This is a modest but monumental work by one of my newest heroes, Dr. Willie Parker. Dr. Parker was born and raised in the South, by his single, very poor black mother who instilled in him a strong value system, prioritizing family, love and God above all else. He managed to find additional role models and mentors who encouraged him to climb to heights even he never imagined he’d achieve, cultivating his thirst for understanding science, even in the face of his religious fervor. He found his calling in the field of medicine and further in the speciality of OB/GYN and practiced in many areas of the country, ultimately ending up in a beautiful area of Hawaii. While he did find himself advocating for women in some areas, his religious convictions still held him back from performing abortions. He was not against referring his patients to others to perform them, but he himself felt he could not do them.
Then he suddenly found the way to reconciling this within himself. He suddenly recognized that, just as the Good Samaritan in the Bible helped the injured traveler out of concern about what would happen to the traveler (ignoring what would happen to himself), that he, Dr. Parker, should also be concerned with what would happen to his patients if he did not do abortions and not what would happen to him (or how he would be judged). Taking this further, Dr. Parker saw in this a moral, – no a religious! – imperative to carry out his patients’ wishes, whether they be to carry a pregnancy to term or to terminate that pregnancy. Furthermore, denying patients the choice of what to do with their bodies, denying them access to safe, healthy choices, denying them the right to choose to continue their educations or their jobs or whatever they needed to do without interruption to have a baby – he realized, went against everything his religion and God stood for. Really, the “anti’s” as he calls them, had it backwards.
He is extremely articulate about a lot of the arguments that the anti’s give about why abortion might be perceived as being wrong – and they’re all mostly devious. They are mostly about controlling women, and usually about controlling women of color and/or who are poor. Women, and particularly women in the south and the midwest, now have such minimal access to safe, healthy abortions, and it is being chipped away – mostly by white men – day after day after day. It is merely a power play.
Dr. Parker is one of those rare brave souls who do perform abortions in the south, making safe, healthy procedures available to those who need them. Thank God for Dr. Parker.
In sum, here is a gorgeously articulated argument for all of you who feel that just because you are religious, you cannot support abortion. On the contrary, if you are religious – in this light, you are morally obligated to honor the choice and the freedom of the already living, as Dr. Parker does.
kindread spirits 