Mandatory Motherhood

The cover article of a recent issue of New York magazine was entitled "My Abortion". It included first-person accounts from 26 women who had abortions between 1968 and 2013. While each woman's story is gripping and provides vital perspective, there is one I haven't been able to get out of mind.

In 2002, Cherisse, a paralegal, thought she was going to an abortion clinic, but the ultrasound technician she was referred to told her that having an abortion would ruin her uterus for bearing children in the future. Cherise kept that baby, but went on to have three abortions over the next five years before meeting a "reproductive-justice advocate who finally taught me how to understand my fertility."

And Cherisse is but one voice for throngs of desperate women seeking to make the best choices in difficult situations. Why would anyone who opposes abortion not want to equip women with the knowledge they need? Why not teach women to understand and care for their own bodies? Why rely on "lies and scare tactics"? Why give misleading or erroneous information like telling women they can go to college for free if they have a child?

At the ripe age of fourteen and a half, I was already learning and spouting many lies myself, winning a $50 prize from Right to Life for a speech in which I announced that "more abortions have occurred from Christians using the Pill than in all the abortion clinics combined" and lauded a couple in Tennessee with eleven offspring. I quoted the Old Testament: "Be fruitful and multiply" and paraphrased from the prophet Malachi. "God's purpose for marriage is that Godly offspring might be raised from the union."

Parroting arguments I'd heard, I threw myself headlong into subjects of which I was almost completely ignorant: "Islam is the most rapidly growing religion today", I said, "because of their respect for life. The average Islamic woman has six children; that's really pro-life!" And I went on: "Children are blessings, God's rewards to those who fear Him. But why do we place a limit on how many we'll take? With attitudes like that, how can ever expect to persuade the world to abolish abortion? Today many couples are having reversal surgeries and trusting God for more children..."

Little did I realize that I was promoting arguments from the Middle Ages. 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas posited that an unprotected vagina was the only place a man could ejaculate without imperiling his soul. For centuries since, this teaching on sex has been part of the good news of the gospel the Roman Catholic Church has promoted around the world. And if that isn't enough, the Church also opposes all forms of contraception.

Little did I dream standing under a portrait of the Pope on that spring night, that ten years later my own parents would have produced eleven children, that another three years later I would have conceived every time I ovulated since my marriage, that there was nothing natural about natural family planning, that condoms were as essential for my babies' wellbeing as for my own, that birth control is an expression of selflessness, and that one day my husband's vasectomy would be an occasion for rejoicing.

Cherisse was in Chicago, but women in Kansas face similar hurdles to self-care. Take A Better Choice, for example, a crisis pregnancy center operated by the Catholic Church. ABC offers pregnancy testing, STD education, information about abortion procedures, compassion, and "chastity mentoring". On the other side of town, the evangelical Pregnancy Crisis Center of Wichita offers pregnancy tests, STD testing, counseling on abstinence, parenting classes, Bible studies, and adoption information. PCC's website assures clients:

"Everything we do is focused on empowering you to make healthy, informed choices. Here you will meet people who care about you."

However, it also states:

"PCC is a limited medical facility and does not provide or refer for abortions or birth control."

Dr. Scott Stringfield is a family practitioner who is also the chairman of the board at Choices Medical Clinic, an anti-abortion organization affiliated with Via Christi Health that has the stated goal of helping women "come to know Christ". The Bible is his favorite book and his faith his primary passion. Stringfield serves on the faculty of Via Christi's Family Medicine residency program: according to the Choices website, the clinic has served as community rotation for over 200 residents. Nursing students from Wichita State also rotate at Choices, and the clinic offers internships for student sonographers from Washburn University. 

When asked recently--at a Q & A after a film screening in Wichita last month--about how his clinic helps women to avoid future unplanned pregnancies and whether he and his staff counsel women about contraception after delivery, Dr. Stringfield squirmed a bit. He does not see access to birth control as a problem for his clients. According to Dr. Stringfield, a woman can easily purchase contraceptives (condoms) at Walmart. But he had to choose his words carefully because he does, indeed, have a moral objection to any birth control method that might prevent a fertilized egg from becoming a pregnancy.

As a Protestant, Dr. Stringfield does not hold any religious objection to "barriers" that prevent sperm from entering a cervix, but after that...  Information on abortion risks? Oh, my, yes. But information on how not to get pregnant again? Well, no, that is a service Choices Medical Clinic does not currently offer.

My own unplanned pregnancy forever changed my perspective on reproductive rights. I well remember months of guilt and confusion, trying to learn about my body and sort out myth from fact. I often fantasized about visiting the pregnancy crisis center down the street, not that I needed financial help or was debating my options: I just longed for support, compassion, and honest information about controlling my fertility. What could they tell me, I wondered, to help me be there for my babies instead of dazed and sick on the couch? I loved sex, and I loved my husband, but I had no intention of spending the rest of my childbearing years pregnant! I wanted to be a devoted mom, an energetic wife. So what options did I have?

Today, ten years later, I finally called, heart racing as emotional memories flooded my soul. I chatted with a nurse--I'll call her Susan--on the Choices staff. I told her about Cherisse's experience. I told her about my own. I asked her what services are available to help women prevent future unwanted pregnancies. At first she echoed Dr. Stringfield's remarks, saying that women can purchase condoms at the grocery store. I agreed, but pointed out that condoms require a high degree of cooperation and are of little efficacy if a woman finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship.

"Susan" told me that her clinic refers pregnant women to either Via Christi (a Catholic hospital) or GraceMed (with ties to both Via Christi and Wesley Medical Center (HCA)) for prenatal and obstetric services. A discussion about contraception would presumably take place between a woman and her doctor after delivery.

"Do you tell them that the doctors at Via Christi cannot offer contraceptives?" I asked (remembering a conversation in our Catholic doctor's office).

No, the women are not told that. However, if a pregnant woman states that she does not want any more children in the future (i.e., desires a tubal ligation), the Choices staff will recommend she go to GraceMed, because Via Christi doctors are not permitted to perform that surgery.

Our conversation was cordial, and I could feel at its close that "Susan" could see how offering prenatal care is not enough. "We really need to have a talk about that here," she said. Perhaps she really had never pondered the subject before.

Women who don't want to get pregnant need options. They need to be empowered and educated about their own bodies. Right now, anti-abortion groups are focused on "supporting" pregnant women and telling women not to let a penis come near their vagina. As if married women never need to avoid pregnancy! Do they assume that married women don't even want sex anymore? Or that once a woman has borne a child, she knows all she needs to know about how to prevent it next time?

Certainly planned pregnancies account for some abortions, but if opponents of abortion also refuse to educate women about fertility or allow them access to contraceptives they can use on their own, how can they ever hope to reduce the number of abortions? I was largely ignorant of birth control methods when I became sexually active (after marriage, in my case), and I have written elsewhere of my experience trying to educate myself without breaking any commandments or accidentally creating any new human life. 

When Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics are the only organizations offering to help women understand, manage, and guard their fertility, it is time for the anti-abortion movement to realize that it is not about protecting or supporting women--it is about protecting fetuses by controlling women and making motherhood mandatory.

Hobby Lobby: Deep Pockets

Since we're talking about Hobby Lobby's values, here is more about the family behind the company.

David Green, founder of Hobby Lobby, is a pastor's son from Emporia, KS. The Greens are Pentecostal and have a long history of supporting charismatic ministries and organizations. In 2003, David Green received the Assemblies of God Superintendent's Medal of Honor. The next year, he donated $10.5 million to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

In 2007, the Green family came to the rescue of charismatic Oral Roberts University, paying off debts to the tune of $70 million. In return, Mart Green, son of David Green and CEO of Christian book store chain Mardel, became chairman of the new ORU board of trustees. The same year, David Green donated a Massachusetts campus to Zion Bible College, which was renamed Northpoint Bible College to avoid being mistaken for a Jewish organization. "Northpoint Bible College exists to teach and train students for excellent Pentecostal ministry."

In 2009, AG News reported that a gift of $10 million from Hobby Lobby to Southeast University, an interdenominational school in Lakeland, FL with a long Pentecostal tradition. Mart Green was quoted as saying, "We appreciate your commitment to Christian higher education and all that Southeastern is doing to raise up students with a Christian world view."  In 2010, Hobby Lobby donated $1.5 million to Northwest University, a private college in Kirkland, WA, operated by the Assemblies of God.

The Green Family Trust supports numerous churches and parachurch organizations, purchasing dozens of properties and donating them to evangelical causes, such as Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. The Greens also own the "Passages" exhibit, a collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts assembled by Steven Green, now Hobby Lobby's president. Hobby Lobby partners with the controversial right-wing group Wallbuilders to run full-page newspaper ads around the country.

Mart Green is also the founder of Every Tribe Entertainment, which produced "End of the Spear", a 2005 film about five male missionaries killed by a tribe in Ecuador while attempting to evangelize them in 1956. One of the missionaries is played by actor Chad Allen, a gay Christian. Green has stated that he was unaware of Allen's sexual orientation when he offered him the contract. "We found out Chad was gay after we offered him the parts. We felt like when we offered him the contract, we were obligated to honor it." Green told Christianity Today, "To be honest, I would not have hired Chad had I known everything about him. But God had to work around me to get Chad on this project. He wanted Chad on this project. I wish I were able to articulate all the things that led me to understand that. It is very hard to share the ways the Lord leads, especially when you can't fully grasp why he is doing things that don't make sense to the natural man."

The Green family has a friendly relationship with cult leader Bill Gothard, whose seminars they have attended. They bought him a decrepit VA hospital in Little Rock in 2000 and another hospital building in Nashville in 2003. (Gothard lacked the resources to see either project completed.) Hobby Lobby also purchased the Ambassador University campus in Big Sandy, Texas from the Worldwide Church of God and turned it over to Gothard's IBLP for an ALERT training campus.

Steve Green, Hobby Lobby's president, has spoken alongside Gothard at an ATI conference (attended by the Duggars) at the Big Sandy center. Last year, he was a keynote speaker at a businessmen's seminar held at Gothard's headquarters in Oak Brook, IL (and also advertised on the very strange website of the "World Trade Center of Illinois", of which Gothard claims to be president). Steve Green is a featured speaker for Gothard's Embassy Institute.

And David Green has allowed Gothard to speak to employees and distribute IBLP materials at a Hobby Lobby store near Oak Brook, IL. According to an IBLP staff member:

"Friday evening, a small group of us had the amazing opportunity to go with Mr. Gothard to the local Hobby Lobby store. We had been invited by CEO and Founder David Green to present the message of God’s freedom and power to their staff. Each employee who attended the meeting was given the opportunity to receive one of Mr. Gothard’s latest books: How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses. During this meeting, three of us had the privilege to give our testimonies of how we transformed the “stresses” from our past experiences by applying the commands of Christ to our situation and life. The staff seemed intrigued seeing the renewed joy, peace, and blessing that came as a result."

Bill Gothard, who has never been married but has been accused of sexually harassing young women on his staff, shares the Greens' opposition to contraceptives. He tells attendees of his Advanced seminar, "There is no question that many birth control methods and devices simply kill the conceived child. Chief among these is the IUD. It comes as a shock to many couples, however, that taking the pill also results in aborting a conceived child." Gothard cites a 1979 report from Britain to convince couples that taking the pill is more dangerous than pregnancy. He assures his followers that overpopulation is a myth, that God intends couples to "multiply exceedingly", and that reducing family size is "the hidden agenda of secular humanism".

"Humanists have carried on a persistent propaganda campaign to convince nations that the world is overpopulated and has dwindling natural resources."  

(Bill Gothard, Advanced Seminar textbook)

In July, Hobby Lobby won a temporary exemption from the law requiring it to offer its employees insurance coverage for birth control. The Green family says some contraceptives, including the morning-after pill, violate its religious beliefs. The Denver appeals court observed that the company had "drawn a line at providing coverage for drugs or devices they consider to induce abortions, and it is not for us to question whether the line is reasonable."

Last month, David Green explained his position:

Hobby Lobby merchandise

A new government healthcare mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs.

Since emergency contraception violates Hobby Lobby's conscience, I can only hope that in the future Hobby Lobby will be redirecting some of its evangelistic budget into programs such as women's self-defense classes, violence prevention, equal rights for women, abuse intervention, and sex education for teen girls.




Update 7/5/14 -- For more information, check out Micah Murray's post at Hobby Lobby, The Duggars, and Bill Gothard

Haunting the Halls of Hobby Lobby

Sticker sheet at Hobby Lobby

The Green family of Oklahoma City, which owns the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, is known for supporting Christian causes and closing their stores on Sundays. The company has stated that they are "committed to honoring the Lord in all we do". According to Forbes magazine, "Hobby Lobby takes half of total pretax earnings and plunges it directly into a portfolio of evangelical ministries."

Plaque at Hobby Lobby

"Old Jeffrey", perhaps?

In recent months, Hobby Lobby has been fighting in court to avoid complying with federal rules that require employer healthcare plans to cover contraceptives, arguing that the Greens' personal religious beliefs do not allow them to sponsor contraceptives for their employees. And Hobby Lobby has recently been criticized for not carrying Hanukkah decorations or supplies. 

Bones of Elisha?

"Wicked Good"

I took a stroll through my local Hobby Lobby yesterday to see how they handle another controversy: Halloween. And as the store's sound system surrounded me with a mellow instrumental version of "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High", I pondered my evangelical past, my atheist present, and the meaning of religious freedom in America.

The Green family are Pentecostal, and their church is listed in the directory on the Assemblies of God website. According to that same website:

 "Halloween cannot, by any stretch, be called a Christian holiday....

"Focusing on witches, ghosts of departed persons, evil monsters, devils, and other characters associated with the satanic should never be allowed in Christian social activities, even in innocent play."

I used to feel the same way, because we knew that those ghosts, evil spirits, and witches were REAL. All that spooky stuff was in the Bible, after all. Jesus was just stronger magic. Now that I consider it all pretend, I just think some aspects of Halloween are icky. Maybe I'll outgrow that feeling someday. Or maybe it's just that I can't forget that lots of real people have gotten hurt because other people believed that witches were an actual thing.

Anyway, David Green apparently takes the Assembly of God position with a grain of salt. Strolling the aisles listening to the church music, it was hard to take myself too seriously either...

"God so loved the world
that he gave..."?

Definitely not kosher

Look! A Lazarus candy dish!

And we don't trust contraceptives...

Un-Natural: Family Planning

Libby Anne's post about Natural Family Planning this morning triggered some powerful flashbacks for me. Our experience with abstinence as birth control had life-changing effects, raising questions I had never before allowed myself to ask and permanently altering my worldview. A decade later, the memories knot my stomach and leave my body shaky.

We were young married newlyweds, parents of a tiny newborn. We had spent years immersed in Quiverfull theology and had been virgins all the way up to the honeymoon. Our daughter arrived before our first anniversary; we had zero knowledge of birth control. And after all those years of abstinence, we were far from bored with sex!

But... my fertility cycle resumed eight weeks postpartum. We wanted more children, but we certainly didn't want them a year apart. Still newlyweds, and now first-time home owners as well, we were overwhelmed by the sudden changes and challenges of parenthood  including a home birth, lactation difficulties, sleep deprivation, and friends with various opinions on vaccination! Financially, we were comfortable enough, but we were struggling to find a supportive social network and we had only barely begun to recognize the harmful psychological effects of the cult we had only recently separated from.

Trying to be responsible parents while not compromising our moral convictions, we considered our options. At our doctor's recommendation, we started using the Creighton model of Natural Family Planning, paying $25 a session to meet with a certified trainer and discuss our charts, with our baby in her infant carrier on the floor of the tiny office a few doors down the hall from our doctor's practice. We liked our coach. We visited her church once, borrowed books from her, read quotes from the Pope on the office walls, and even toyed briefly with becoming Catholic.

Practicing NFP involved a steep learning curve, but we are both smart and we had years of experience with following rules to the letter. We wanted each other desperately, but since I was breastfeeding, it seemed there were only about five days a month when the method gave us a "green light" to have intercourse. It was so complicated, we even got a sheet of yellow stickers to use besides the basic set of colors. And it soon became clear that sex would always be forbidden on days when my libido was high. NFP may have been "100% natural", but we were certainly fighting hard against God-designed nature!

When I found myself pregnant again before M was even seven months old, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe it. We were at a loss to know how this could have happened when the method was promoted by doctors and on city-wide billboards as 99% effective. After all those weeks of stress, tears, and painfully conscientious hugging, how could we be the 1%? We showed up for our next appointment, and told our [to us] shocking news. The method had failed us.

Our coach looked at me compassionately. "Merciful Mother-!" she murmured under her breath. Then she reviewed our chart, to figure out what had gone wrong, I thought. "Here," she tapped on a square. "This should have been a different colored sticker. You had intercourse on a day when you were actually fertile, and you achieved desired pregnancy. The method worked the way it was supposed to." Achieved desired pregnancy! Wha-?

So that's how they get their statistics. NFP works to avoid pregnancy (on infertile days), and to achieve pregnancy (when a couple makes love while fertile). The mystery is figuring out which ones are which ahead of time. When our coach submitted our records, we were considered a "success". We used informed abstinence to successfully achieve a pregnancy. I left her office feeling embarrassed, ignorant, and ashamed. I had to read the fertility signs, after all. Only I could tell if the cervical mucus felt "slippery", "lubricative", or just "smooth". Rather than an excited and responsible couple expecting their second child, we felt like scolded teenagers who'd just been grounded for accidentally breaking a rule. We just loved each other too much.

That was a hard year for me. The next two years are really kind of a blur. I had to wean the baby girl I adored. When she injured her elbow and was taken away crying for x-rays, I had to wait in the lobby with tears in my own eyes. I didn't have the energy to be the mom I wanted to be. I was anemic, slept a lot, and gained a lot of weight. I prayed to miscarry at first, then felt guilty when I had early contractions at 30 weeks. During that pregnancy I rethought my theology, read up on all kinds of birth control methods, and learned a lot about human biology. I wasn't ready to give birth again, but I did it. I only remember the following months because of the photos we took.

After the delivery, our NFP coach called us to set up appointments again. We hadn't come far enough to be honest yet. We said we weren't sure; we were considering other methods. "Condoms aren't effective," she warned, sounding anxious. We said we'd call her. We never did.

Fertility awareness is a wonderful and important part of being a woman, but it is no substitute for contraception when a sexually active couple is unprepared for pregnancy. And it is morally wrong for religious or health professionals to suggest that it is. 

Ex-Quiverfull

Bruce Gerencser has written an honest account of what it was like to be that happy man with a full quiver, both theologically and practically. I feel glad and hopeful when I think of how he and Polly reconsidered their religious convictions to protect her body.

For a time, we felt guilty. We thought, we are disobeying God. Where is our faith?

In the end, in spite of our theological beliefs, we put our faith and trust, not in God, but in doctors. As we look back on it now, perhaps this was the first small crack in our Evangelical Calvinistic worldview.

We now see how foolish we were and how dangerous certain beliefs were.

We are blessed to have six wonderful children. We love all of them dearly. But, if we had to do it all over again, knowing what we know now, I doubt we would have had six children. Health and economics should have been the criteria we used to determine whether or not to have children. Instead, we let the folly of youth and our religious beliefs determine what size of family we wanted to have. We are fortunate things turned out as well as they did. I can only imagine how life might had been if Polly had died having child seven or ten. I am grateful that the wife of my youth is alive and we are able to enjoy together the latter years of life.

You can read Bruce's entire piece at No Longer Quivering.

His Quiver Full of Them

Decades ago, I cross-stitched a scripture motto for my parents from Psalm 127, the favorite psalm of large families.

"Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward."

The psalmist goes on to say: "As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them..."

The term "quiverfull" is now used as both a noun and an adjective to describe a theology and lifestyle that glorifies human fertility while maintaining that God will provide the resources to raise as many children as he allows a couple to conceive. Contraception is held to be "playing God" and a violation of the command to "Be fruitful and multiply". The ideal Quiverfull couple are always open to "more blessings", regardless of financial situation, health concerns, housing limitations, or needs of existing children. 

I'm not certain when my parents decided that contraception was immoral. As a high schooler, Mom was an advocate of zero population growth and intended to adopt rather than bear children. A few years later, she graduated from a strict Catholic nursing school and married my dad. I was born a year later, my brother two years after that, and so on for the next 20 years.

Mail would arrive periodically from the Couple to Couple League and my parents had a couple of books by Catholic authors John & Sheila Kippley explaining the practice of abstinence and/or breastfeeding as a means of birth control. Of course, even "natural family planning" sounded too much like the evil "Planned Parenthood" so it was usually referred to as "child spacing". Somewhere along the line my parents abandoned NFP (turns out it's not all that effective at preventing pregnancy!) and the babies began to come even closer together.

Certainly Mom was influenced by Mary Pride's 1985 book The Way Home, a story of the author's journey from feminism to what she calls "reality". Mary had just three young children when she wrote the book, in which she blasted away at contraception, lingerie, Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman, and even Christian schools. 

"All forms of sex that shy away from marital fruitfulness are perverted. Masturbation, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, prostitution, adultery, and even deliberate marital barrenness--all are perverted."

"Since the word used for female is connected so strongly with the idea of nursing babies, whereas it has no connection at all with the idea of sexual activity, I believe that God is saying here that when women exchange their natural function of childbearing and motherliness for that which is 'against nature' [that is, trying to behave sexually like a man], the men tend to abandon the natural sexual use of the women and turn to homosexuality. When men stop seeing women as mothers, sex loses its sacredness. Sex becomes 'recreational', and therefore the drive begins to find new kicks."    (Mary Pride, The Way Home, 1985)

(Pride's position against family planning was more extreme than even the Catholic Couple-to-Couple League's, prompting a correspondence between her and John Kippley, president of CCLI, and leading Pride to grudgingly endorse NFP in some situations in her sequel to The Way Home.)

Pride went on to birth six more babies and became a powerful force in the new homeschooling movement. My mom used to share The Way Home with all her friends and donated it to church libraries when she could. (When she encouraged me to read it, I was confused. Especially by the story about the lady wearing saran-wrap. Sexually naive young women raised in patriarchal, homeschooling isolation were definitely not Pride's target audience.)

Mary Pride's views fit rather well with the teachings of Bill Gothard--a middle-aged bachelor who handed out plenty of sexual and parenting advice at his seminars and encouraged couples to have surgeries to reverse previous vasectomies and tubal ligations. One of Gothard's books informs us, "Labor in childbirth... was given to the woman for her spiritual benefit..." and points out that the God of the Old Testament "cursed several women by closing their wombs." Attendees of Gothard's conferences learned to associate infertility with God's judgement. A full quiver, on the other hand, was a sign of God's favor, a spiritual status symbol.

In 1990, a Nebraska couple published A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ. In this book, Rick and Jan Hess (homeschooling parents of ten) invite the reader to imagine a world where no one has ever had more than two or three siblings, effectively eliminating many historical figures. This exercise concludes with visualization of a future where enormous families are normal and God provides spacesuits for a missionary family moving their brood to evangelize a colony on the moon. My parents had this book, probably purchased at an IBLP seminar and still available on Gothard's website.

Then there was Nancy Campbell's occasional magazine for moms, Above Rubies. Nancy is a fierce promoter of anti-feminism from her compound in Tennessee. Her website includes multiple articles by women who felt guilt and regret over "the biggest mistake" of their life. After they repented, they went on to expand their families by four, five, six more babies. What mistake is reversed by more pregnancies? An abortion, perhaps? No, as it turns out, the biggest mistake of these women's lives was a tubal ligation. Nancy also sells a book, A Change of Heart, encouraging couples to have surgeries to reverse both vasectomies and tubal ligations.

Vickie Farris, whose husband Mike is president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, homeschooled their ten children and lived to write a book about it. She encourages other women to reject birth control methods and embrace motherhood. Quiverfull women like Farris, and Michelle Duggar of "Nineteen Kids and Counting", have built their lives on the mantra "God won't give anyone more than they can handle", sometimes phrased as "What God orders, he pays for".

My parents were opponents of both birth control and sterilization. They even encouraged some of their friends to have reversal surgeries, resulting in many more babies. My mom had eleven children over 24 years, including ten [unassisted home]births. Pregnancy was not easy for her--she often referred to herself with the phrase from St. Paul, "a living sacrifice". She spent most of my childhood breastfeeding, diapering, potty-training, and homeschooling on top of that. I understood that this was not culturally normal, but sought to convince myself that God was pleased with this self-sacrifice. I spent my teen years watching my mom's body swell and deflate, and changing thousands of diapers.

In my twenties, as I waited for my turn to become a wife and mother, I quietly ticked off how many children I could have in x years. I may have been ideologically persuaded that contraception was wrong, but I didn't want to spend twenty years lactating either. When I got impatient for God to bring me a husband (no boyfriends on the horizon), I consoled myself by guessing how many fewer children I would bear in a shorter window of fertile sexual activity.

Fortunately, when I did get married, my husband and I quickly began to realize that many aspects of Quiverfull thought and practice were contradictory to our values. Not before taking NFP classes from a Catholic certified trainer, though. When we got pregnant anyway, we were told the method worked fine--we'd just had sex when [it turned out!] we were actually fertile. Well, what do you know?

I think my relationship with the Quiverfull movement finally ended a few years ago as I was perched on the end of an exam table in my doctor's office. Looking up from my chart, she compassionately observed, "You've been raising kids for a long time," and I burst into unexpected tears.

These days, stories of ex-Quiverfull moms and their "quivering daughters" are multiplying on the Internet like rabbits in the spring. The fruit of the movement has not turned out to be sweet; we deal with health problems, poverty, anxiety, depression, PTSD, eating disorders, cutting, sexual abuse, emotional incest, and divorce. (You can read far more than you want to know at the Homeschoolers Anonymous blog.)

In spite of these firsthand horror stories, Quiverfull continues to enjoy wide support in America and is gaining traction in other nations. Earlier this year, the BBC reported on the movement's growth in the United Kingdom. You can listen to more, including scary-sounding clips from Nancy Campbell, here.

Meanwhile here in the States, Hobby Lobby and Catholic hospitals gnash their teeth over their employees' rights to use birth control. Texan teenagers are taught that contraceptives don't work. (The result? Texas has more than 10% of America's teen births.) And TLC continues to profit from shows like "Nineteen Kids and Counting", promoting Quiverfull ideology to some unsuspecting viewers. The show should include a disclaimer: For your own safety, don't try this at home.

The Rights of Women

Quick history review:

One hundred years ago, women in America were still marching for the right to vote.

An American suffrage event in 1913

Jeanette Rankin, the lonely female voice in Congress in 1917, was proud to vote for woman's suffrage. Her male colleagues finally approved women's voting rights in 1920, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment more than forty years after Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first drafted it. Men in Switzerland did not approve federal female suffrage till 1971.

Much more recently, married women in Wichita still needed their husband's permission to get a library card and women in Memphis could only get a library card in their husband's name.

In the 1980's, I grew up in a religious cult that did not permit women to wear pants (lest they cause a man to lust after them and rape them). Contraception was also considered immoral, so my mother had 15 pregnancies: 4 miscarriages, 11 births. When I realized (just a few years ago!) that women actually have equal rights with men, I was amazed. And then I discovered that those rights are under attack right here in heartland.

For example, our governor and some of our male state legislators are continually eroding, in the name of religion, the rights of Kansas women to not be pregnant. If women were making these rules, that affect only women after all, maybe I would feel differently. But these men were born with the right to never be pregnant. Why would they insist that a woman grow another human inside her body against her will?

My daughters need to know they can be whatever they want to be. That motherhood is their choice--even if they are victims of sexual violence. Even if they are minors. Even if their birth control fails. Even if they are ignorant or irresponsible. Even if they don't discover they are pregnant until 8 weeks later. And if they choose to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion, they should not have to fight a state-mandated obstacle course of shame, fear and lies. 

Men, especially religious men, have a long history of telling women how God intended women's bodies to be used:

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another...
--St. Paul (Romans 1:26-27)

You really wrote that, Paul? "The natural use of the woman"? Oh, God. Got that straight from Him, did you? You'll be glad to know the church in Rome took it seriously. In fact, they've spread the good news all over the globe--letting it be known that the only morally acceptable place for a male orgasm is inside a woman's vagina. Yep. Thanks, Paul.

Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
--St. Paul (I Corinthians 11:9)

Of course. What was I thinking?

But others drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived.
--St. Jerome (Letter 22, to Eustochium 13)

How the heck? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Therefore, women do wrong when they seek to have children by means of evil drugs. They sin still more grievously when they kill the children who are already conceived or born, and when by taking impious drugs to prevent conception they condemn in themselves the nature which God wanted to be fruitful. Let them not doubt that they have committed as many murders as the number of the children they might have begotten.
--St. Caesarius of Arles (Sermon 51, 4; CC 103, 229)

Inconceivable!

By that primitive name [Eve], says he, He showed for what labor the woman had been provided; and He said accordingly, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Now, who among ourselves denies that the woman was provided for the work of child-bearing by the Lord God, the beneficent Creator of all good?
--St. Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book II, Chapter 12)

 I guess no one else is going to do it...

...We see how weak and sickly barren women are. Those who are fruitful, however, are healthier, cleanlier, and happier. And even if they bear themselves weary—or ultimately bear themselves out—that does not hurt. Let them bear themselves out. This is the purpose for which they exist. It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health.
--Martin Luther (The Estate of Marriage, LW 45)

I've seen such women. It is a heartbreaking sight.

Woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by Satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading to all perdition. It is necessary that woman recognize this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. This is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.
--John Calvin (author of Institutes of the Christian Religion, cited by Brown in An Apology to Women)

So glad I don't live in Calvin's Geneva.

Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him. After the fall, she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God. In which sentence there are two parts.
    (a) A dolor, anguish and pain as oft as ever she shall be a mother.
    (b) A subjection of her self, her appetites and will to her husband and his will.
From the former part of this malediction can neither art, nobility, policy nor law made by man deliver women: but, alas, ignorance of God, ambition and tyranny have studied to abolish and destroy the second part of God's punishment.
--John Knox (First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women)

And so it goes on. From Calvin and Knox to Doug Phillips and Jim Bob Duggar. Let the women kill fleas!

Sisters, we have come far. Occasionally with the support of religious groups, more often without. Our daughters are watching us to determine their own value. For their sake, let's not give up any of our hard-won progress now.

Why We Need Abortion

Abortion is nothing new. For as long as sexual intimacy has provided pleasure and birth has been painful and life-threatening, some women have taken their fate into their own hands and attempted to prevent "nature" from taking her course. 

In her article for the New York Times, Kate Manning lists some of the dangerous and horrible methods used by desperate women throughout history to induce miscarriage. In the mid-1800's, newspapers carried numerous advertisements for abortifacient remedies. And in 1930, one-fifth of the reported maternal deaths were caused by [illegal] abortion. 

"What is most striking about this history of probes and poisons is that throughout all recorded time, there have been women so desperate to end a pregnancy that they were willing to endure excruciating pain and considerable risk, including infection, sterility, permanent injury, puncture and hemorrhage, to say nothing of shame and ostracism. Where abortion was illegal, they risked prosecution and imprisonment. And death, of course."

Consider Jan Wilberg's story of her risky and illegal abortion in 1967 after a single sexual encounter with her boyfriend. A teenager, a college freshman, Jan did not have the security of a home herself in which to raise a child. Neither was the boyfriend prepared to provide one. She describes the feeling of being trapped in a dark corner while her boyfriend could be nonchalant:

"It wasn’t right to punish women who have been cornered by circumstances — unplanned pregnancy, no job, no money, no options — by daring them to find the $250 illegal abortionist in their city or worse. It wasn’t right that women should have to pay for a mistake with their fear, risk their future health and their very lives while men could walk away and be free." [emphasis mine]

Today, thanks to brave doctors, good medical schools, and Roe v. Wade, abortion is among our safest procedures. Bearing a child carries more risks than abortion. According to Amnesty International's report on maternal health, nearly half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended and two women die of pregnancy/birth complications every day. African-American women are four times more likely than white women to die of pregnancy-related complications. If the pregnancy is deemed high-risk, those odds are even higher. According to the 2010 report, the state of Georgia has a maternal mortality rate of 20.5 per 100,000 live births and reporting of maternal death is not even mandatory there!

"More than a third of all women who give birth in the USA – 1.7 million women each year – experience some type of complication that has an adverse effect on their health."

According to a study by ANSIRH of the effects of abortion on women's health and economic situation, specifically comparing women who received abortions with those who wanted abortions but could not obtain them (turnaways), the women who received abortions were better off than those who continued the unwanted pregnancy.

"When a woman is denied the abortion she wants, she is statistically more likely to wind up unemployed, on public assistance, and below the poverty line.

"Turnaways were more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner than women who got abortions. A year after being denied an abortion, 7% reported an incident of domestic violence in the last six months. 3% of women who received abortions reported domestic violence in the same time period. Foster emphasized that this wasn't because the turnaways were more likely to get into abusive relationships. It was simply that getting abortions allowed women to get out of such relationships more easily....

"... the Turnaway Study found no indication that there were lasting, harmful negative emotions associated with getting an abortion. The only emotional difference between the two groups at one year was that the turnaways were more stressed.

"...But turnaways did face a greater health risk from giving birth. Even late stage abortions are safer than giving birth. The researchers said at the APHA meeting: 

'We find physical health complications are more common and severe following birth (38% experience limited activity, average 10 days) compared to abortion (24% limited activity, average 2.7 days). There were no severe complications after abortion; after birth complications included seizure, fractured pelvis, infection and hemorrhage. We find no differences in chronic health conditions at 1 week or one year after seeking abortion.'"

 [emphasis mine]

We can see that even if a woman is able to give up her baby for adoption, carrying a pregnancy to term is no simple solution. Of course human life starts at conception, agrees Mary Elizabeth Williams, but the story doesn't stop there: "Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal."

"... We make choices about life all the time in our country. We make them about men and women in other nations. We make them about prisoners in our penal system. We make them about patients with terminal illnesses and accident victims. We still have passionate debates about the justifications of our actions as a society, but we don’t have to do it while being bullied around by the vague idea that if you say we’re talking about human life, then the jig is up, rights-wise." [emphasis mine]

Besides, most women having abortions are already mothers raising children. The choice is as much about those children's lives as about the mother's. Yes, abstinence prevents pregnancy, but how effectively can a married woman use that? Every contraceptive method fails, and not every sexual encounter can be planned against in advance (I am speaking of rape, including marital rape, but one could also include carelessness caused by alcohol). There are women who long to be mothers to the children they have, and another pregnancy would prevent them from caring for the little ones that already need them desperately.

Those families holding signs in the Life Chain, will they pay for a planned-against birth? Will the crisis pregnancy center provide iron tablets? Perhaps the nuns protesting contraceptives will reimburse a woman's employer for missed days of work? Cover antidepressants and counseling? Provide daycare? In ten years, who will help cover college bills for the older children? Or ought their education be sacrificed to provide food and daycare for the surprise addition to the family? Choosing to raise a child is a commitment that far outlasts the free diapers, crib, or donated maternity clothes. It spans decades and affects every life choice from then on.

Personally, I believe there are worse fates a human being could suffer than being aborted before taking a breath. Abortion needs to be legal because we value human life. I was "pro-life" because life was cheap, men were designed to reproduce themselves, women were intended to bear men's children, and we wanted as many Christians as possible. When I realized the value of each human being, the immense responsibility of parenthood, the lifetime effects of childhood nurture on the adult psyche, and the awful societal price of ignorance, poverty, and abuse, my view of abortion evolved, too. This is why I am glad that a courageous doctor is reopening a women's clinic in Wichita, at the same location where the late Dr. Tiller provided abortions until his murder.

Last week, Michelle Kinsey Bruns told her story to a train car filled with Catholic teenagers on their way home from the annual "March for Life" in Washington, D.C. "By eighteen it had begun to seem I might survive my childhood, but I didn’t believe I could survive being responsible for someone else’s. Since then, though, I have survived and thrived in a way that would have quite simply not been possible without the abortion that cleared a path for me to eventually get here." [emphasis mine]

As long as human beings begin their growth inside women's bodies, we will need abortion. As long as women can conceive against their will, we will need abortion. As long as human birth is difficult, we will need abortion. As long as we believe children are precious, we will need abortion.