Holy Love, Holy Rage
Literally and metaphorically, I live in a fertile and dangerous bayou. My beloved adopted home of New Orleans is a place where, as a progressive Unitarian Universalist minister, I have witnessed the Louisiana legislature passing some of the most inhumane laws surrounding women’s reproductive rights and health. It is a place where I have personally experienced the consequences of when women are unable to make informed decisions about their healthcare. And it is also a place where incredible activists and organizers embody what faith in a better world can look like, even after countless stinging defeats—where communities of care love and support each other, and where growth is possible in theological, emotional, and intellectual reckoning.
My own fertile growth into reproductive justice advocacy began about five years ago on the steps of the Louisiana state capitol. I had always supported the tenets of reproductive justice—a movement created and led by women of color to advocate for the right to have children, to not have children, and to raise the children you do have in safe and healthy environments. But my truly embodied advocacy began when legislators bent on passing some of the most restrictive women’s health care policy in the nation stopped to stare at my then-eight-months-pregnant belly pressing up against the mic stand as I spoke at a reproductive rights rally. Their benign smiles turned to confusion as they looked up to see a ministerial stole draped over my “Planned Parenthood” shirt. What they didn’t seem to understand was that my own pregnancy had solidified my advocacy for reproductive rights: I now had a profound clarity surrounding the importance of women having health-related decision-making access for their sacred bodies. That day, I also witnessed just how easily Louisiana state legislators, overwhelmingly male, ignored women’s voices as they passed yet another series of bills slashing reproductive health services—a disturbing but now-familiar pattern. The struggle was no longer theoretical to me; it felt real and dangerous and fertile. But in my own
