The Ethical Society, and our national federation, the American Ethical Union, has long supported abortion as being an often difficult but spiritual and ethical choice. Our highest value is the worth and dignity of every person, and since pregnant women are clearly people, while pregnancies are not clearly people (witness all the arguments and differences of opinion on when human life begins), our official stance (individual members, of course, have freedom of opinion) is that to force a woman against her will to carry a pregnancy she does not want threatens her physical, psychological, and spiritual health, and therefore it violates rather than affirms her worth and dignity.

The Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is an organization that brings together representative voices for the millions of clergy and lay people from every major religion and denomination (and many minor ones) who support women’s and men’s sexual health and reproductive rights. MoRCRC’s…

I hate the term “pro-abortion”. I recently came across it in a quote Tim used (not his own words) in his recent post and then in one of the comments. And I just want to put this out there: nobody is pro-abortion. Regardless of when you believe that life begins, nobody is advocating or encouraging abortions. I respect that differences in beliefs divide us into those that are pro-life (a term I also don’t like) and those that are pro-choice.

For me, this is an issue about choices and freedom. As a woman and mother, I can not imagine the trauma and pain a woman must experience with abortion. Both physical and mental. Judaism tells me that life begins at birth; after two pregnancies I felt life sooner.

So I’m not sure about when life begins but I can tell you this: I wholeheartedly support a woman’s right to choose. Hence the term “pro-choice”.…