Today was a vitally important day in the struggle to ensure Abortion Care for all in Colorado. Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom is a coalition of faith leaders, community activists and concerned citizens who have been working to ensure that Reproductive Health Care will be affordable and available to all citizens of our State. I was asked to speak last January at the kickoff rally for the initiative to gather signatures to enshrine this right in our State Constitution and place it on the ballot in November, Today, I spoke at the rally celebrating the successful completion of this initiative. These are my words:
My name is Rabbi Joseph Black. I serve as Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Denver. I stand here today to celebrate the fact that we have gathered enough signatures to ensure that the voters of our state will be able to enshrine abortion access in the Colorado State Constitution this coming November. I have come to speak because, in addition to strongly supporting the right for all to have access to health care, this is also personal. When my wife and I decided to get married 35 years ago, we looked forward to raising our children in a home filled with love and Jewish tradition. As a rabbi, I had worked with many couples in preparation for marriage and I knew that since both of us were Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, there was a slight possibility that one or both of us might carry the gene for Tay-Sachs – a rare, incurable genetic disorder that results in a painful and gruesome death - usually within five years of birth. Both my wife, Sue, and I discovered that we were carriers of Tay-Sachs. Thankfully, 33 years ago, in 1991, we were blessed by the birth of our healthy daughter.
Our luck changed with our second pregnancy, however. To hear
from our doctor that the embryo that we so desperately wanted to bring to term
had a fatal disease was devastating.
Thankfully, at that time, abortion was legal and safe. As difficult as it was to say goodbye to the
hopes and dreams of a second baby, the thought of having to care for and
eventually bury a suffering child was unpalatable. Termination of the pregnancy was the obvious
choice. I thank God and modern medicine that we have two healthy children and a
beautiful 9-month old grandchild.
I stand here today in support of this initiative because I
believe strongly that government should never put itself in a position to
legislate how people can care for their own bodies. Abortion care is health
care.
In the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 30, verse 19, we find the
following text that is often used against abortion rights. It reads as follows:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I
have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you
and your descendants may live!
The words, “choose life” are quite powerful. But they also can be spun and defined in a
variety of ways. They can used to motivate us to live to our highest potential
– choosing God’s loftiest ideals for our daily living and the choices we make,
or they can be used as a weapon to narrowly define an agenda of intolerance.
There are too many individuals and organizations who want to
impose their own fundamentalist and draconian definition of when life begins – For
those who oppose Abortion Care, this means that the government has both the
ability and responsibility to legislate individual’s bodies without regard to
personal freedom, physical or mental health, abuse, rape, or economic hardship.
For me – the words, “Choose Life” mean that as humans blessed
with the precious gift of life, we have a responsibility to live our
lives in ways that affirm the highest aspirations of humanity. It does not mean imposing our
narrow understandings of life’s questions, traumas, and values on others – nor
does it disavow us from disagreeing on the many complex paradoxes with which we
are confronted on a daily basis.
The passions that inflame anti-Abortion advocates cross the
line of healthy disagreement and enter dangerous authoritarian oppression of
some of the most vulnerable in our midst. My wife and I, due to our outspoken
support of Abortion rights have been targeted by activists with vile threats
and condemnation of our personal choices.
To choose to terminate a pregnancy is not easy – but there
are times when it is absolutely the correct thing to do. It is essential that
such a decision should be made by individual people – who may or may not choose
to consult with family (whenever possible), or clergy, or counselors or even God.
But we have no right to legislate their personal and painful choices. WE also
must ensure that the current ban on State funds covering the costs of abortion
care is eliminated. Everyone should have access to health care. Proposition 89will ensure that abortion will
be safe, legal, accessible and affordable to all. Enshrining Abortion care in
the Colorado State Constitution will help to ensure that every citizen of our
state will have the right to make medical decisions free from government
interference into the most intimate aspects of our lives. Anything else is
antithetical to the foundation of the separation of religion and state upon
which our nation was founded and for which too many have died.
Thank you.
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