to come back behind that and talk about grace and talk about God’s plan and love and be able to change that so we can create cultures and environments where women who have gone through abortions are able to share their stories, were women who have placed children in adoption are able to share their stories, and then to be able to educate what that really is.

LYONS: Thank you. OK, so, this is where the rubber meets the road. We’d love to hear what you guys think. We’re going to have a text response because this is something that’s pressing into where we are and what we’re facing and we want to see what you guys think about this through, just, can we have the question up on the screen? And then there will be prompts on where to text. I’d like to get kind of a real time response to this talk because it’s a sticky talk and I’d really like to see where you guys settle with this. What the church’s role is and if you have resistance to the topic of contraception I’d like to see that. And then also understanding all of that, what responsibility will we take on. So the question is “Do you believe churches should advocate contraception for their single twenty-somethings?” since that’s the majority of the number within this and, you text a keyword to 22333, QDCYES or QDCNO and so as you’re responding it will be real time and it will really give us a picture of where this particular room sits which I think is very revealing and eye-opening. It can help us understand if this is something yay or nay, then if not what are we to do with this reframing the gospel narrative of theology of sex. And how are we going to care for those in our communities because they are sitting in our pews, they are there, they are needing someone to reach out and to realize that this is happening, even if it’s not being talked about. OK, so, we’ve got 70-30. We’ll let this go for a couple more minutes and this is great feedback. Sarah, as you’re watching this what do you think is at stake based on the church’s response to how to engage this topic, based on how the numbers have come, the trends, yeah, what’s at stake in this number on abortion reduction?

BROWN: Well, as I think we’ve all agreed, virtually everybody in the United States when they learn that there have been 1.2 million abortions every year will, in some way, say “Gee, that number should go down.” I think that’s a common value, maybe more than is commonly recognized. The problem with it, of course, is that it forces us to confront these issues that are on the screen and so forth. You know, one of the other suggestions that has been made in sort of the prevention angle is to encourage earlier marriage. One of the things that’s going on here of course is large numbers of sexually active young adults, because, you know, in the olden days, people got married maybe at their late teens, early twenties, and now the age of first marriage retreats to the horizon, which is what you’re seeing now with all these young adults who are unmarried, but still getting pregnant. The problem with that solution is that as a general matter we know that very young adults as they get married it tends to be more difficult. They’re still not sort of fully grown up, and many of them are still in school, and have a lot of education and career issues facing them and student debt and it goes on and on, but what we’re really talking about here is what we expect in the future structure of the family. I think this country is going to have to face off soon enough to, you know, in what kind of environment do we want children raised, what is the role of marriage in modern culture, it’s decreasing all the time. And I think it is this broad narrative about the American family. That’s really what this is about and all these particular things whether it’s abortion or nonmarital sex or very early marriage and divorce and so forth, they’re all I think a great struggle right now of how are children going to be raised, through what sorts of settings and what is the structure of the American family. I think it’s a very, very serious issue.

LYONS: Well, this is telling. We’re at 66% of yes, 34 of no. I know when we moved to New York a couple years ago about three months into it I heard in church – great place to hear this – that the abortion rate in New York is double the national average, almost 40%. And what lined up with that was all my friends in my age group were looking at me like, “Really, you have an 11 year old? You’re still in your 30s.” I’ve been to more baby showers in the last year of people my age and in Georgia that was not the case, that was a decade prior. It is an interesting thing and yet women who are delaying marriage or it just, the timing is not yet are having to face questions of freezing eggs and family planning is all over the map on this issue and I do think it is such a bigger conversation, but I think it is important to understand that as we delay marriage this is where we sit. And New York is a great example of a city that many, many young professionals, very single culture people getting married not until they’re forty and then this is what things are looking like. So thank you so much for your time with this, thanks for engaging with this and we just wanted to raise this discussion, get it out there. I think it’d be something great for churches even within the context of your team saying “How are we, as a staff, confronting this? How are we addressing this? How are we making programmed time around this topic?” because it is definitely happening, let’s not ignore it, let’s figure out how we can lock our arms together and go towards that so thank you again for your time. Thank you guys.