Two Daughters and an Uncertain Future
I have two daughters: a 3-year-old and an 8-month-old, as of this writing. Beginning with my partner’s pregnancy, and surely continuing through my daughters’ lives, women’s health is and will continue to be a primary concern of mine.
Since the women in my life will be covered under church insurance, hear church lessons spoken and sung, and have conversations with other women at church, then what the church teaches, requires, and legislates about women is important to me.
My church is The United Methodist Church, and while we are the largest denomination in the world that ordains women, we are not doing as well as we could be in caring for lay and clergy women alike.
Disregarding Women’s Health
Every four years, The UMC evaluates its doctrinal statements and its policies at General Conference, held recently in the middle of May.
There were a number of proposals this year that dealt directly with women that did not pass and did not move the church forward.
- A proposal to remove some unnecessary and invasive medical information (only from women, I might add) from the required health forms for eligibility for ordination failed to pass.
- Several Resolutions that had an 8 years shelf life and needed to be renewed in 2016 were not even voted on in committee, including Protecting Children From Mercury, United Methodist Response to Hospital Mergers in the United States, Status of Women, and The Girl Child. Another on Responsible Parenthood failed on a floor vote.
By failing to retain language affirming of women’s health, we fail to be a denomination that speaks with authority and gives language to current issues facing women worldwide.
Sacrificing Reproductive Health…
The biggest controversy when it comes to women, of course, is about reproductive health. Some updates are:
- Two petitions calling for The UMC to leave the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice passed. What this means is that we will no longer be at the decision-making table of a religious organization for women’s health that we co-founded in the 1970s.
- However, there were seven petitions that would have altered our statement on abortion (found here) to be less graceful and have more pro-life agenda items placed in it. All seven of those were not voted on in committee and did not get a vote with the whole body.
- What was added to our Social Principles was this sentence: “We commit our Church to continue to provide nurturing ministries to those who terminate a pregnancy, to those in the midst of a crisis pregnancy, and to those who give birth.” Good deal.
- Multiple other efforts to incorporate pro-life agenda items into resolutions as varied as divestment from abortion-related industries to requiring church officials to give alternatives to abortion failed.
…because of a buzzword?
It seems like people just keyword-search for “abortion” and vote down irregardless of the rest of the proposal. I’m not alone in that sentiment, as United Methodist Women posted today:
Contrary to some reports, reproductive health care is not a code word for abortion. Women’s reproductive health is central to women’s total health care throughout the childbearing years and beyond, for as women age the reproductive system becomes more at risk for disease.
I believe women need access to abortion services but I don’t think people understand that reproductive health is a whole conversation about health, well-being, status for women around the world, and far more than just abortion. If the UMC is unwilling to even talk about reproductive health because an alarm goes off whenever the word “abortion” is used, and I do think that happened with regard to many proposals, then that’s problematic for us going forward.
As UM Women concludes:
United Methodist Women will continue to prioritize the needs of women and the girl child, including their need for comprehensive reproductive health education, care and nutrition. The health of women and girls has been an integral part of United Methodist Women’s mission outreach since our beginning in 1869, when our foremothers organized to send a woman doctor to India to serve women and girls who could not be seen by male doctors.
One of the denomination’s four areas of focus is global health. There can be no global health that does not include the health of women and girls. Reproductive health care is intrinsic to the health of women and girls. United Methodist Women will work to ensure women and girls are not left behind.
Shining Stars: UM Women, GCOSROW, GBCS
The biggest advocates for women’s health continue to be both the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women and the official women’s organization United Methodist Women. The bulk of these advancements were penned by or supported by UMWomen and GCOSROW:
- Here’s United Methodist Women’s list of legislation and final tally (link)
- Starting here and clicking the related links, here’s GCOSROW’s legislative updates (link)
Update: I’m adding General Board of Church and Society as their wonderful proposal “Eradicating Sexual and Gender-based Violence” passed as well. After this blog went to press, GBCS penned a blog here about this petition, which you can read here. I apologize for missing it in the post-GC roundups.
Click through for the legislation items, which may surprise you. I am always thrilled at the intersections between women’s health and other justice areas.
I’m thankful we get informed, holistic advocacy and education through these organizations. It really is far beyond what a local church could provide or a caucus group, and that’s why we are in this connectional system that focuses resources on global concerns. It’s deplorable that we do not prioritize legislative time to these global concerns and then they fall out of our vernacular for four years or more.
I’m thankful for these official United Methodist bodies who keep naming what matters to my daughters’ bodies and to yours.
Your turn
Thoughts?
- Where are we moving forward in support of women?
- Where are we stalled or even moving backwards in support?
Thanks for reading and your shares on social media.
You are correct that Petition 60264, The Girl Child, was not considered in Legislative Committee due to time constraints. This meant it was dead unless signatures were collected to pull it to the plenary floor. A group collected those necessary signature and it was available to be brought to the floor. (I know of at least one evangelical clergywoman who was a signer.) It was, however, not gotten to in plenary at least in part, because of the long debate on Fossil Fuels. GC passed legislation submitted by Indiana AC that will require all petitions to be acted upon in some way which may decrease odds of petitions dying for lack of attention like this. It was petition 60226.
The revised version of Responsible Parenthood, in my opinion, over-reached. It appeared to support abortion in ways that our carefully nuanced stance in 161J does not. I hope UMW and/or GCBS will prepare a more statement good resolution on women’s health that lines up with our denominational position in 161J and bring it to GC2020. Blessings and peace.
Hi Beth Ann, I’m not sure it’s fair we can blame fossil fuel debate alone. We can blame the budget debate. We can blame the $20m request for Don House. We can blame the debate over African bishop timelines. We can blame the Bishop’s Commission. We can blame the three speeches you gave against RCRC. The point is every topic is important, so to blame it “was because of this one” is not a fair statement.
Petition 60226’s passage will have an adverse effect on the legislative process, and you can be sure it will be receiving significant critique from me as we approach 2020 processes. The people who voted for it (406, barely 54%) have the wrong idea of how to govern General Conference’s 1400 petitions without relying on snap judgments and caucus group control–or maybe that’s what they want precisely.
If you are saying that budget questions should be a lower priority than resolutions, you are entitled to your opinion but factually the resolutions mean very little while the budgetary questions do have to be decided by General Conference.
It should be telling that until 2012, General Conference would get through each petition TWICE. Even those that received no affirmative votes in committee would be presented to plenary to ask for “concurrence in the recommendation of non-concurrence.” The changes to the agenda by a Randall Miller-led GCGC and continuing forward have not been positive. Removing the requirement for a second vote on legislation that was going nowhere should have made it EASIER for everything to be considered. Instead, we have had a LOT of plenary time taken up with “non-legislative” matters and then we wonder why GC can’t complete its work.
But, your concerns about “caucus group control” are simply laughable considering that LYN (now pronounced “Lyin'”?) was able again to frustrate the majority will with a well-timed leak of a rumor that was repudiated by the COB President. If it wasn’t a lie, then what was it? But, as usual, there is no accountability.
Tom Oden, probably United Methodism’s greatest living theologian, said…”that life is of incomparable value since it is the precondition of all other human values.” A CHANGE OF HEART Thomas C. Oden, 2014, p 160. I am also the parent of two girls, I am grateful for the progress made at GC2016 on life issues, and I look for the time when our church becomes fully prolife.
In Christ,
The enemy hates clarity
Good point Jeremy. In reality all of the other debates (including the amount of time spent talking about Rule 44 early on in the conference, RCRC, budget, and everything else we spent time on) kept us from getting to this petition. The fossil fuel debate was just most proximate.
The point I was making, however, is that that Girl Child resolution died for lack of getting to the floor AFTER being pulled to plenary. It didn’t just die after not being considered as you originally stated. (What you showed is what the legislative tracking software shows–you would have to look at DCA to see that it was pulled. For some reason Legislative tracking doesn’t show when delegates sign to pull a petition.)
There are pros and cons to everything including attempting to act on all petitions. As you stated a con can be hastily made decisions. (Although we hope and pray that delegates do the homework in advance of GC to know what they are voting on. But keeping up with DCAs isn’t easy.) The pro is that it keeps things from falling to the wayside because they weren’t gotten around to.
Just an aside–I love Tom Oden’s book “A Change of Heart: A personal and Theological Memoir”. It is amazing. And the quote above is only one of many, many reasons.
Rev. Cook, that book by Oden is one of the best I ever read. On p. 325 he said “(m)y constant prayer is to live a full life of accountability to God.”
In Christ,
The enemy hates clarity
So hypothetically speaking, what exactly would happen if we had some rebel United Methodist women continue to serve with the RCRC regardless of official policy?
They definitely wouldn’t be speaking with the voice of the church itself, but I’m sure we have more than a few women willing to practice a little civil disobedience until the church gets its head out of this election cycle and can think rationally again.
It is true that GC2016 produced few advances for women’s health. Particularly disappointing was failure to advance and adopt petitions on mercury and hospital mergers, social and legal status of women and children, divesting from industrialized abortion. Overall… bad deal.
It is particularly noteworthy that by an overwhelming vote of 425 to 268, the decision was made to leave the RCRC. This corrects a mistake of over four decades standing. Overall… a resounding good deal.
Is this only because of a buzzword? No. But, it does reflect a refusal to allow a secular political phrase to be used as a cloak to support and advance policies and practices that support industrialized abortion. In the future it will be better if clear and accurate language is used in place of such unnecessary codewords.