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Choose your friends carefully!
It is sound advice we have all heard from parents,
professors, and pastors. It's the kind of advice we give to our
children. Our associations with others have influence on our own
behaviors and character. Our associations affect the perception
others have of us. Those friendships may assign value to us or
de-value us in the eyes of others.
Take, for example, the Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice (RCRC) and their recent amicus brief presented
to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in the Stormans, Inc. (Ralph's Thriftway)
v. Selecky (Washington State Department
of Health) case. RCRC wants the court to reverse a lower court
ruling that affirmed the right of a pharmacist to refuse to fill a
prescription (i.e. abortifacient drugs or "morning after
pill") based on their religious convictions (e.g. that life in
the womb is precious to God). The court's action rightly protected
the religious freedom of the individual pharmacist. It was a fair
and right judgment upholding the individual's freedom of religion
established in our constitution.
That's not the way RCRC
sees it. Their organization was founded in 1973 "to safeguard
the newly won right to abortion". They do this, according to
their mission statement, by bringing "the moral power of
religious communities to ensure reproductive choice through
education and advocacy." One of the ways they do this is by
promoting the faulty concept that abortion is an expression of a
woman's faith. Choose your
friends carefully! Do we really want to be associated with an
organization that sees the chemical execution of a child in the
womb of its mother as a religious practice that ought to be
protected? Sounds a little like human sacrifice to me.
One might argue that
religious freedom is rightfully limited when the life of another
human being is threatened by its practice. RCRC tries to use that
very argument to say that a pharmacist has no right to refuse
participation in a chemical abortion on religious grounds, because
doing so would impinge on the woman's "religious freedom
regarding personal health care." (Amicus Brief, p. 11) At the
risk of sounding like an anti-abortionist activist: "Abortion
is NOT health care!"
Abortion ends the life of
the child and endangers the woman's long-term emotional and
physical health. Where is the health,
or the care, in that?
There is
some hope that we are learning something in the PC(USA) about such friends.
On a positive note, the three entities of the PCUSA who hold
memberships in RCRC (Washington Office,
Women's Ministries,
and Presbyterians Affirming
Reproductive Options) DID NOT SIGN this amicus brief. I
am grateful for that. It gives me hope that my denomination is
gaining respect for my conscience and convictions as a pro-life
Presbyterian. In fact, only
one Presbyterian Pastor's name appears--Reverend Mary
Robinson-Mohr, St. James Presbyterian Church, Bellingham, Washington-whose
name is included with a number of Washington State Clergy and two
Planned Parenthood chaplains. The list is posted on the RCRC
website.
Still the PC(USA) name does not totally escape association
with the weak and faulty arguments presented by RCRC in this amicus
brief. "Women's Ministries of the Presbyterian Church
(USA)" is listed on page 11 as one of the organizations that
believes persons ought to be free to "exercise their moral
agency and religious freedom when receiving health care." The
statement alone is not a bad statement. In this context of
defending abortion as a 'religious freedom,' however, the association
is dreadful. Choose your
friends carefully!
The "Presbyterian
Church" name is used again on page 13 as one of several
denominations that support "'full and equal access' to health care consistent with a
woman's decisions." The footnote references the 1992 Report of the Special Committee
on Problem Pregnancies and Abortion. The actual
wording in the 1992 report [p. 13, (6) b.] is "full and equal
access to contraceptive methods" (underline mine). Contraceptive
methods which prevent fertilization of the egg by the sperm differ
fundamentally from abortifacient
methods such as the "morning after pill", which end
the life of a fertilized embryo---a genetically complete
individual.
Choose
your friends carefully. Others will judge you by their
words as well as your own. Perhaps even more disturbing is RCRC's youth initiative SYRF (Spiritual Youth
for Reproductive Freedom). For example, would you want your
teenager to have a friend who encouraged him or her with this
message found on the SYRF website?
Learn more about how to put your faith into action
on campus, in your community, and
your congregation.
Make
birth control pills affordable!
I would rather see our
youth in a friendship with Tony Perkins of Family Research Council
who wrote this week in an email newsletter article, "Condom
Culture".
"It
continues to astound me that our society is willing to tell kids to
abstain from the dangers of drinking or smoking but not premarital
sex. If America is truly committed to disease
prevention, and the emotional well-being of our teens, then we must
be committed to abstinence--the only method that works 100% of the
time."
Sadly, Perkins is right.
Society is failing our youth, but too often, so is the
church! What message is the PC(USA)
sending to our youth through our association with
"friends" such as RCRC and SYRF?
Choose
your friends carefully. The PC(USA)
has some embarrassing friends. Maybe it's time to change friends!
Related articles: Our association with RCRC compounds our disunity on
abortion, by Marie Bowen
Religious Coalition for
Reproductive Choice's Support for Partial Birth Abortion
"Confused, at Best," by
Fr. Frank Pavone
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