You’d think an asteroid was hurtling toward Earth judging from the outraged coverage on abortion the past three weeks after Politico announced on May 3 that the Supreme Court may be poised to reverse Roe v. Wade.
If the coverage was measured, even-handed and inclusive, I could deal with it. In that case, we would be talking about a standard journalistic response to a major story.
But no, what we are seeing — in commentaries and even in news reports — is a mash of “The Handmaid’s Tale, “ the imminent end of civilization as we know it and White supremacy because — as we all know — male White nationalists are behind all this.
So, when I saw this Washington Post piece on how black Protestants view abortion (curiously, Catholics were totally left out of the piece), I figured I’d get a fresh look at the issue and some crucial information. Black women are 13% of the female population but 30% of those who abort their young. Yes, this is an important issue in Black churches and communities.
One would think. And the headline said black churches were “conflicted” over the possibility of abortion access being curtailed, so I read further, hoping the article would air the views of Black church leaders and believers on both sides of the issue.
I can’t say they did.
When a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked indicating that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, the Rev. Cheryl Sanders felt conflicted.
The senior pastor of D.C.’s Third Street Church of God personally doesn’t support abortion but is weary of the politics around being labeled “pro-life” and is grappling with how to address the issue before her predominantly Black congregation. “If you understand that in the politicized term, it’s fraught with problematic racial views and exceptions and blind spots,” she says. And Sanders doesn’t want to align herself with far-right conservative activists she disagrees with on many social issues.
