This poem by Rev. M Barclay is published at Enfleshed.
On Choosing Abortion
God is not a judge who sits at a distance
shaking “His” finger at us
about divine rules and regulations.
God is within.
Like a whisper.
Like a question.
Like a knowing and a rising.
God lures us towards each other. Towards collective flourishing. Towards power growing from the margins. Towards our roots deep in the earth.
God pulls us in every direction that serves love and life.
Sometimes that direction is abortion.
When a woman
or a trans man
or a nonbinary person with a uterus
becomes pregnant
and must decide how best
to foster life:
Their own,
and that of their family,
and that of this earth breaking under our burdens,
God knows, for many, there are such few “choices”
available in this
racist
classist
(cis)sexist system.
The God of the fringes,
the impoverished,
the oppressed,
condemns
every form of coercion
and every act of control
over the bodies of those
who ask all the right questions
of life and autonomy and futures and collective well-being
under all the wrong systems
that abandon and judge and isolate and weigh down.
Let us not grow weary in claiming our power,
in professing and practicing our solidarity,
In sharing our resources,
and in following the One
who from the margins cries:
come and follow.
- Rev. M Barclay, enfleshed
