Mother's Day: It's Complicated

For the first Sunday in what feels like forever, I did not preach. 

I did not even attend a church service in-person or virtually. 

Instead, I was moving furniture, vacuuming and cleaning as we prepare our house for some major and long overdue renovation work. We're lucky to have neighbors who are letting us house sit and take care of their cat while they're away and we are being displaced. 

Because I wasn't preaching, I didn't have to figure out how to handle my own...and maybe others...complicated feelings about the secular Hallmark holiday called "Mother's Day."  My own mother passed away in 2014, and while she appreciated the attention, this was never as an important an occasion for her as--say--Easter or even Christmas. 

It is even more complicated this year because of a leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion penned by the acerbic Justice Samuel Alito which threatens to undo the nearly 50-year-old legal precedent on abortion called Roe v. Wade. I couldn't help thinking about the dangers that thousands of women will face if Alito and company have their way and abortion laws are turned over to the states. Already, Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed so-called "trigger" laws that would go into effect if the SCOTUS overturns Roe. Some of those laws would make abortion totally illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, or risk to the woman's life. Others shorten the time frame for a legal abortion to 15 weeks, even though medical researchers have concluded that a fetus is not viable outside the womb until 26 weeks. OB/GYN doctors are worried that the criminalization of abortion suggested in some of these state laws will lead to a generation of medical professionals who don't know how to perform the procedure which may be medically necessary if a woman miscarries. Suddenly, doctors and their patients become murderers.

The decision to have a child, and then the risks involved with childbirth, should not be in the hands of politicians or courts or pundits or priests. This is solely the woman's decision, made with a mind toward embracing a vocation of mothering a child. And it is a vocation. Some women are exceptionally good mothers. Some, like me, looking at the responsibility of bringing forth life into the world, have rightly concluded that we are better as supporters of those who want to be mothers rather than becoming one ourselves. 

The debate about abortion in this country, and others, has often been tied up in religion and religious belief. The Episcopal Church has been nuanced and consist in its position on the ethics of abortion. While we support the sacredness of life, we also recognize that the life of the mother is as sacred as any other life. 

The draft of Alito's opinion on this matter makes it clear that women are seen not as having fully-realized human lives. Our wombs are factories meant to meet the demand of a shrinking supply of babies eligible for adoption. 

I can't think of a more anti-Christian position than reducing one half of the human race to being merely a baby making machine. 

I pray this is not the last word on this question. I fear that it might be.