Katey Zeh

RCRC Clergy Argue Abortion ‘A Blessing’ Even Amid Grief

Jeffrey Walton on February 17, 2022

Post-abortive women who continue to support legal abortion haven’t told their stories because of an internalized abortion stigma, according to an ordained Baptist pastor and abortion rights activist.

“Our dominant culture of whiteness and patriarchy and Christian supremacy really limits the kinds of experiences that we’re allowed to acknowledge and to grieve,” stated the Rev. Katey Zeh, a former member of the United Methodist Church who departed the denomination in 2016 after she grew “increasingly concerned about its lack of recognition of women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights.”

Zeh, who serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), spoke on February 17 as part of an online launch event for her new book, A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice Movement. The book draws from interviews with 17 different women who underwent abortions. It contrasts with the narratives of pro-life groups like the Silent No More awareness campaign that seek to expose and heal emotional and physical pain experienced by those who underwent abortions.

Founded in 1973, RCRC advocates for unrestricted abortion-on-demand and describes all abortions as “holy”. The group organizes interfaith clergy, including mainline Protestants, to participate in abortion clinic blessing ceremonies.

More than a dozen organizations were thanked for their sponsorship of the book launch event Thursday, including the Methodist Federation for Social Action and the Religious Left publication Sojourners. The latter published an interview with Zeh this past Monday in which the activist advanced her belief that access to abortion is essential and to be praised as a social good.

“When we say that abortion should be ‘rare,’ that’s adding this idea that abortion is bad, that it’s morally wrong, and it’s to be avoided at all costs. And what I’ve learned in [from] talking to people is that abortion can be a blessing,” Zeh told Sojourners Managing Editor Betsy Shirley. “Abortion can save lives. Abortion can affirm life. Abortion can be a positive parenting decision. So using a word like ‘rare’ in that context is actually quite harmful to the broader reproductive freedom movement.”

The event also featured comments by Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Alexis McGill Johnson, who authored the forward in Zeh’s new book (Zeh sits on the Clergy Advocacy Board of Planned Parenthood).

“The right to abortion is hanging on by a thread,” Johnson warned. “It’s been more than five months since Texans could access abortion after approximately six weeks.” Johnson noted that several state legislatures “are considering copycat legislation and of course the Supreme Court is considering Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that could unravel Roe v. Wade, and the right to abortion once and for all.”

Johnson elevated a sense of urgency among the pro-choice activists, assessing that “we have never been closer to losing a fundamental constitutional right; and if Roe falls, or is rendered meaningless, 26 states could move to immediately ban abortion.”

The Planned Parenthood official stated that nearly one in four U.S. women will have an abortion in her lifetime.

“Those stories have incredible power to change our culture, but they are bottled up and silenced,” Johnson alleged. “Sharing a story that you’ve been told to hide is a radical act of defiance. Choosing to witness that story, without judgment or prejudice, is a radical act of grace, and in that space between the telling and the hearing, the spirit is at work.”

Asked about the genesis of her book project by Rabbi Donna Rutenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women, Zeh explained that she originally envisioned a much broader examination about reproductive loss that included abortion as one of several topics. A publishing team, she recalled, urged her to write the book “about abortion as a loss for some people who need to grieve and to heal.”

“Even though I’ve heard so many abortion stories over the last 15 plus years, there are so many that I hadn’t heard before and I really found myself expanding and stretching my own kind of compassion muscles that I have, and doing more internal work of interrogating my own internalized abortion stigma,” Zeh told Rutenberg. “I knew before I wrote this book that I believed Abortion was a moral good, and I’d seen that operating people’s lives. But to hear it as something life-saving and life affirming, and abortion as a blessing as a catalyst for incredible change in a person’s life, it really emboldened me in the way that I talk about abortion.”

In assigning blame to “our dominant culture of whiteness and patriarchy and Christian supremacy,” Zeh lamented a lack of positive public acknowledgment for those who undergo abortions. “The anti-abortion movement, which is so intertwined with white Christian nationalism as a political movement, that we are all exposed to the idea that abortion is wrong on some level, no matter where you stand politically we all absorb that message, even if we don’t consciously believe it, we have to do that work of recognizing the ways that we’ve absorbed this idea just as we internalize sexism and racism and all the other ‘isms’. We all have abortion stigma.”

Zeh called for faith communities to share affirmation for those who choose to terminate pregnancies.

“When I think about what guides me theologically in this work, it’s really the belief that we all have the divine within us, and that we know deep down what we most need, and that includes people who are contemplating whether or not to end a pregnancy.”

The book launch featured a conversation between Zeh and the Rev. Kaeley McEvoy, an Associate Minister at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, Maryland. McEvoy, a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, recalled undergoing an abortion while in graduate school.

“I was working at this incredible congregation, Judson Memorial Church, who had this long history of reproductive dignity work, and still my abortion experience was really hard,” McEvoy shared. “I had all of these resources, and it was still really messy.”

Zeh referenced the story of the hemorrhaging woman in Mark’s Gospel: “She’s healed not only because she reaches out and and touches Jesus’s garment and is healed physically, but she’s healed in the telling of her story, not just to him, but to the community.”

McEvoy said she thought about a time when she felt that from God, “that God loved my full self, and that was in the halls of a Planned Parenthood.” Her decision to preach about it “did feel very scripturally based and it also felt right with my congregation.”

“You recognize how hungry people are to share, and how many times that is the first telling of a story that people have sometimes been holding for decades,” Zeh added.

The RCRC official said that she wrote the book thinking of people who identify as Christian and have experienced abortion.

“I learned so much about just how precarious pregnancy can be for people,” Zeh recalled. “I think we glamorize it. But it is, in fact, life-threatening for people in many different ways. And abortion, in that way, is very life-affirming and life-saving, and a blessing.”

Two United Methodist agencies, the General Board on Church and Society (GBCS) and United Methodist Women (UMW) were RCRC founding members. Both UMW and GBCS were required to withdraw from the organization by a vote of the 2016 United Methodist General Conference, which they did so begrudgingly.

  1. Comment by Star Tripper on February 17, 2022 at 11:54 pm

    Not since the Serpent in the Garden have we heard such a load of insidious evil. Baby killing as holy sacrament is in line with Moloch. Jesus, on the other hand, said it would be better if the perpetrators had millstones put around their necks and tossed into the sea.

  2. Comment by David on February 18, 2022 at 7:00 am

    The question is whether a fetus is the same as a “baby.” Most in the US would say it is not according to the polls.

  3. Comment by Dan W on February 18, 2022 at 8:04 am

    Reverend Zeh says pregnancy is “life-threatening for people in many different ways.” And abortion is “life-saving, and a blessing.”

    So sad : (

  4. Comment by ot on February 18, 2022 at 9:14 am

    Fetus and baby are not synonyms terms, check out a dictionary. Pro-life people do not use the terms interchangeably, but it is still a human being (whether potential or actual) dying for the convenience of others that these horrible people are celebrating and condoning . I’m really tired of your half-truths and posts just to irritate people. Why not post a coherent argument once in a while so we can have a discussion?

    BTW, using poll results is pretty weak, since poling reveals that a large majority of Americans and Europeans say that there should be limits on abortions, not unlimited license to kill human life until birth (or as the ex-governor of VA said even after birth).

    The pro-choice people the author discusses are ruthless, murdering people; and while I have sins I have to answer for one day I would not want to answer for some of their sins.

  5. Comment by Douglas Ehrhardt on February 18, 2022 at 9:17 am

    So Christians should care what the world thinks ? That’s a revelation.

  6. Comment by Patrick on February 18, 2022 at 9:31 am

    A popularity contest is never a truth contest.

  7. Comment by Jeff on February 18, 2022 at 1:18 pm

    As usual, David sez: “The question is whether a fetus is the same as a “baby.””

    As usual, I’m gonna go with “yes” on that one, David.

    [Luk 1:41-42 KJV] “And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed [art] thou among women, and blessed [is] the fruit of thy womb.”

  8. Comment by Tom on February 18, 2022 at 5:30 pm

    “Abortion can save lives. Abortion can affirm life. Abortion can be a positive parenting decision.”

    Words fail. Someone who can utter these words is not only morally bankrupt but has no understanding of the plain meaning of English words.

  9. Comment by Katherine on February 18, 2022 at 6:43 pm

    What “white Christian nationalism” has to do with this is unexplained, possibly because it can’t be explained.

  10. Comment by Thomas on February 19, 2022 at 8:57 am

    These people are pure evil. They have nothing Christian in themselves. “You shall not kill.”

  11. Comment by Search4Truth on February 19, 2022 at 9:51 pm

    Maybe some of the “wind blowers” above should check out some history and the bible. M. Sanger of PP readily admitted that abortion was murder. Her goal was to control and limit the black population. The medical profession, the ethical profession and religious leaders all agree that life begins at conception; we’ve just managed to create laws that don’t accept the facts.
    The bible is fully of references to God knowing people in their mothers’ wombs; but what scared me to death was the statement in Jerimiah 15, “Because of the sins of Manassas, Jerusalem had to be destroyed.” His sins – the immolation of the babies. And I think most of us know what God did to Jerusalem.

  12. Comment by Loren J Golden on February 21, 2022 at 10:23 pm

    “The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice …describes all abortions as ‘holy’.”
     
    Doubtless, they would describe what went on inside Nazi concentration camps with the same egregiously misapplied adjective.  “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Is. 5.20)
     
    “When we say that abortion should be ‘rare,’ that’s adding this idea that abortion is bad, that it’s morally wrong, and it’s to be avoided at all costs.”
     
    That’s because abortion is bad, morally wrong, and must be avoided at all costs, except in the rare case of when the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy (e.g., from a tubal pregnancy).  Among the “six things that the LORD hates (and the) seven that are an abomination to him,” are “hands that shed innocent blood.” (Prov. 6.16-19)
     
    “What I’ve learned in [from] talking to people is that abortion can be a blessing.”
     
    Abortion is not a blessing to the children who lose their very lives at the hands of individuals who hypocritically took the Hippocratic Oath.  “O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!  Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (Ps. 137.8-9)
     
    “Abortion can save lives.”
     
    Only on extremely rare occasions, but the vast majority do not.  Every abortion always ends at least one life.  “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days.” (Dt. 30.19-20)
     
    “Abortion can affirm life.”
     
    Abortion no more affirms life than a gunshot wound to the head.  “Is it lawful…to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” (Mk. 3.4)
     
    “Abortion can be a positive parenting decision.”
     
    In whose warped mind does killing one’s own child constitute “a positive parenting decision”?  “And the king said, ‘Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.’  Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, ‘Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.’  But the other said, ‘He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.’” (I Kg. 3.25-26)
     
    “We have never been closer to losing a fundamental constitutional right.”
     
    Nowhere does the U.S. Constitution promise abortion as a “right.”  Indeed, in the Fifth Amendment’s protection against one being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” the unborn child’s right to life and protection against abortion ought to be recognized as constitutional.  “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.  Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (Ps. 82.3-4)
     
    “If Roe falls, or is rendered meaningless, 26 states could move to immediately ban abortion.”
     
    Then may it fall swiftly.  “And he said to them, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’” (Lk. 10.18)
     
    “The hemorrhaging woman in Mark’s Gospel (is) healed not only because she reaches out and touches Jesus’s garment and is healed physically, but she’s healed in the telling of her story, not just to him, but to the community.”
     
    No, she was healed solely by the power of the Lord Jesus.  “If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness.  As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean.  Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity.  And everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity.  And whoever touches these things shall be unclean. … Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst.” (Lev. 15.25-31)  And again, “If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual period and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood.  Both of them shall be cut off from among their people.” (Lev. 20.18)  The curse of her hemorrhaging was that for twelve years, she could not have normal, day-to-day intercourse with others in her community, she was prohibited from the Temple and therefore could not come forward with sacrificial animals to atone for her sins, and she could not marry or enjoy marital relations with her husband.  Jesus alone, by His single act of healing, took all that stigma away from her.
     
    Nothing good comes from abortion.  Even abortions performed to save the mother’s life are tragic.  Every single abortion ends the life of at least one human being made in the image of God.  This is not something to celebrate.  This is nothing that the Church of Jesus Christ has any business affirming.  “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” Jesus said.  “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (Jn. 10.10)
     
    “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.  Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” (Ps. 127.3-5)  Children are a precious gift from the Lord, to be cherished, loved, and disciplined.  They are not “fetal tissue matter” that can be thrown away and dispensed with, without great cost, not only to the soul of the mother who consents to one, but to the soul of society as a whole.  Upward of 63 million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade was made law by an act of the Supreme Court of the United States.  63 million children in the United States have lost their lives because their parents did not want them, and thought it expedient to terminate their lives.  This is equivalent to the current populations of California, New York, and Oregon combined.  This is nearly eleven times the total number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world, to date.  In 2019, 629,898 abortions were reported to the CDC—almost as many as the leading cause of death, heart disease (659,041), more than the second leading cause of death, cancer (599,601), almost four times as high as the third leading cause of death, unintentional accidents (173,040), over 38 times as high as the number of violent deaths in the nation (16,425), and thirty times as high as the official number of infants who died in the U.S. that year (20,927).  And if the number of abortions continue to be performed at the same rate, then twenty years from now, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. alone will exceed the total number of global fatalities in World War II (75 million).
     
    Abortion is a horrible, tragic sin.  It is not something to be celebrated, and to call it a blessing—or worse, holy—is a travesty of justice.  Its proponents only consider the material benefits that a woman obtaining one can reap, yet they heartlessly disregard the life of the unborn child, as if he or she were not human, that the woman’s material benefits and control over her womb outweigh the value of the unborn child’s life.  “My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” (Jas. 3.10)

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