Making Choice Sacred
I am currently working on a manuscript called Making Choice Sacred: Liberal Religion and Reproductive Rights Before Roe v Wade (forthcoming UNC Press). This book explores the crucial role of liberal religious activists in shaping the legal, medical and transnational histories of abortion services. I focus on the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, the single largest abortion referral service in the United States before Roe v Wade. Made up of liberal Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis and dissident Catholic nuns and priests, the CCS organized in three countries to lobby for the repeal of abortion laws, challenge anti-abortion activists and assist women obtain safe abortions.
Despite facing arrest and prosecution, the CCS created a domestic and international medical referral network that shepherded hundreds of thousands of women to reliable abortionists within the continental United States and to providers in Canada, England, Mexico, Japan and Puerto Rico.
By 1970, with the repeal of abortion laws in several states, CCS members established their own abortion clinics and pushed the organization into new forms of global medical activism that would continue beyond the Roe v Wade decision. This project uses over one hundred oral histories with CCS members, abortion provider and their clients. It also draws from newly available archival sources and private collections. In doing so, Making Choice Sacred reframes historical understandings of sexual mores, religious activism, medical practice and reproductive rights in the postwar period.
Listen to excerpts of my oral histories with clergy, clients and providers discussing abortion and faith before Roe v Wade below:
