In my senior year of high school, two of my classmates became pregnant. One of them, from a conservative, but upper-middle-class family, was quietly spirited away to a clinic a few towns over, her biggest bother having to make up a chemistry exam. The other one, for whom scrambling the several hundred needed out-of-pocket was unfeasible, carried her child to term, giving birth a few weeks before prom. Their futures would only continue to diverge.
For the past four decades, the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion, has made it nearly impossible for low-income women—predominantly women of color—to obtain a legal abortion. It’s the only procedure ever banned from Medicaid, a federal program many impoverished women rely on for healthcare. So despite the right to an abortion being enshrined in Roe v. Wade since 1973, not all women have equal access.
As Hyde approaches its 40th anniversary on September 30th, many reproductive justice organizations have mobilized to bring increased attention to the unfair policy, one of them being SisterReach, a Memphis-based nonprofit that fights for the reproductive autonomy of under-served women and girls.
I spoke to Rev. Faye London, who rallies clergy and people of faith around reproductive justice as SisterReach’s interfaith outreach coordinator.
Anita Little: Can you start by telling me a little bit about your work with SisterReach and the role you play?
Rev. Faye London: SisterReach is a reproductive justice organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls of color, poor women, and rural women across the state of Tennessee by fighting for access to full healthcare and scientifically accurate reproductive health information. My role is to educate and organize people of faith around these different issues.
Reproductive justice as a framework is not all about abortion, it’s about how all the other things in a person’s life impact them in such a way that they end up in that moment of having to make a decision about an abortion. We want people to realize what those moments look like and how we can address them. That’s the conversation I’m always having with clergy.
Religion is usually cited as a reason for opposing abortion rights, but your passion for reproductive justice seems to be informed by your Christianity. How does your work challenge the narrative of Christians as anti-choice?
I am a Christian, but more importantly I am a follower of Jesus. The same Bible out of which my conservative brothers and sisters pull these cheap one-liners to control the conversation about reproductive health also shows us the life and ministry of Jesus—whom we all claim to follow. The Jesus of the Gospel always treated poor people and people in crisis with compassion, never judgement. I don’t understand how you can claim to model yourself on Jesus while seeking to constantly judge and shame and limit people.
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