Clergy Support for Unplanned Pregnancy?

I thought that the Religious Coalition of Reproductive Choice would have a list of clergy or other trained individuals willing to offer support to women and/or families facing an unplanned pregnancy, but I couldn’t find a list. Does such a thing exist anywhere? Or do families who face an unplanned pregnancy but have no church home just have to pick a random church and ask for support/advice?

Update: The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice lists local affiliates here and it seems like families or women could contact those people, but they are rather limited, so I am still happy for any other resources that people know of.

Update II: So, for instance in Ohio, you can call an all-options clergy counseling hotline. This looks super helpful. I wonder if they are available in all states? This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Perhaps I will try to compile a list of these resources for all states, so if you know of other such resources, this is what I am looking for.

The Hardest Choice

The article below is a beautiful and heart-breaking piece about abortion past the first trimester. It is so difficult for me to understand how people cannot hear stories like this.

The Hardest Hardest Choice: Why I Had a Second-Term Abortion.

Writing About Dr. George Tiller

I am sad about the doctor who was killed…angry about the lack of access that women have to abortions… about the people who try to reduce access to abortion and birth control but don’t adopt all the unwanted children out there… about conservative zealots who promote hate but take no responsibility for the results of their irresponsible and polarizing rhetoric. At the same time, I always hate to make a big fuss about *one big happening* that is sad and tragic and terrible since there are such happenings every day that go unnoticed by us because they are routine. So I almost didn’t write this post, but then I did because I’m trying to let myself write more without it having to be perfect and worked out.

I am sad and angry about the loss of Dr. George Tiller, the loss of the important services he provides, the people who work to limit women’s control over their own lives and bodies, the women who feel shame about abortion, the children who are born unwanted… and all of the suffering and hurt and injustice that goes unnoticed and unmourned each day.

May our lives be blessings on those who need it – families, doctors, religious people who feel strongly, who act wrongly. May we be peace where it is needed. Hope where there is none. Love – real love, hard love, challenging love – in the places where it is hardest to do that.

New Year New Year: a bit of rambling/visioning/thinking and an annoucement of sorts

Hello 2009. We are 9 days into you. I wonder how this will go?

I tend not to be a big new year resolution person because I am not really good at keeping big promises and because I am always trying to improve things (um, maybe too much) and I guess adding to that isn’t really so helpful. Really, I don’t know. I just don’t do them much. (As I write this, I realize I did it two years ago right here on this blog where I vowed not to buy new clothes for a year and I stuck with it very well for five months. But usually I don’t do resolutions, and maybe my failure five months into my 2007 resolution helped to solidify this.)

Anyway, so I guess I want to reflect a bit on the upcoming year and how I would hope that it might go for me and my family.

Um, so I guess I am sort of private and this blog isn’t really a personal journal, but it I suppose I will want to write about this more at some point so:

drum roll

is about a month and a half until we welcome a little baby into our family. So that makes for a very different year. I have been reading about pregnancy since I was 15, and excited about having a baby since I was old enough to hold my baby cousins. I’ve always wanted a family and it has always been a big part of how I envision my life.

I would read about or talk to women who would say that they didn’t like being pregnant, and I would think, “They must not love it enough. They must not have read enough about all the natural remedies that can make it better. They must not have a midwife and a doula and a support system.”

Until I got pregnant and have been very very very sick ever since. I do not believe in a God that teaches us lessons, but if I did, I am sure this would be one of God’s humbling lessons to Elizabeth about how you can’t control everything in your life and you shouldn’t judge other people so harshly, especially until you have walked a mile or seven and half months in their shoes.

I should probably clarify that there are women who have been more miserable than me in pregnancy and, as far as we know, nothing is really really wrong. I have not been hospitalized. Baby seems healthy. I seem healthy (enough). But every day is a day to get through. Which does not facilitate the pregnancy pre-baby, round belly, pregnancy joy that I had been envisioning.

Soooo, my point here is that in the New Year, I am going to try to let go a bit more and realize that I cannot read and plan my way out of the struggles and road bumps in life, and that sitting counting the hours and the days until something is over or better does not make for mindful, joyful living. In high school, it was “Oh, how I can’t wait until college.” In college, “Oh how I can’t wait to settle down with a partner and be done with college.” In my Masters studies, “Oh, how lovely that will be if I can get into a Ph.D. program.” Each semester: “Oh, how nice it will be to be done with papers.” And, as much as I have tried to not think it, it has often been, “Oh, how wonderful it will be for the baby to be born and not be pregnant anymore.”

And so goes our life.

My life has, far too often, been about achievement. I wanted to be the line leader in Kindergarten. The best reader. The best community service do-er. Get more scholarships. Seem more special. Write better papers. Be the best future minister.

In one way, of course, this is good. It is good to work hard, right? To do good. But, of course, we can do it too much.

And, at the end of the day month year, our wall is covered with diplomas and our drawers are stuffed with A+ papers and the congregation loves the sermon and we have missed What We Are Here For. Which, for me, is to love others. To be loved. To drink hot chocolate and hear others’ stories and be present to people and be present to myself. To cuddle the cats. To love the colors of the trees. To ease the suffering of others.

I have seen this so much in the last months as I tried to not collapse finishing my classes, waddling around like a sick hippopotamus on speed trying to read enough, write enough, do enough, and watch myself be perky and cheerful to others, as if I was watching some other person who could not turn off her fake cheer and show how tired she was.

I do not want to show this sort of life to our baby. I do not want to miss first coos, and the magic of a baby growing up while I scramble to Do It All. And I do not want him or her to learn that to live is to Do Good and Do Right and Achieve. I have not spent enough time playing. Or laughing. Or drinking hot chocolate. And I want my little one to do this more.

I know this is cliched and I almost don’t want to post it because it seems to me like it could be some sort of email spam story about treasuring our friends and our life and our children. All that is missing is a note at the end that if you don’t pass this on to 10 people you will be cursed.

It reminds me of a thousand sermons about being in the moment. A thousand books about Women Who Do Too Much and our rushed 21st Century World and how we need to Slow Down.

Perhaps there is a reason that there are so many damn books and sermons on this – because it is hard.

So, as we prepare to welcome a new little person into our lives, I have given myself a little new year nudge, realizing that it will never be a goal I will Achieve, but that it is an important path to be on and remind myself of.

Be present. Be gentle. Love. Let myself be loved. Slow down. Remember what will be important as I look back on my life.

Mess up.

Try again.

Be thankful.

Amen.