This past Lent, I set upon a project of creating an eight-panel version of the Stations of the Cross. My own version, which I dubbed the “Bioethics Stations of the Cross,” sought to hold biblical vignettes from the day of Jesus’ crucifixion in dialogue with expressions of suffering in contemporary society, especially as I bear witness to them in my work in the hospital.
The project was going well until I approached the task of the fourth panel, “Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.” It is based on the following text:
A large crowd was following, many of them women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. At one point, Jesus turned to these women and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me! Weep rather for yourselves and for your children! The time is coming when it will be said, ‘Blessed are the childless, the wombs that have never given birth and the breasts that have never nursed.’ Then people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us up!’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:27-31, The Inclusive Bible)
This particular Station tripped me up because, I recognized, it felt too personal. In Jesus’ time, as in our own, the proclamation, “Blessed are the childless,” sounds wrong. Children are in themselves, we assume, a blessing. Much more so in Jesus’ time than in our own, they were social security, a guarantee of a woman’s social standing and that she would be cared for should she live into old age. But—and I am stricken by guilt even now to admit, unable to shake the niggling voice that I am a “bad mother” or horridly ungrateful for feeling this way—I know well what it is to feel as though the mountains and hills of parenting responsibilities are caving in around me, and to pine for the days when my womb and my breasts—not to mention my hands, heart, mind, and spirit—bore far less responsibility. As I often barely manage to pull myself through each day, overwhelmed every step of the way by the unrelenting balancing act of childcare, laundry, job, finances, cooking, dishes, sleepless nights, and the latest wave of COVID-19, a thought slips in, uninvited but persistent: “Blessed are the childless.”
The thing is, in Jesus’ time as in ours, the phrase “Blessed are the childless” is the byproduct of a malfunctioning society—a world gone awry. If our children are more of a burden on us than a blessing, then our culture and social structures are not doing their job to help share in the responsibilities (the burdens and the blessings!) of child rearing.
(And here I’ll interject the obligatory caveat that my daughter is amazing and brings much joy to my world and I love her to the point of foolishness, but yes, without question, caring for her is a burden. And even though I am in a supportive partnership with my child’s other parent, and with a relatively comfortable combined household income, there are many days when that burden feels nearly unbearable.)
All of this has been running through my mind afresh this week as the leaked Supreme Court draft confirms that Roe v. Wade may indeed be overturned in the coming months, which would immediately restrict or deny abortion access to millions of people with wombs throughout the United States. And, like pretty much everyone I know, I have very strong personal feelings on the subject. There is, most pressingly, the fact that abortion is life-saving healthcare and the only medical treatment for myriad pregnancy complications, so the bans that several states are poised to enact will place an impossible burden on many women and their healthcare providers in responding to already life-threatening and emotionally fraught circumstances. What’s more, the way the issue is traditionally framed in the news media and by much of the signage on display at protest rallies insists we focus on the profoundly misleading dichotomy of “pro-choice” v. “pro-life,” which essentially pits women’s rights and fetus’ rights against each other, as though babies and the bodies that birth them are somehow enemies. This framework, depicting children and their mothers as enemies rather than natural allies, is especially utilized by the anti-abortion movement and has a long and inherently racist history. The notion of the womb as a dangerous place for a fetus has been particularly weaponized against Black women’s bodies, and the narrative that portrays mothers as antagonists in the fate of their children has been used to justify both forced reproduction during slavery and forced sterilization of Black and Brown women in the last century. (For a deeper explanation of the connection between the contemporary anti-abortion movement and the history of anti-Black-woman healthcare policies in America, I highly recommend this presentation by Dorothy E. Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body.)
The notion that the interests of women and the interests of babies are somehow in opposition may add momentum to many people’s political ambitions and maybe it can even get you elected president, but it is absolutely wrong. Generally, the best way to support children is by supporting mothers. By paying women fair wages. By providing paid parental leave. By subsidizing childcare. And by ensuring all birthing people have access to comprehensive and affordable reproductive healthcare.
Can you imagine the enormous strain that would be removed from the shoulders of so many families—and especially women—if these things were somehow guaranteed?!
But I think part of the problem in the abortion debate is that so many people simply can’t imagine. We’ve experienced a breakdown in our collective imaginative capacity to place ourselves in the shoes of another, to humble ourselves enough to recognize we may not know the whole story. And to trust the wisdom of another person’s suffering.
The women of Jerusalem who meet Jesus along his path to Golgotha are remarkable because they are the only ones in the scene who seem to be appropriately emotionally affected by what is going on! In the midst of a crowd, their breast-beating and wailing announce throughout history that something unbearably tragic is occurring, an insult to life on behalf of the Empire that they are powerless to stop. Jesus has been sentenced to death—the ultimate example of government control over people’s bodies. And yet, when Jesus addresses them, he seems to be of the opinion that the trials that await these women and their children are more worthy of tears than anything he has to endure.
Can you imagine?
I am certain that this moment calls for action, and it also calls for compassion. As a Christian minister, my faith calls me to hold with humility the very real and challenging ethical dynamics at play in an individual’s decision to have an abortion, while also unequivocally condemning the social sins of misogyny, racism, and religious imperialism that give fuel to a movement that seeks to paternalistically control and criminalize women’s bodies and deny them the freedom to make decisions about their own health and families. As a Christian minister, I say to anyone who has had an abortion or will need one at any point in their lives: God loves you, God has compassion on you, and Jesus—whose own body was subjected to government control to the point of death—stands with you.
A couple of weeks ago I came across the icon, “Our Lady of the Journey: Mothers,” painted by the contemporary iconographer Kelly Latimore. I think it depicts so poignantly what I wanted to “say” as I pondered how to give contemporary representation to the Women of Jerusalem for the Bioethics Stations of the Cross. Looking at it again now also helps me to say what I’ve been trying to communicate throughout this essay: that this is a harsh world for mothers (and all people with wombs), but especially mothers who are not white. Especially mothers who are poor or exist in other social or physical conditions that make rearing and raising children even harder. And overturning Roe v. Wade would serve to make this an even harsher world for mothers, which naturally means a harsher world for babies and children, too. The invitation of Latimore’s image, the invitation of this moment in history, the invitation of Jesus, is to compassionately consider those who suffer, and show them that they (we) are not alone. To even put our lives on the line (because, for those of us in this country who have uteruses and are of reproductive age—or will be of reproductive age at any time in the future—our lives are already on the line).
For the love of mothers.
