{"id":391,"date":"2009-01-22T17:23:02","date_gmt":"2009-01-22T17:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/01\/pro-choice-while-seeking-commo.html"},"modified":"2009-01-22T17:23:02","modified_gmt":"2009-01-22T17:23:02","slug":"pro-choice-while-seeking-commo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/01\/pro-choice-while-seeking-commo.html","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Choice While Seeking Common Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty-six years ago today, women were legally granted a basic right of conscience. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that women, rather than politicians, appointed boards of physicians, or review panels, were the ones to decide whether or not to have an abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, the issue of abortion has inflamed cultural wars and spurred polarizing rhetoric, where opponents have demonized each other and claimed to have justice on their side. Also since then, millions of women have had safe, legal abortions, after which the vast majority felt a mixture of feelings but mostly gratitude and relief.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now comes a pause in the abortion wars. Thanks to the hard work of groups on both sides of the issue, we are finding common ground-agreeing on ways in which we can reduce unintended pregnancies and also ways in which we can provide real support to women who want to continue their pregnancies.<\/p>\n

This is good news. And it points a way forward. Surely we ought to be able to agree on the need for reliable, affordable and accessible contraception; on the importance of age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education; and on the necessity of good pregnancy-related care for all women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And while we agree to all these things, we must also acknowledge that we will never reduce the number of abortions to zero-and so we must provide women with safe and affordable abortion care. In addition, we must respect the conscience of women who choose abortion-and while recognizing its moral complexity-should never stigmatize women who choose abortion or assume that for them it is a “tragedy.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the spirit of the new administration, let us commit ourselves to women’s health and rights, and to the well-being of their families. And let us recognize that basic rights for women are human rights. \u00a0\u00a0
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Thirty-six years ago today, women were legally granted a basic right of conscience. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that women, rather than politicians, appointed boards of physicians, or review panels, were the ones to decide whether or not to have an abortion.\u00a0 Since then, the issue of abortion has inflamed cultural wars…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-religion-in-the-public-square"],"yoast_head":"\nPro-Choice While Seeking Common Ground - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/01\/pro-choice-while-seeking-commo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pro-Choice While Seeking Common Ground - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thirty-six years ago today, women were legally granted a basic right of conscience. In Roe v. 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In 2005, she organized the Initiative\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153national conversations,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a series of town-hall meetings and discussions across the country on pressing issues of faith and policy. She guides the Initiative\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work on a variety of policy issues, including faith and science, the role of religion in the public square, diversity and tolerance, economics, the environment, and cultural and social matters. She also co-edited the Global Common Good, a collection of essays by policy experts and faith leaders that argues that U.S. foreign policy must go beyond preconceived notions of national self-interest and security by including our ethical obligations to the global community. In the 1990s, she was a frequent op-ed columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. In the 1980s, she was Deputy Director of the National Commission on Working Women, where she wrote major studies on women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s employment and women in the media and directed projects involving women in nonprofessional jobs. For several years she taught English, filmmaking and critical media studies in high schools. Steenland has written two best-selling books, The Magnetic Poetry Book and the award-winning Kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Magnetic Book of Poetry. Her short stories have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, and her story collection, Skin and Bones, was a finalist in the 2004 Bakeless Literary Prize for fiction. Steenland was raised in a Dutch Calvinist community in northern New Jersey. She received a B.A. in English from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and a Masters in Education from Howard University.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/sstreenland"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}