Overturning Roe v. Wade Isn't About Christian Morals or Protecting Life

At around 4 a.m., in the cold and barely filled hospital room, I hear a groan that snatches me out of my sleep. I hear the words, "This is it—she will die," echo in my subconscious mind.

My wife, Jasamine, and I had just welcomed my daughter, Ava, into the world. It's 12:30 a.m. We heard her faint screeches as she moved and turned in the hospital bassinet a few hours earlier. We had been at the hospital for two long, exhausting days. I'd shifted from the hard beige couch that folded out to the hard floor doing pushups. I counted deep breaths between heart-racing anxiety and scrolling endlessly on social media.

I found myself catching up on reading for class. I'm getting my theology degree. This section of the semester is on religious studies, theories of God and humanity, and asking whether religion is a public good. My classmates and I are wrestling with ourselves, this world, this God, this suffering, this hatred, this love, and every hard thing in between.

My hand slowly moves from right to left across the words of Audre Lorde's Zami, looking to the right as my wife peacefully slept. As a writer and a minister, someone who believes there is something sacred about the small things, and something necessary about our work to change the big things, this reading had become like prayer. It reminded me that whatever load I carried, or would carry, was not mine alone.

"Babe," my wife says, gripping her gut, "I don't feel right… I can feel myself bleeding." We page the nurse. She nurse comes in, checks underneath my wife's gown, presses her three different times and my wife passes three clots the size of my hand. Three more nurses come in. Then four. Then five.

One of the Black nurses on shift says, "Girl, this is your life," grabbing my wife's leg.

Before that moment, I had read about the risks Black women faced in pregnancy—either dying before birth, during, or after—oftentimes because of systemic bias. Often they died because of staff that don't trust Black women's own intuition about pain and problems. In fact, because of this bias, Black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women are.

It's been a year since my wife's experience. She ultimately lost nearly 1,000 ml of blood. Until now, I was barely been able to talk about it or even process what it meant to be so helpless and so afraid and so angry at the same time.

The reality is my wife survived because, as a military family, we have healthcare, and that day we had a Black nurse and a Black doctor who checked on her continually—committed to her survival as they were committed to their own breath. Many Black women walk into hostile medical environments where they are already seen as worthy of distrust rather than safety.

I am grateful that my wife survived. So many women who experience complications in pregnancy and childbirth do not.

When I learned that Roe v. Wade was struck down, I thought about those who rely on reproductive rights, those who will bear the bad end of its overturning, those who are already left out and left behind in our society and will not have the choices they deserve. It doesn't matter the reason someone seeks reproductive rights—that is not my place. But it matters that their choice is honored in ways that legitimately care for their well-being and the best possible situation for them.

I sunk at the thought that so many women, birthing people, and families will suffer because we live in a country where things are so black and white. Where nuance and individual well-being are thrown out the window by certain communities' ideologies and commitments.

In a 2021 study, the Population Reference Bureau noted that "banning abortion could raise pregnancy-related death rates." All women will suffer in some form or fashion. Black women? Sadly, as they have for centuries, will suffer more.

And there are emotions—a range of them. The first one is grief. And then anger. And then regret. And then trepidation and the question: Is it even my place, as a man, to say something, to do something? How do I, as a Christian and a minister, do all I can to imagine better for others? Especially, when so many Christians celebrate and champion this erasure and oppression as a divine victory? What does love demand at this moment, when I think about what I want for myself and other citizens?

A few years ago, I was in a white Evangelical church preaching, teaching, and leading. I remember being invited to go to the local clinic here in Augusta, Georgia, to "save" the mothers and their children. I remember hearing them talk so much about love but failing to actually vote differently and act differently toward those they so claimed to love. I remember hearing local parishioners claim to care about others—particularly children and mothers—only to never hear from those children and mothers.

I remember when I thought that another person's freedom and choices—particularly those of women, LGBTQIA+ people, poor people, and immigrants—meant my oppression and that person's erasure meant my victory. I remember what it was like to ingest the toxic air of religious bigotry—creating enemies of women—hearing the words "baby killer" come out of the same mouth as someone who says "hallelujah."

These cultural wars (really, wars), that protect hatred and disregard the bodies and well-being of our neighbors, depend on our distance from the marginalized. They use the Bible as a weapon of power rather than an instrument of love. The curious irony locked within the white walls of that church in Augusta, and white hands raised in adoration is that the people they apparently cared for outside the church never found themselves seen or cared for within.

I began to understand that I couldn't say that I loved others while also creating a world that erases them and makes life harder for them. This is not to say mine is the only Christian perspective or even the final one. It is to say that, personally, as a minister and Christian, I am angry and I grieve because people are arguing about "theology" and "life" without listening to the trauma and tragedy that so many women are actually experiencing.

I am haunted by James Baldwin's words: "I think this nation should be, for the foreseeable future, in mourning. One must face the fact that this Christian nation may never have read any of the Gospels, but they do understand money."

This was never just about abortion or caring for families. This, and the many freedoms they will come against, is about fighting for a white patriarchal Christian nation. The church and the courts are the vehicles. In history, this political playbook is not new. Since the 1970s and 80s, many white Christians and those who are adjacent to them have been on a crusade to make the country more white, more straight, more sick, more poor, and more Christian—and less free, less loving, and less honest.

What makes me most sick is that Christians will celebrate this moment and believe that God made it so. No, this is not God. It is years of Christians waging a religious war. It is not about protection, love, or morality. All of this is about one thing only: power. White power.

What kind of God, I wonder, would need others to be less free in order to be more loved?

It also saddens me that we live in a country where so many people say they love and care for babies in the womb but show so much hatred and disregard for so many babies already in the world. Black children and other children of color still experience more poverty, less education, more policing, more death, and less investment from this nation than others—in a nation with so many churches that declare love for children. And then: It saddens me that such desire for power effectively erases the lived experience of those like my wife and many other Black women who will suffer as a casualty of their war.

If I'm honest, there is no one way forward. For me, especially as a man, I feel the need to continually point to women and LGBTQIA+ people at the forefront of fighting and caring for those in most need. I want to point to others who have been in this fight and created space for mutual learning, complexity, and common humanity as we seek to create a more just world where all can flourish. I want to do what's necessary to challenge bad religion, the ways people weaponize the church for their own agendas.

As a minister, I believe Christians should be involved in helping shape the country. Christians should not be trying to create a "Christian" nation. To be people of faith means we join God and our neighbors in creating a more loving and liberating country for everyone, not a "Christian" one.

In my book, Shoutin' in The Fire: An American Epistle, I wrote, "Jesus loves everybody, no matter who or where or what they are—he refuses to use his power to make faith about control. And Jesus does not hurt people in order to love them." If I am going to disagree and fight for someone else's right as a fellow citizen, then I want to be on the side that champions more liberation and love for all people, and not on the side that championed the power of one group.

I want to be the type of person who listens, who learns, who grows and who wrestles, who knows that my view is limited and that oftentimes my personal opinion doesn't translate to public policy. I want to be the type of person who at least says something, even if I'm still learning.

Most of all, I want to be the type of person that works for a world where those like my wife—and many not like my wife—will have the assurance that their sacred choice, about what they think is best, will be honored. That they will be able to make decisions that are put in the context of safety and free from judgment, hatred, or shame.

At around four a.m., in that cold and barely filled hospital room, I heard a groan that snatched me out of my sleep. I heard the words, "This is it—she will die," echo in my subconscious mind.

But she did not.

And neither should others.

Dante Stewart is a minister and author of 'Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle.' He lives in Augusta, Georgia with his wife and two children.

Editor's Note: Though this story addresses reproductive health care for cisgender Black women, Kindred by Parents acknowledges that not all people who can become pregnant identify as women.