An Inconvenient Abortion Story
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Several years ago, I was speaking to a political science course about US foreign policy, independent humanitarian work, and the messiness of both. Talking with students is one of my favorite parts of my job. This particular group of college students walked into class full of questions and ideas.
Near the end of a robust discussion and Q&A, a young woman raised her hand and asked the why do you do what you do question. So, I shared about how I stumbled into the group of people the nonprofit I work for serves, how they changed my life, and a little about my Christian faith.
There was the usual string of students who stayed for followup questions when the class ended. After the last few departed, the young woman introduced herself as a fellow Christian and thanked me for coming to share with them. She asked if I had some extra time to hear her story. I figured she must be a missionary kid or her parents were involved in nonprofit work or something along those lines.
“I just need to talk to someone,” she said. “There’s a bench a few buildings over I like. Can we go there?”
Not exactly a normal ending to a speaking gig for me, but I had an hour to kill and walked with her to the bench. It was a quieter corner of campus with tall trees, beautiful flowers, and a few students spread out of earshot from each other. “Peaceful,” I thought.
And then she told her story. There was nothing peaceful about it. While she gave me permission to share this, I won’t be sharing her real name or identifying details per her request. Instead, we’ll call her Clara.
Clara grew up in a world that is familiar to me. She was one of the few kids at her childhood evangelical church who went to public school instead of private Christian schools. Her experiences were always a bit different than her peers at church because of that, but she still fit in.
The church was majority white and conservative, but it slowly grew more diverse during her time there. It wasn’t a perfect place, but she thought back on it with a warm fondness. The posture of the faith community had a lot more in common with, say, something akin to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral than what much of American evangelicalism is known for today.
Clara’s dad took a job in another city when she was 14. It meant a new school and church for her and her sister. Their previous church had been inherited from their mom. She didn’t want to leave when she married their father, so he ended up there, too. Her dad had always felt like it “wasn’t conservative enough.” Their new church rested in the porous borderlands of mainstream white evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It was entirely white and hyper-conservative. Sectarian is how Clara described it.
Purity culture was the law of the land in her new youth group. The preaching frequently veered into culture war territory. Masculinity was aggressive, and conversations about women and girls were mostly exclusive to sexuality, marriage, and parenting. For Clara and her older sister, it was a jarring transition that they never managed to settle fully into.
When Clara was 17, she was peer pressured into secretly dating one of the boys in her youth group. The relationship didn’t last long. He was a product of the church environment: aggressive and selfish with a lack of respect for girls. After a youth event that summer, he pulled Clara aside and tried to pressure her into performing oral sex on him. When she declined, he began guilting her and questioning her loyalty to him. As he grew angrier, she became scared and eventually gave in.
Clara cried that night instead of sleeping. She broke up with him the next day. He didn’t seem to care that the relationship was ending, instead begging her not to tell anyone “what happened.” She agreed just to end the conversation. And for the rest of her youth group days, Clara became more confused and guilt-ridden by the heavily-gendered expectations in the church culture around her, expectations that slowly seeped into their home, making it a more rigid and unloving place.
Unsurprisingly, college couldn’t come soon enough. It was Clara’s ticket out. She was accepted to the university (no accident that it was a few hours drive away) and moved into her dorm room the first day she could. She quickly made new friends and found a student ministry on campus that felt more like her childhood church. Clara found some healing on the margins in this new environment. She felt like she could start letting her guard down a bit.
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As her junior year of college began, Clara met a fellow student via a mutual friend. He came across as a kind and thoughtful Christian. After a few group hangouts, he asked her out. He seemed to be everything Clara was looking for. She felt like he was someone she was growing to trust and love.
After fall break, they both went to a friend’s 21st birthday party. Clara wasn’t much of a partier and only had half a beer. But her usually relaxed boyfriend was throwing back shots. “That’s a side of him I’ve never seen,” one of their mutual friends commented to her.
By the time they left the party, it was late and her boyfriend was in no condition to drive, although he wasn’t blackout drunk either. He lived in a house with two friends on the other side of campus, so she took his keys and drove him home. “Come inside for a minute and say hey to the guys,” he said. Clara had met his roommates several times, so she didn’t think anything of it.
When they got inside, the guys had already turned in upstairs for the night. Clara said she was going to head home since it was so late. She tried to give her boyfriend a hug. He firmly pressed her up against the closed door instead. “Why don’t you stay here tonight?” he asked and tried to kiss her. The directness made her uncomfortable, so she gently pushed him away and tried to tell him she’d talk to him tomorrow.
And then, it was like Clara was back in high school. He firmly pushed her back up against the door and said “let’s move to the couch.” She declined and tried to push him away again. He began guilting her, questioning her loyalty to him, and asking why she didn’t love him. He grew angrier and more physically domineering. Clara became scared and eventually started to give in, fearing that she would be hurt if she didn’t give him what he wanted.
Confused and frightened, only one thought crossed Clara’s mind on the couch as she suffered through the next 5 minutes of him being on top of her: “Why is this happening again?” When it was over, he want to the bathroom. She left and, just like high school, spent the night in tears instead of sleeping.
The next morning, he texted her that he “had fun last night.” Clara waited until that afternoon to respond, eventually telling him they were done and that she wasn’t interested in seeing him again. He would try to reach out several times the rest of the semester. Eventually she blocked his number and sent a message through a mutual friend to stop trying.
A few weeks later, Clara was late. She ended up missing her period and bought a pregnancy test on her way home for Thanksgiving. After a brief welcome from her parents, Clara went straight to the bathroom. The results were positive.
Clara was so distraught that she didn’t realize she had left the test on the counter when she walked out. Her mother found it a few minutes later and showed her dad. They crashed into her room, screaming at a young woman who was already terrified and confused.
“What the hell have you done?!”
“We raised you better than this!”
“Do you know what our friends are going to think when they find out?”
Her dad stormed out of the house angrily and, against her mother’s protests, Clara fled. She drove straight back to a mostly empty campus, not even remembering the drive. One of her friends in student ministry had stayed on campus through Thanksgiving, and Clara confided in her. After a lot of talking, crying, and praying together, she told Clara about a healthcare clinic nearby that offered a wide variety of free and low-cost services to the community. “They can make sure you and the baby are healthy and go over some options with you” she said. “I think it’d be good if you just get some more information about where you are physically. One step at a time.”
The next morning, Clara drove to the clinic. She stopped dead in her tracks in the parking lot. Two older women with anti-abortion signs were waiving at cars passing by and waiting for patients to approach the building. She had seen similar scenes too many times to count, yet had never really thought about what it must feel like to experience this in a moment of crisis. Not wanting to find out, she tried unsuccessfully to slip past them as some cars briefly drew their attention away.
The women could tell Clara was frightened and began stepping toward her. “Can we talk to you for a moment?” one of them said. “Sorry, I just need to get inside,” Clara nervously replied as she hurried toward the door. As she opened it, one of the women raised her voice over the sound of the passing cars.
“If you do what I think you’re about to do, God will never forgive you. He’ll damn you. You’ll live with it for the rest of your life.”
And with that final straw, fear turned into anger. Confusion melted into clarity. Clara was going to get her life back from a world and church subculture that was hellbent on breaking her instead of loving her.
She mindlessly completed a few forms and was in an exam room shortly afterward. A nurse confirmed she was pregnant and a doctor found her to be healthy after an examination and a few quick tests. She was given her options. Wanting the nightmare to end, she said as much.
“You shouldn’t feel rushed to make a decision today,” the doctor said. “We can schedule a time for next week to do another check up and go over your options again if you’d like. We have some good resources we can send home with you that have more details, too.”
But it was all too much. Used in high school, betrayed by her recent ex-boyfriend, rejected by her family, and condemned by those two hateful women outside, Clara was done. She asked for an abortion and came back a few days later for the medication and instructions. That was that.
Her friend who told her about the clinic briefly looked dismayed that Clara had an abortion, but it quickly turned into love and understanding. It’s the love and understanding she had needed all along. And almost four long months later, here I was: a stranger sitting in one of the few places she felt safe, hearing Clara’s story.
Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash
Sitting on that bench, I felt angry for this young woman. She was supposed to be enjoying college: learning new ideas, discovering her beliefs, and growing in friendships that would be with her for life.
Instead, Clara was dealing with…all of this. Other people made choices about her, forcing her into a situation she never wanted to be in. Relationships were wrecked that she thought were safe. Saddled with the guilt, fear, and confusion others had wrongly heaped on her, Clara didn’t know what came next. She was stuck in a rut of what ifs and couldn’t turn her brain off.
“What if I had been more forceful in pushing him away?”
“What if I had never met him?”
“What if my parents had listened to me?”
“What if I had the baby? What if I was a mother? What if someone else was?”
What if…what if…what if…
In hindsight, I now understand those questions were Clara trying to process the severe trauma that had been inflicted on her. She needed to be whole again, but this kind of trauma is designed to keep a person in a state of perpetual brokenness. It’s terrible. I didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, Clara didn’t seem to need me to say much of anything.
And so, we sat there mostly in silence. A gentle breeze ruffled the trees. Patches of sunlight broke through to the ground. Birds sang their songs. A peaceful place for a young woman in turmoil to try to find the words for how hard it is to be female in a country that politicizes her body. To try to say how difficult it is to escape a church subculture that sees her gender as only being good for serving the needs of men and children, not as a person to be loved.
“Some days when I’m here, I feel Jesus sitting next to me,” Clara said. “This is the only place I feel his presence anymore. That’s why I wanted to come here.”
A few minutes later, I had to go to a meeting with some faculty and she had a class to prepare for. She thanked me for taking the time and said she felt a little better. I gave her my contact information and let her know she could reach out anytime.
Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash
I stood up from that bench years ago, but a part of me never left. I hear Clara’s voice every time I see a new proposed law related to abortion, someone yelling with a sign at a healthcare clinic, and displays of small crosses for those “lost to the evil of abortion” on the carefully-manicured lawns of wealthy churches that have insulated themselves from the real world.
I’ve heard from this remarkable woman several times over the years. After graduating, Clara took a job in another state. An employee turned friend invited her to what would become her new church. During the membership process, she told her story to a male and female pastor. They embraced her. They wept with her. They offered their own counseling and financial assistance so she could see a professional therapist. There was no judgement. Just the beginnings of a loving community offering healing.
It’s a faith community that introduced her to a genuinely good man who became her husband. Today, they have a little girl and a baby boy on the way.
Looking back, that hour on the bench was also a turning point in my life. Clara helped open my eyes to the truth that many of our political, cultural, and theological fights aren’t really about what we say they’re about. Her story shows that real people get hurt regardless of who is right or wrong. Often times there is no right or wrong, just unfair and impossible.
Clara also showed me that when those who claim the name of Christ fail their neighbors as miserably as she was failed, Jesus is still there — sitting on a bench — ready to love those who have been discarded by the people who claim his name.
Photo by Will Paterson on Unsplash
Closing Thoughts
Roughly one month ago, a draft opinion leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court suggesting that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned. The resulting cultural moment has been as predictable as the rising and setting sun.
I’ve watched many in the “pro-life” crowd gloat about their impending culture war victory. I’ve seen the most extreme elements in that movement salivating at the possibility of being able to legally prosecute women in the near future. I’ve witnessed so many women hanging their heads — regardless of their views on abortion— exhausted in the obvious truth that much of this preening and posturing isn’t really about them or children. They know from endless experience that this is mostly about the degree to which certain men will get to hyper-sexualize, dehumanize, and control them.
These past few weeks, I’ve thought about Clara a lot. Her story demands that we find a better way, one that centers women and provides everything they need at a systemic level. A way that is guided by people like her. Not only to be made whole again, but to prevent such experiences in the first place.
To be blunt, I struggle to believe that we live in a country capable of arriving at such a holy place. I find it even harder to believe that certain corners of American Christianity are even interested in fighting for the kind of systemic justice we see the prophets in Scripture and early Church leaders fighting for. I simply do not understand why so many who claim the name of Christ refuse to lift women and children up as Jesus did. I do not understand what is “pro-life” or “pro-family” about any of this.
These truths have left me — a practicing Christian — without a position on abortion. I’ve met too many people who have been harmed by those holding firm positions. Clara is not the only woman I’ve met who was made to feel like this was her only option. I know even more people — men and women — who dared to hold more nuanced views on abortion in churches that detest nuance. Some of them survived the resulting spiritual assassination attempts. The faith of others did not. I’ve been a victim of this, too.
In certain corners of white American evangelicalism especially, women and children have been reduced to pawns in a sickening war for cultural power. Claims that “ending abortion” is about “saving lives” are difficult to take seriously when they are often deeply intertwined with nationalist, misogynistic, and racist views, views that are rooted in institutions that aggressively worship themselves. Being anti-abortion doesn’t make you pro-life. It just makes you anti-abortion, and maybe a bigot.
To be fair, I know some evangelicals who have adopted babies, fostered kids, and provided generous financial, material, and relational support to expecting mothers who needed help. Such assistance was delivered quietly and without fanfare. Those experiences not only helped real women in difficult situations, it also changed those who were helping in profound ways, opening their eyes to just how difficult the world is. It shifted their moral code and worldview. It made their posture more loving. Helping made them immensely frustrated with the brutal truth that we have inherited a country with too little justice and not nearly enough charity to plug the holes.
I long for the day when fewer and fewer women are faced with impossible decisions because we live in a country that is pursuing magnanimous justice. Overturning a court decision with a flurry of state legislative activity in the aftermath will do no such thing. It is delusional to hear stories like Clara’s and believe what is coming could.
No, the pursuit of justice would be living in a country that is waging total war on misogyny and the underlying health problems, reproductive challenges, socio-economic conditions, and enforced racial disparities that have set us all up to turn on each other instead of pursuing progress together.
I want this magnanimously just future as a dad who was in the hospital with his wife for two weeks when she went into pre-term labor. There was a real possibility our son wasn’t developed enough to survive if he came as early as he almost did. I don’t know what I would have done if their lives had been placed in my hands and I had to choose one or the other. Thank God our situation never got close to that point. But it was still hard. It was still overwhelming. And a lot of people simply do not have the resources we did to make it through their own, even harder crises.
We’ve made a deeply human experience deeply inhumane. We screech about moral high grounds and good vs. evil and the rest. It’s all too abstract. As much as we want things to be black and white or right versus wrong, life rarely works that way. Brokenness and evil are not the same thing. We do the best we can with the hand we’re dealt. And, for far too long, women and children in this country and in our churches have been dealt a genuinely crappy hand.
We must also understand that our current cultural moment is about so much more than abortion. It’s about privacy and our relationship to the state. It’s about managing the fallout of a certain type of cultural Christianity that is going down, wounded and bleeding from the self-annihilation that is underway within. It is certainly about our democracy, as the Republican Party requires that you not just be anti-abortion, but also against anything that threatens their power and privilege. To embrace this party as an ally in the fight to “end abortion” requires that you also embrace the destruction of American democracy.
This moment is also about our communities and relationships. It’s about choosing between love and hate. Between hope and fear. Listening and silencing. Humility and brutal control. It’s about choosing between the hardships that inevitably come with embracing nuance in a broken world and the enslavement of mind-numbing, insular tribalism.
Somehow, through all of this, Jesus is still sitting on that bench, meeting the people this world has decimated where they are. I’ve long wondered what would happen if the culture warriors sat down. Would they discover they have more in common than they realize with the people they describe as “baby killers” and those who “commit child sacrifice”? Would they learn that the people who they believe to be their enemies are just as scared and worried about the future as they are?
I genuinely don’t know.
What I do know is that women and children deserve so much more than what this country has given them, as do so many in our churches. Maybe if we actually worked together with them, centered them, we could move beyond the insanity of culture warring and put ourselves on the road to real justice.
What a joyful, life-giving world that could be.
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.
