Born-again Christians who support legal abortion

Anne Linstatter being interviewed on Ask a Christian

Share this YouTube video with any Christians you know who may be anti-abortion.  It's also on the Facebook page Ask a Christian (Sept. 30).

Let them know that some seriously committed Christians see God as respecting a woman's decision on whether to complete a pregnancy that she and her partner cannot cope with.

A woman may choose to give that little potential human back to God rather than bring him or her into a situation of conflict, stress, hunger, and even abuse or death.  

The women in my book prayed about what to do and came to a decision with a sense of God's permission, sometimes with the support of their priest or pastor.

God may approve and understand a woman's choice--often made with her husband in a marriage where there are already two or more children. 

Fifty-nine percent of abortion patients in 2014 had had at least one previous birth--Guttmacher Institute.

A report on NPR said that about 70% of the women seeking abortions in Texas this year already have two or more children.  The family cannot afford to raise another child, either financially or emotionally.  Children require a lot of time and loving care.  One more child can cause a fragile situation to fall apart.

In this video Amie Regester of Ask a Christian @askaChristianfriend interviews me on the book I edited: Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories (Pasadena CA: Hope Publishing House, 1994).  Scroll down to September 30.

To Christians who stress the sanctity of life, I make several points in this 40-minute interview:

• Respect women.  Respect pregnancy, birth, and raising a child for the difficult work it is.  Respect a woman's decision that she can't give up for adoption a child who carries her genes and whom she has carried in her womb for nine months.  Women who choose abortion respect life and understand how hard it is to bring another human being into a happy life.
• Put the burden of birth control on men.  Encourage fathers to get vasectomies.  If you truly respect life, pay each man $10,000 to get a vasectomy--don't pay that to someone who accuses a woman of having an abortion.
• Take reproductive choice away from men who commit murder or rape.  They don't deserve to create life.  Cut off their balls.  They have not respected life.
• The government should not tell a woman she has to complete a pregnancy she did not seek.  Will forced pregnancy produce a loving mother?  Will the child be unloved?  Will the father love and support a child he didn't want?  Is it respectful of life to force a child into a miserable situation?

My book is available from Amazon or from me, and it's in many libraries.  It's also free on the Kindle app.

On the wall behind me is a poster with the words of Rabbi Moses Sofer, who died in 1839: "No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself."  This was his conclusion after studying the Torah, especially the one Bible passage that mentions miscarriage (Exodus 21:22-25).

The Story of Betty Reid Soskin & Rosie the Riveter

By Ann Rosener, U.S. Office of War Information 

Betty Reid Soskin turned 100 years old on September 22, 2021.

During World War II she worked as a file clerk for Boilermakers Union A-36.  At age 85 she became a park ranger for the National Park Service, a job she still holds today.  

Recently she fought to get a park in Richmond CA to honor the women who worked in welding and shipbuilding during World War II -- "Rosy the Riveter" real women.

Here's a photo of a real worker dropping her daughter off at day care so she herself can sleep during the day and be ready for her next nightshift of work.  Other photos can be found at Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park.

Betty Reid Soskin

Now a middle school near Richmond has chosen to change its name from Juan Crespi Middle School to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School.  The decision began with one student's campaign to honor Soskin. 

Juan Crespi was one of the Franciscan priests who accompanied Spanish soldiers exploring and claiming California.  In the process, they conquered the Native Americans living in California, built forts, and enslaved many of the people to build missions. 

Thank you to Pastor Stacy Boorn of herchurch, San Francisco, for highlighting this bit of news in her message this Sunday morning.  

Rest in Peace: Albert Gleaves Cohen

 A holy man died last March, born in the 1920s and leaving this earth early in the 2020s.

I am richer for knowing this saint.  Sanctus, kadosh, holy--every language has a word for the kind of person Albert Gleaves Cohen was.  

Al Cohen was reverend too, ordained a minister/servant in the United Church of Christ.  Early in his life, he attended the Naval Academy in Anapolis, Maryland, graduating just after the world's second great war.

I loved visiting him at his home in Pasadena.  He read widely and followed the political follies of the last several years in Washington, D.C., where he was born.  Our political views were very similar though his observations were made with humor and patience, mine with frustration.  

His study of theology at Oberlin College made him a radical Christian, the kind that changed the world in the first centuries of the Common Era.  From the 1960s through the mid-1990s, he worked on two California State University campuses as a chaplain, showing students how to be a follower of Jesus:

attending peace marches, organizing protests, registering voters in Mississippi and in Selma, Alabama, organizing trips to U.N. environmental conferences and generally "speaking truth to power."  (from the legacy.com website below)

Then in 1996 he became executive director of the Southern California Ecumenical Council, working for racial justice and against US military adventures, among other causes.  

My path intersected with his in 1994 when Faith Annette Sand of Hope Publishing House decided to publish my prochoice book on Christians choosing abortion (Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories).  I had met Faith, his second wife, at conferences of evangelical feminists.  She died of cancer in 2015 at age 76.

To the end, he remained a keen observer of humans, their ups and downs, and their foibles.

Albert Cohen was the kind of man who causes others to say, "Yes, there is a God.  The deity he sees and serves, I want to believe in."

Praise be to the Holy One who gives us life.  

Or as the Kaddish says, "Magnified and exalted be God's great Name throughout the world created by divine will."

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/albert-cohen-obituary?pid=198313275

A public memorial service will be held on October 2, 2021, in Pasadena.