When I became a mother,
I felt a tiger wake up within me. I mean, I’ve always been concerned in
justice, but once Nick was born there were certain news stories, certain ideas
that would cause this tiger energy to just come rushing into me. This tiger
comes out:
When
I hear about children who do not have enough food to eat or a safe place to
live,
When
I hear about parents who are denied their right to parental leave after the
birth of their child.
When
I hear about parents who can’t afford good childcare and are forced to choose
between putting food on the table and having a safe place for their child while
they work.
When
I hear about women who aren’t allowed to make choices about their own bodies during
their pregnancies or labor .
when
I hear about women sterilized against their will.
This tiger surprised me
with ferocious need to protect the most vulnerable. I keep this as a symbol of that part of
myself.
Last week many of us
celebrated mother’s day with flowers, with brunch, with cards. And speaking for
myself, I can assure you moms do love those things. But what moms all over the
world really need is a tiger, who will defend their right to make choices about
their own bodies, who will defend their children’s’ rights to a safe and
healthy start in life.
Yes, motherhood is
about playing patty-cake, and swing-sets, and stories at bedtime. But
Underneath all that motherhood is about the choice to perpetuate the species
through your own body. That is a pretty ferocious responsibility. That mild mannered woman in the pink sweater
is actually a tiger. I remember one time a substitute taught our pre-natal yoga
class, and she as these third trimester women struggled into some pose “oh you all are so cute!” And I felt my tiger
rising -- here were a group of women who
have chosen to face one of the most dangerous, courageous acts a human can
choose, who are going to embody and face the gateway between life and death-
and you are calling us cute? Biological
mothers have made a choice to sacrifice their own body to the pains and changes
of pregnancy and labor, have chosen to risk their own lives in the act of
birth. And whether they birthed their babies or not, all mothers have chosen to put their own life
between their child and life’s dangerous edges. Motherhood is about being a
tiger.
Maybe it is because we
are afraid of the power of that tiger that so many cultures seek to minimize mom’s
power. We are so blessed in this culture that women have the right to decide
when and with whom she will have a sexual relationship. We believe that both
partners in any sex act should consent. We are lucky that we live in a culture
where we don’t have to worry about forced sterilization. We are lucky that for the past 40 years we
have had effective birth control so that parents can choose when they are ready
to have children. As a woman who grew up in the 70s I have long taken these things
for granted. I didn’t understand that for centuries women had been pregnant for
most of their adult lives, that as soon as one child had weaned a new one was
on the way. For some mothers this was a
joy and a blessing, for others it was an inescapable struggle. I am so blessed to be part of a generation
given the power of consent.
For those of us who growing up in a
UU church in the 1970s, both our families and our church affirmed our inner
wisdom and gave us an ethical compass for making decisions. They empowered us
to make wise informed choices about our lives. Growing up I didn’t understand
how recently some of these rights had been won.
I didn’t realize that it wasn’t until 1965 in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, that the U.S. Supreme Court decided
that married couples could use contraception. Let me repeat that:
the United States Supreme Court had to decide that a married woman could
practice birth control.[i]
In an age where many of those rights I took for granted as a child are
being challenged in states like Oklahoma and North Dakota which are considering
laws that would make the birth control
pill illegal, we need to stand up for a woman’s right to decide with whom she
will mate, and if she choose to have children, when and with whom she will have
children. As Dina Butcher, longtime Republican activist from North Dakota said in
a recent story “this is not a legislative issue-- this is between a woman, her
doctor and her god.” [ii]
That, my friends, is why we are
talking about reproductive Justice this morning. We are a people who have
covenanted to support one another in a free and responsible search for truth
and meaning. When people are verged on the most important ethical and spiritual
decisions of their lives, they should feel they can turn to their beloved
community. Whether or not we ourselves are parents, we have a responsibility to
be allies to those who do propagate our species, we have a responsibility to be
allies to all those who refrain from reproducing, and we have a responsibility
to all the generations who follow us. I believe our responsibility is
threefold.
First, it is our responsibility to
provide for one another an ethical framework which supports us as we make these
critical decisions about life. As a faith tradition, we have been allies in
helping people, youth and adult alike, understand what it means to have a
healthy, responsible sexual life since our first Sex ed curriculum “About Your
Sexuality” in 1970. I took that class at my UU church in 1984. Today we provide this ethical framework through
a Sexuality Education program called Our
Whole Lives which has curricula for
everyone from Kindergarteners to Adults. It is built upon four core values:
1. Self-Worth
Every person is entitled to dignity and self-worth and to his or her own attitudes and beliefs about sexuality.2. Sexual Health
Knowledge about human sexuality is helpful, not harmful. Every individual has the right to accurate information about sexuality and to have her or his questions answered.Healthy sexual relationships are:· Consensual (both people consent)· Nonexploitative (equal in terms of power; neither person pressures or forces the other into activities or behaviors)· Mutually pleasurable· Safe (no or low risk of unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, or emotional pain)· Developmentally appropriate (appropriate to the age and maturity of persons involved)· Based on mutual expectations and caring· Respectful (including values of honesty and keeping commitments made to others)3. Responsibility
We are called to enrich our lives by expressing sexuality in ways that enhance human wholeness and fulfillment and express love, commitment, delight, and pleasure. All persons have the right and obligation to make responsible sexual choices.4. Justice and Inclusivity
We need to avoid double standards.People of different ages, genders, races, backgrounds, income levels, physical abilities, and sexual orientations must have equal value and rights.Sexual relationships should never be coercive or exploitative.Being romantically and sexually attracted to both genders (bisexual), the same gender (homosexual), or the other gender (heterosexual) is natural in the range of human sexual experience.[i]
UUs
are encouraged to use these values in decision-making concerning their own
sexuality and relationships.
Second,
we have a responsibility to protect the rights of all our brothers and sisters,
so that they are free to make the decisions that their conscience, their bodies
call them to make. Last June the delegates to the General Assembly in Phoenix, chose
“Reproductive Justice” as our “Study Action Issue” for the next 4 years. It was
up against many other critically important issues, but I believe that it won
the our hearts and minds because we had seen too many congressional hearings
where rows of men in suits testified that people like me should not be allowed
to make decisions about my family any more. UUs across the nation realized that
we can’t take for granted people’s rights to make their own choices about their
bodies, about their sexuality unless we are willing to be tigers and protect
those rights.
A
number of folks have asked what this term “reproductive justice” means. It is a
term that was first coined in the 1990s by a black women’s caucus, who
developed an “intersectional theory highlighting the lived
experience of reproductive oppression in communities of color.” I know, that sentence is a little jargony.
What it is trying to express is the complexity of providing a supportive
community for people deciding whether or not to become parents, and then to
support those parents in being the parents they are called to be. The group
“Sistersong” defines it this way: “The
reproductive justice framework – the right to have children, not have children,
and to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments -- is based
on the human right to make personal decisions about one’s life, and the
obligation of government and society to ensure that the conditions are suitable
for implementing one’s decisions.”[ii] So Reproductive Justice is a new framework
for looking at this whole complex web of issues -- not just thumbs up or thumbs
down on one particular piece of legislation, but the complex reality of trying
to have a sexual life that affirms the Self Worth of every person, promotes their Sexual Health and
Responsibility, and promotes Justice and Inclusivity for all. And being an ally
does not mean deciding once and for all what is right, but empowering women and
men to make good decisions, and making sure they have the support they need to
live out those decisions.
This
is our third responsibility – supporting the living out of those tough
decisions. We have a responsibility to
the actual physical well being of mothers and their children. Are parents
really free to choose if they feel that they
cannot provide a safe and nurturing environment for their children? If they are going to lose their jobs if they
become pregnant? If they can’t put food on their table? If they feel alone and
disconnected? Parents are not able to do this alone, nor were they meant to.
What
does it mean to be an ally? My mom and my mother in law were allies there
supporting me at the hospital through the birth, respecting my sometimes
unusual choices. My husband was an ally when he stood by me we felt the doctors
were not honoring my rights as a patient, and not honoring my own knowing about
the process, saying “I’m busting you out
of here- I don’t care if I have to body block orderlies on the way to the
elevator.”
When
I chose to start my family, my
congregation was an ally. They not only
provided me with paid maternity leave so I could recover and tend my child in
his earliest days, but they had a tradition called the “baby café” where
volunteers would come by every 2 days with home cooked meals to help us through
the challenging transition of becoming parents. Really, I’ve never felt
anything like that outpouring of support. Whenever a friend is expecting a child, I think
of my mothers, my husband, my church who taught me to be a tiger, an ally.
Now
that I am done making difficult decisions about my own family, that tiger
inside me is called to defend those rights I have been so lucky to enjoy,
whether that is the right to effective birth control, the right to have a say
during labor and delivery, or the blessed relief of a community rallying around
with casseroles in the challenging early days of parenthood.
In
this age not all of us are called to be parents. Not all of us need to be
parents. But we all need to be tigers. Or to put it another way, we are all
called to be allies. Allies of mothers and fathers who become biological
parents, allies of mothers and fathers who raise children who do not share
their DNA and allies of people who refrain from becoming parents. We must be
allies who defend the rights of all people to make decisions about their own
bodies- when they will have sex and with whom. When they will become parents or
refrain from becoming parents. We must be allies of children to make sure they
grow up in a family that loves and cares for them, allies of children who make
sure they have enough to eat, and access to a good education.
Let’s
all find that tiger inside of ourselves. Not all of us are called to be
parents, but all of us can be allies to the generations of children coming into
this world, and to their mothers and fathers, so they can be the kind of
parents this world needs them to be.
