Photo courtesy of Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

From left, United Church of Christ ministers Robert Patterson and Janice Edwards Barnes stand next to United Methodist minister Wally Shearburn in front of a St. Louis Planned Parenthood office. Each year on the Saturday closest to the Roe v. Wade Jan. 22 anniversary, clergy from Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice rally in front of the clinic to support its staff, an organizer said.

Local and state clergy involved in the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice say making abortion illegal again in Missouri would return the state to the days when women with unwanted pregnancies suffered mutilation in pursuit of what the group sees as a God-given right of controlling your own procreation.

Rabbi Susan Talve of St. Louis made the tough decision to go on record about the abortion she had when she was 19 years old because she is terrified that either the state or federal government will outlaw access to first-term abortions.

"I was in love, and the first time I had sex, I used contraception, and I got pregnant," she said. "I have to tell you how grateful I was that that was the year that New York made it legal to have a legal, safe abortion. … I had friends who tried to use coat hangers or threw themselves down steps."

Talve said many women come to her for counsel from faiths that prohibit abortion, even when the pregnancy is jeopardizing their life. The Catholic faith requires the mother and child be treated together, whereas the Jewish faith requires the pregnancy be terminated if the mother’s life is in danger, she said.

No decision to have an abortion is ever without pain, she said, and she still thinks of her decision to end her first pregnancy. "I have no doubt I made the right decision, even though it was difficult," she said.

It’s a right Talve said she will go to prison to defend.

She helped found two state affiliates of the national Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and is being honored by the Missouri coalition with a Faith and Freedom Award in April.

"Although the current political climate in Jefferson City represents a very narrow religious perspective that is undermining our citizens’ access to contraceptives and abortion, most Missourians support both religion and family planning," said the Rev. Rebecca Turner, executive director of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, or MORCRC, in a news release.

"The members of the coalition are pro-choice because of our faith, not in spite of it," the Disciples of Christ minister said.

Amy Cortright, an associate rector at Calvary Episcopal Church in Columbia, said she views supporting her congregation through the decisions in their lives as her responsibility, including helping them through family planning decisions and the decision to terminate a pregnancy.

The Episcopal Diocese of Missouri is a member of MORCRC.

Members of the Episcopal Church, she said, make their decisions based on prayer, tradition, reason and their relationship with God.

"We believe that God loves, supports and sustains us as we live our lives and make difficult decisions," Cortright said.

In her effort to fulfill her mission as an Episcopal priest, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 19 to request family planning be added to a Senate bill that would establish programs to promote alternatives to abortion such as adoption.

"It does not include anything having to do with family planning," she said. "It supports a woman for a year after she’s pregnant but does nothing to support her after that."

Robin Blake, professor emeritus of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia’s School of Medicine, is also being honored by the MORCRC this year with a Faith and Freedom Award. Blake’s been a member since MORCRC began in 1982.

Blake’s 40 years of supporting reproductive choice began when he was a medical student and saw women who had been mutilated by illegal abortion, he said.

"Millions of women had illegal abortions," he said. "Only a small percentage had abortions that were performed by people that knew what they were doing."

He was part of a group of students and physicians in the 1960s that helped women get safe abortions from qualified providers.

Blake also testified in the Missouri General Assembly for a bill in the late 60s that would have changed a provision that allowed only women whose lives were in danger to receive abortion services to allow women who had been raped, victims of incest or whose babies had severe health problems. The bill didn’t pass, he said.

In 1989, he was a plaintiff in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. He is also faculty adviser of the MU chapter of Medical Students for Choice.

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that most laws against abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy.

Thirty-four years later, Blake is worried the cultural shift toward outlawing abortion could create another black market for abortion, resulting in a reoccurrence of the horrors he saw in the 1960s.

"Making abortion illegal doesn’t stop it," he said. "It just makes it really dangerous.

"The way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. One of the cruel ironies is many of the people who want the government to force women to continue unwanted pregnancies also want the government to deprive them of contraception," he said.

Harsh Brown, a resident of Columbia and retired Disciples of Christ pastor from St. Louis, said his life of ministering included counseling pregnant women as far back as the ’60s with the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, which existed until Roe v. Wade.

Then, women had to go to New York to get abortions, he said.

"Jesus never said anything about abortion," Brown said. "The Disciples are officially pro-choice. Of course, the Disciples are a diverse group," and not everyone who is of the faith supports reproductive choice.

Brown said he believes the right to reproductive choice is inborn and connected to being created in God’s image and free will.

"I’m in favor of making it safe, legal and rare," he said, emphasizing the last word.

It’s a phrase many of the clergy use. The MORCRC is made up of about 25 religious and ethics groups, including Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian, Christian, Episcopalian and Jewish organizations.

Bonnie Shapero, a Columbia resident and member of Congregation Beth Shalom, said she can’t separate being pro-choice and Jewish.

"They are in alignment," she said. "It’s a shame this very private, ethical issue has been politicized," she said. "I think that’s unfortunate because I don’t think it belongs in the halls of the Missouri state legislature or the halls of the U.S. Congress," she said. "My feeling has been all along if the government can tell you that you can’t have an abortion, that is very close to the government telling you that you have to have an abortion."

Turner said the MORCRC’s bottom line is "because religions do not agree on the beginning of life, ensoulment or when abortion is a morally acceptable choice, the government cannot legislate one religious view over another."

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