A Christian dissents: Vote no on Kansas abortion amendment to protect the vulnerable

As a follower of Christ, I believe in and seek to uphold the intrinsic value of all life. In the eyes of God, every single person possesses the same inestimable worth as a fetus in utero. Tragically, American women are being forced to bear witness to how the unrestrained power of the Supreme Court’s majority can strip them of their rights and devalue their full personhood.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is the latest and most egregious example of our government reneging on one of its greatest promises: the beautiful and yet fragile idea that we all possess inalienable rights. On Aug. 2, Kansans will have the opportunity to vote for or against an amendment that would further curtail the freedom and bodily autonomy of women. A no vote would preserve these fragile liberties.

Our government is woefully unprepared to serve the needs of the people who will give birth and the children who will be born in post-Roe America. I know this fact at a deeply personal and professional level. Since my early 20s, I’ve devoted myself to educating and empowering children who have been historically marginalized. Over the past two decades, my work has ranged from teaching children with disabilities and economic disadvantages in American schools to providing care for orphans in South Sudan.

Through the years I’ve learned that the most vulnerable children in our world — the ones who have experienced the worst trauma, the ones who need the most educational support, the ones who have lost more than many adults can even begin to imagine — are not given the resources and care that they so desperately need.

All children in America are living through uncertain times, where even the simple act of walking into their school can be a death sentence. Instead of working to improve the lives of our children, the systems in our country — from our legislatures to our courts — are sending our kids a clear and terrifying message: You do not matter. Your education, your dreams and your life do not matter.

Our systems are sending that same message to every person with the capacity to give birth.

In defiance of the Supreme Court and those celebrating its decision to obliterate a half-century of precedent, we must dispatch a gloriously loud, roof-shaking and unmistakable message to all birth-giving people: Your life is precious and your rights will be protected. We must collectively work toward creating a society where a person’s right to safely terminate a pregnancy is an unalterable reality.

And of equal importance, we must fight against the status quo that permits the suffering of children and the people who bore them. Something has gone profoundly wrong in the American experiment when the economic and medical needs of children and those who gave them life are treated with less concern than an individual’s desire to own semi-automatic weapons.

The Supreme Court’s reckless judgment and the proliferation of state bans on abortion will not usher in a better world. Restrictive laws don’t significantly decrease the number of abortions. Rather, they result in a decrease in safe abortions, accompanied by a frightening increase in dangerous abortions. In post-Roe America, countless people will die or be seriously injured in botched abortion procedures, and countless children will be born into the depths of poverty, unable to rise above their circumstances because our nation’s leaders are more focused on offering tax breaks to the obscenely rich than helping children in dire need.

The destructive consequences of the court’s ruling must compel us to labor with all of our strength to create a society that truly values all birth-giving people and proves to them that a child in the world is as sacred as a fetus in utero — that all children will be nurtured, educated and empowered. Even then, in such a seemingly unreachable utopia, all people with the capacity to create life still must possess the freedom to choose what is best for their future.

To our great shame, we have utterly failed to construct a nation that supports all children and all women, a nation where abortion is rare not because it is criminalized but because we have invested in a plethora of good reasons to have kids: affordable health care, paid parental leave and universal preschool (to name but a few).

Instead of becoming the cultivators of a society that embraces our most vulnerable, we have become the co-authors of a waking nightmare. And yet, I believe with every fiber of my being that it is not too late for us to bravely retrace our steps, find the mouth of the tomb that we prematurely constructed for ourselves, and then emerge, clothed in both our remorse and God’s limitless grace, to a day that hasn’t ceased to be — a day that remains a work in progress.

The light of our shared humanity may be flickering, but it has not gone out.