Wendy Davis, Courage, and the Sacredness of the Womb

It’s all over the Texas news–and national news by now.  Texas Democratic Senator Wendy Davis, probably forever known now by her pink sneakers, is rapidly becoming a media icon.

Why?

Because this courageous woman stood for hours and fought with everything she had against huge injustice.

Now, let me make myself clear: Abortion is not something I wish would ever happen. But desperate women have been aborting babies for millennia. There always have been and always will be ways to do this.  Some are safer than others. But there are always ways.

In the perfect world, such acts would never be necessary. In the best of worlds, the womb is a sacred place, a place reflecting the creative heart of God who brings life. We women have the unique privilege of partnering with our Creator God in that holy act.

Even so, I stand with those who say that abortion should be safe, legal and extremely rare.  This bill before the Texas Senate does nothing to help and much to harm, particularly for women occupying the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, the very ones a just society seeks to help and protect.

The wealthy and privileged will always find a way to terminate a pregnancy safely. It is the poor, desperate and unprotected that this legislation punishes.

Please note the the word, “desperate.”  Very few pregnancies are terminated in the name of convenience. Most terminations come after periods of agony and paralyzing fear. Many come because the women already have more children than they can support, and/or they are abandoned by their baby daddies.

Yes, abstinence and/or effective birth control would be very good ideas.  But why does it all land on the women?

Here’s a quote from a June 27, 2013, Letter to the Editor at the Dallas Morning News:  “Let’s put some of the onus for reproduction on men.  If they get someone to whom they are not married pregnant, they must undergo a mandatory vasectomy. How does that work for them?”

I would just add that I can think of lots of worse scenarios than vasectomy for those baby daddies. Lots. But their responsibility never even get mentioned in these debates. Fascinating.

I know I’m angry about this today. I always get angry at the abuses of power. Just one of my hot buttons. We need to fight for a more just society, a society with much higher levels of personal responsibility. And punishing the desperate is not the way to start.