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Spiritual battles in ongoing war over abortion

Clergy that support Planned Parenthood say religion not just domain of opponents
By Jill Tucker


ANTI-ABORTION groups are good at getting the God message out.

Religion and the antiabortion movement are inextricably linked.

Not so on the other side.

Abortion advocates and national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood seem far removed from religion, existing in a secular world free of Bible verses and scriptural sound bites.

And yet, faithful followers from various world religions line up with the abortion rights contingent — perhaps not as vocal or visual as anti-abortion advocates, but there nonetheless, historically and currently.

But that spiritual side is starting to show — just as abortion is moving back into the spotlight with a Supreme Court nominee and a California ballot initiative requiring a waiting period and parental consent to terminate a minor’s pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood appointed a national chaplain last year, with local chaplains appearing across the country, including one in Oakland.

“Planned Parenthood is deeply, firmly on the side of religion,” said Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Religion, she explained, is centrally and fundamentally about ethics and morality, and those things are central to what Planned Parenthood does.

“It is why most Planned Parenthood board affiliates have religious people on them,” she added.

Yet defining morality and ethics from an abortion rights perspective is not as easy as a placard stating the opposing and simple statement: Abortion is murder.

Abortion rights ethics, in the simplest terms, deal with the health of women, families and the life decisions relating to them.

“I think that in the media, (the abortion debate) is religious vs. nonreligious,” said Therese Wilson, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Golden Gate. “I think maybe we haven’t done a good job telling the public how we do our work.”

Historically, clergy have long been involved in supporting abortion.

In the 1960s, clergy members directed women to clean clinics where they could get a safe, albeit illegal abortion.

It was aligned with suicide- prevention efforts, given that unsafe abortions resulted in women dying.

“A lot of these clergy people saw this as saving lives because they knew what would happen if they didn’t,” said Cynthia Gorney, University of California, Berkeley journalism professor and author of “Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars.”

In the years since, various large religious affiliations — United Methodist, Presbyterian USA, United Church of Christ, among others — have adopted an abortion rights stance.

Nationwide, a network of 2,000 clergy support Planned Parenthood efforts, said the organization’s national chaplain Ignacio Castuera.

For 32 years, through various name changes, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights has worked to educate people about the “moral necessity” of women having choice, of women being able to control their reproductive lives, said Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, director of clergy programming at the Coalition. “Clergy and religious communities have been involved in the pro-choice movement forever,” she added.

So why does it seem such a secret? Why do church and abortion rights seem to be on opposite sides of the picket line?

“People got comfortable with that stereotype,” said Tom Davis, author of “Sacred Choices,” which describes religion’s role in abortion rights activism.

“When the television thinks about religion, it thinks about Jerry Falwell, and it thinks about the Catholic bishops.”

Yet the patients who walk through Planned Parenthood doors are often religious or spiritual, Golden Gate’s Wilson said.

By the age of 45, about a third of U.S. women will have had an abortion, according to current estimates. Many of them are religious or spiritual.

“That is a component of most people’s lives,” she added. “From our position it doesn’t have to be so separate.”