On June 23, 2022, my bodily autonomy was recognized as a fundamental constitutional right.
On June 24, 2022, it wasn’t.
But I don’t want to talk about reproductive choice or Dobbs–not exactly, anyway. Many, many people have already done that; there are already multiple posts on Wheat & Tares that address the issue, including some that specifically address Dobbs & the Church position on abortion. There are also a couple of other posts at By Comment Consent that discuss it. I’ve engaged in some of those discussions already and I really don’t want to frame up another substantive abortion debate for the comments here. (Really.)
Instead, I want to talk about how this legal upheaval–and the potential additional changes it portends, such as the elimination of the constitutional protection for gay marriage recognized in Obergefell–might impact our experience at Church. What might it mean for reproductive rights and marriage equality to be back on the table for state legislatures and, therefore, ripe for political advocacy from the Church or its members?
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This matters to me because mixing politics and Church has been the worst thing to happen to my Church experience. While I disagree with the institutional Church on many issues, I’ve long felt that my local experience is pretty good and as long as I focus on Jesus and my own congregation, I can get by just fine.
But that changes when local congregations get commandeered for political fights (as happened during Prop 8) or when such fights unavoidably impact them (as happened during the Covid mask/vaccine debates). As I learned during Covid, it actually doesn’t matter much whether I oppose the Church’s official position (as with marriage equality) or I agree with it (as with masks and Covid)–it’s miserable either way. Jesus leaves the building.
As such, a major benefit of Roe / Casey and Obergefell for me has been that, although people at Church might talk about abortion (sometimes) and gay marriage (often), there was comfort in knowing that their religious beliefs and political opinions couldn’t infringe on my own reproductive rights or my friends’ and families’ marriage equality. Sure, I think some of what they say is harmful, but I and other women and my queer friends and family have been shielded from them. They can believe what they want to believe and practice the way they want to practice, but they can’t force me to do the same. (That is, by the way, exactly the point of fundamental rights–certain rights that are so fundamental that, for example, a conservative Christian minority can’t deprive a minority of those rights by imposing its own religious practices on people who believe differently.) This has made the divisions that exist in Church between pro-lifers and pro-choicers / Republicans and Democrats / pro- and anti-marriage equality much more tolerable because I don’t have to get very worked up about it. It’s largely irrelevant to my actual life.
Until now. Now that reproductive choice is an open issue again–subject to campaigning and convincing and sign-posting and legislating–my ward members’ beliefs about it are likely to impact my own reproductive rights and those of my sisters and daughters and friends (especially because I live in the Theocracy of Deseret). If gay marriage no longer receives federal protection, my brother’s marriage may not be valid in his home state; again, my ward members’ views on the issue may actually end up directly impacting my family and friends. So it’s no longer something I can just look away from or agree to disagree or live and let live. It’s very personal and it concretely impacts my own life and family.
Likewise, although people on the other side of these debates may be glad that they can influence public policy to conform to their views on abortion and gay marriage, I have to imagine that at least some of them at least still would prefer the issues not take over our Church meetings. I imagine there may also even be people out there who believe that the Church is correct in its stance on abortion and gay marriage, but that the free exercise of religion and principles of limited government mean that those things should still be legal for others who believe differently.
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So, the two questions on my mind are:
- Will the Church get involved in legislative battles over abortion and gay marriage as it did for the ERA in the 70’s and gay marriage in the late 90’s and early 2000’s?
Part of me thinks (hopes?) that the Church learned a hard lesson after Prop 8–it may have won a short-term political victory, but it lost a tremendous amount of goodwill. Likewise, with Covid, even encouraging members to wear masks and get vaccinated–which should not have been particularly political to begin with–created problems for the Church with its members on the far right.
That said, the Church continues to support anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion groups domestically and abroad, and continues to file amicus briefs in opposition to LGBTQ rights in the United States. I’m not sure that Nelson cares much about public opinion on this point. While I doubt that the Church’s level of involvement will be as intense as it was during Prop 8, I can imagine it will continue issuing statements in favor of gay marriage-restrictive and anti-reproductive choice policies and that it will at least subtly encourage members to vote accordingly.
Indeed, in response to Dobbs, the Church Newsroom statement on abortion added a new paragraph to the existing language: “The Church’s position on this matter remains unchanged. As states work to enact laws related to abortion, Church members may appropriately choose to participate in efforts to protect life and to preserve religious liberty.”
Why the Church felt that it needed to give members permission to do this, I have no idea, but either way seems like encouragement to insert ourselves and our religious beliefs into these debates. But for the record, I believe pro-choice efforts are efforts to protect life (the lives of women) and preserve religious liberty (the liberty of folks who do not share Catholic / Evangelical / Mormon views on abortion and whether human life begins at conception). Somehow, though, I doubt that’s what the Newsroom means.
- Will Church members be disciplined for public advocacy and financial support to pro-marriage equality or pro-choice groups and causes?
Whether or not the Church encourages or mobilizes Church members to fight to restrict reproductive rights legislation or bans marriage equality–or tries to stay out of the fray apart from reiterating its own policy–it is certain (in fact, it is already the case) that Church members will mobilize on either side of the issues on their own initiative. The Utah Legislature–which is about 88% Mormon–has already passed a trigger law that looks strikingly similar to Church policy, and the President of the Utah Senate has noted that he would join efforts to revisit Obergefell.
On the other hand, many Church members have publicly voiced opposition to Dobbs, limitations on reproductive rights, and Justice Thomas’s suggestion that marriage equality should be revisited. I’ve actually been quite surprised at the number of active Church members–mostly women–who have been outspoken on these issues. For my part, I have given and will continue to give vocal, financial, legal, and any other support I can to fight for reproductive rights and marriage equality.
Will this get me and other pro-choice, pro-marriage equality members in trouble? I don’t know. Elder Christofferson is often quoted as saying that members won’t be punished for holding their own beliefs about gay marriage, but some leaders seem to draw the line at public advocacy. Recent changes in the vetting and retention of BYU faculty suggest that, at least for Church employment, private beliefs are enough to land you in hot water or out of a job.
My guess is that if members simply advocate that the law should not restrict people from making their own decisions about abortion and gay marriage, without specifically opposing the Church’s position as it applies to Church members own choices, they generally won’t face discipline absent some leadership roulette (although the risk of leadership roulette is real). Of course, that’s different for Church employees and potentially students at Church schools. And I think there’s an open question whether donating to a charitable organization that provides abortion funding (like Planned Parenthood or other funds that directly pay for abortions) is tantamount to “encourag[ing], pay[ing], or arrang[ing] for [elective] abortions” or what discipline (if any) would result from such actions.
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Ultimately, of course, I don’t know what will happen. I am trying to be optimistic–I really can’t afford not to be. I hope that leadership recognizes the divisiveness and sensitivity of these issues and encourages congregations to keep them out of Sunday worship. But I worry that just as we’ve come out of the divisive nightmare that was the 2020 election cycle and Covid, we’re headed towards something even worse.
- Whichever side of the issues you land on, how do you feel about the possibility that reproductive rights & marriage equality may become hot(ter) topics at Church?
- Do you think the Church will get involved (within the limits of its status of a 501(c)(3), which technically prohibits political advocacy)? Do you think members who advocate for reproductive choice or gay marriage may face Church discipline?
- If you consider yourself pro-life and anti-gay marriage, do you think you should make space for alternate views in your congregation? Do you plan to do anything to do so?
- If you consider yourself pro-choice and pro-marriage equality, how do you think you’ll handle potential changes to your Church experience?
Wheat & Tares 
The Church, like many large US corporations, is generally very risk averse. And the Brethren care a great deal about public relations. Many members of the Q15 were in office when the Church promoted Prop 8. Most were in office when they did the POX in 2015. And all (I think) were in office in 2020 when RMN encouraged vaccination. I’m all three instances, the Church took a big hit internally and externally (at least by the COVID deniers).
I bet they learned their lesson. And I bet they stay out of the way as this SCOTUS does their dirty work.
The Church has lost too many members thanks to the Internet (the truth set them free) and thanks to COVID (the folks who took a mandated break and never came back). I don’t expect the Brethren to take any more significant risks publicly.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the problems that these conservative political wins pose for the Church, and for all churches. The US was never supposed to be a Christian theocracy–we couldn’t be because there have been many Christian sects here from day one. This was a point made by someone on a history podcast I was listening to about why it is that the US is so much more religious than European nations are. The reason this historian gave is that it is because the US has always been pluralistic, a marketplace of religions; European countries generally had a state religion that forced people to be religious, to follow the rules of that single religion, and restricted their freedoms of conscience and moral choice. Nobody likes being pushed around. So, my opinion is that the Church (and the conservative dogmatic churches that seek to undo separation of church & state while calling it “religious freedom”) are literally committing suicide in so doing.
As you pointed out in the OP, one day you had bodily autonomy and the next day you didn’t. The problem is that the people who voted away your rights, who rejoice that you are now a meat-sack of nutrients should you become pregnant, they are basically sitting next to you at Church, often crowing about it. Do I think the Church will continue to push their politics down our throats? Yes, 100% It’s baked into the curriculum and the CES dept. Most Church members feel emboldened to say racist, sexist, anti-science things. I’d love to know where all these reasonable Church members you mentioned are. I am seeing a parking lot full of blue lives matter license plates.
I agree the institutional church is still recovering from the members refusal to follow the science and will tread lightly. Locally, it depends on your community.
For me personally, the church has a choice. Locally we can focus on Christ and I’ll continue to stay. Or they can focus on this stuff and I can leave. Honestly, they lost my money years ago. If they no longer want my time, it’s their loss.
The challenge is that there will always be members that wish I could just tow the line and say what they want without me raising my hand contrariwise. But then there are the members that thank me for speaking up, for wearing that rainbow pin, for redirecting conversations back to Christ.
So that’s the challenge. Half the ward wishes I would just disappear while the other half appreciates my advocacy. Should I stay or should I go becomes a difficult proposition. I revisit it daily.
Elisa, Thoughtful, reflective, and powerful. Great questions. Thank you for posting. I hope your concerns about future local Church partisan efforts on abortion and marriage equality do not come to fruition. As you state, Jesus needs to stay in our buildings.
kjsutt
The Church is still fighting legal battles over gay marriage and LGBT in general, it is just in the court room or behind closed doors (lobbying legislators mostly), not out in the open, publicly campaigning. I think that will be the Church’s approach going forward, so as to not offend members, but still potentially getting what they want in the end.
@Josh H, I am really not sure that Nelson cares as much about PR at least among certain groups. Increasingly it seems to me like they are just throwing their hands in the air, knowing they’re losing people, but chalking it up to sifting the wheat from the chaff / the sheep from the goats and waiting for Jesus to come clean things up at the Second Coming. So while I hope you’re right, I honestly don’t know. They’ve done and said some pretty boneheaded things if that were the case.
@Angela, that is a REALLY interesting point about a Christian theocracy. Someday hopefully the tide will turn but it can’t come soon enough for me. As for outspoken pro-choice members … well, scattered all around the country. I doubt you’d find more than a handful in any one congregation unless you lived in a super liberal place.
@Chadwick, yes, “should I stay or should I go” is on repeat in my head.
@kjsutt thank you.
@zwingli that’s probably accurate in terms of what the Church will do publicly, but we still get a lot of CFM lessons on how to talk to people about gay marriage (i.e., how to justify our belief that it’s wrong and that our rights to oppose gay marriage should be protected) and I don’t see that going away. Seems it will get bigger now that there’s a possibility for the law to change. And then we get abortion to boot. Like I said, I don’t see another ERA or Prop 8-level battle in the future, but I think these issues will definitely get more airtime and there’s a possibility of Prop 8 2.0 / Prop 8 lite.
LDS leadership and the Church as a whole is of two minds on this. On the one hand, they want to welcome those from across the political spectrum as active members. They don’t want to turn off half the potential convert population by overtly signaling “we are a politically conservative church; liberals not welcome.” On the other hand, deep down most leaders strongly favor conservative/Republican policies and tend to view many liberal positions as not just wrong but evil. I think the prevailing anti-liberal culture and rhetoric has driven away enough progressives that the battle is now lost. Democrats/liberals/progressives are really no longer welcome in the Church, which just can’t disengage from an increasingly authoritarian conservative movement.
It’s hard to figure out what the Nelson/Oaks team wants, if not just that: more authoritarian government to push their conservative policies and fewer progressives in the Church so, you know, we don’t keep making uncomfortable comments in Sunday School. They must be cheering every recent US Supreme Court decision in the COB. The crazy state-level politics one sees in the Mormon Corridor (Utah, Idaho, Arizona) is telling on this whole line of thinking.
Regarding whether the church will become involved politically in these issues, I think depends largely on who is at the helm. As long as it’s RMN or Oaks, with respect to LGBTQ issues, they will do everything in their power to execute God’s mandate, as they see it, for heteronormativity and gender roles. I tend to believe they won’t be as politically activist about it after the black eye over Prop 8 and the membership’s increasing acceptance of and empathy towards LGBTQ people. But they’ll certainly be involved in the behind-the-scenes legal efforts, channeling tithing funds to Kirton McConkie and other organizations that will do the front work. I can also see them amping up the doctrinal rhetoric in talks and encouraging members to vote in ways that will preserve the “traditional family.”
Once RMN and Oaks are gone, while I don’t expect any major shifts in church position in the near term on LGBTQ policies, I think Ballard/Holland/Uchtdorf (whoever wins by staying alive the longest) will back off and tend to let the organic change occur among the membership as they have done on other issues in the past. With respect to abortion rights, I have no idea what they’ll do as state legislatures take up the debate on how it should be regulated/prohibited in their states.
After Roe was overturned last week I’ve seen numerous obnoxious posts on Facebook about how the SP decision was God’s work. This week I posted an overtly political statement on my personal Facebook page (something I almost never do) in support of Roe / pro-choice and that people who claim to be pro-life should act like it. I’m Facebook friends with many members of the ward and stake and I expected much disagreement, but a surprising number of ward members agreed with me. Yeah, it’s a minority but there was more support than expected. The catch is that few or none will say anything in a church setting.
I keep seeing headlines that the majority of the US supports Roe and I have to think that a sizable minority of LDS also supports Roe but are afraid to express it. I remember with POX one of the bishops in our stake said that putting a rainbow Facebook banner around your picture constituted encouragement of homosexuality and would result in disciplinary action in his ward. Sigh. I think members are afraid of that type of reaction. Church leadership at the general and local levels feel emboldened by last week’s SP ruling.
@Chadwick and @Elisa – “do I stay?” is a refrain playing frequently in my brain. Part of me thinks that nothing changes easily and without proponents but part of me wonders if it’s a sunk cost.
Bryce. You believe the church will use TITHING money to fund behind-the-scenes legal efforts that in effect will do the front work. My question is how do we know they will use tithing funds and not some money from other sources? I’m not sure about the legal aspects of using tithing money for such actions.
The more I reflect on this post, the more relevant it seems (so I’ll make a second comment). There has been almost no discussion of abortion in LDS meetings or classes since Roe — it was a settled issue, the LDS policy was fairly clear, and there just wasn’t much to talk about. Now, suddenly, there will be something to talk about. And with the amped-up rhetoric that now attends political issues, some of these discussions in church could get very spirited. I shudder to think about how some members are going to talk about this.
What would help? Maybe a “How to Talk about Abortion in Church” article in the Ensign (oops, Liahona), but I won’t hold my breath. Maybe a reprise of Elder Anderson’s April 2021 Conference talk, updated to be a little more relevant to the Post-Roe world we now live in. I don’t really trust any local talk or counsel from local leaders to shed any light on this.
There probably needs to be some discussion of the new wording the Church added to the end of its abortion policy: –> –>”As states work to enact laws related to abortion, Church members may appropriately choose to participate in efforts to protect life and to preserve religious liberty.” Please explain what is meant by “appropriate” (what do they think is inappropriate participation?). Please expand on “efforts to protect life,” since all participants think they are trying to protect life. Please explain what religious liberty has to do with this discussion? Maybe it means churches should be free to offer shelter and refuge and assistance to women who are being hounded by state authorities who think they might have undergone or assisted with an abortion. We might be looking at state Fugitive Pregnant Women Laws (modelled on the Fugitive Slave Act which was part of the Compromise of 1850), so there will inevitably be private parties and churches who seek to aid those targeted by these new legal initiatives.
@Toad, I agree. I’ve posted in favor of Roe & gay marriage and I have been surprised at the support I’ve gotten from active Church members. But, I’m not actually social media friends with the vast majority of my current ward so these are friends from former places. But I know for sure that when I was in wards with them before, they weren’t pro-choice or pro-gay marriage – MANY people’s thinking on this has changed in the last 5ish years.
@geraaldo101, I think the dispersement of tithing funds is sort of outside the scope of this post, but from my perspective “who cares”? Like, the Church has a certain amount of money to draw from to do what it needs to do. Whether that money technically comes from “tithing funds” or comes from growth on its investment or real estate, why does that matter? If they use all my tithing for humanitarian causes great, but that just means they have more bandwidth in their other non-tithing pots to draw from to fund anti-LGBTQ lawsuits because they don’t have to spend that money on things they used my tithing for. I get that from an accounting and 501(c)(3) perspective it matters, but from a “how is the Church spending its resources, including resources I directly contributed to it” perspective, I honestly don’t care.
@dave b, exactly. All of this is what I was thinking about when I wrote this post.
I think this is potentially a big change for my Church experience.
On the one hand, I see a slow move left politically among younger generations in the church. Perhaps that will speed up as the younger folk age into more leadership callings. On the other hand, I see a lot of people (me) that don’t want to say too much at church because of questions of leadership roulette. How’s that for religious freedom?
“Church members may appropriately choose to participate in efforts to protect life and to preserve religious liberty”
I find this new statement irritating. It seems like it is coded and intended to encourage activism for banning abortion, but is actually worded vaguely enough to give plausible deniability that they are in fact taking a political position. Speaking out of both sides of their mouth. This will only serve to increase the political rhetoric at church.
I don’t remember abortion ever being discussed in Sunday meetings (other than GenCon) until last week. It was an occasional topic way back in my seminary/institute days, but those weren’t Sunday meetings.
Until last week. In spite of the teacher trying to subtly change the subject, abortion was main topic of the Priesthood lesson this last week. I don’t generally go to priesthood these days, but I attended last week for an unrelated reason and unfortunately had to listen to close to an hour of discussion supporting the Roe decision
Abortion and marriage rights have been long settled in my country and I don’t see any way for that to change. People have accepted it and moved on and in my church congregation I don’t see these issues rising to the surface. However – our smaller population is highly affected by what goes on south of our border because your social issues have such a splash over effect and seem to embolden certain factions that exist within any society. It’s hard to witness all of the extreme social discord happening to neighbors that we have such a close relationship with and in my own case, children and grandchildren living there. I fear for their futures and I see the church bleeding more and more of our youth who are much more socially progressive and also very accepting of their LGBTQ peers. These young people need to vote – perhaps their votes will eventually change the climate there. There’s so much that’s messed up – choosing candidates for your major elections has become so fraught and absurdly costly, but then we have our own political leadership quagmires too 🥴
I doubt that the church congregations, at least in Salt Lake County, will say much about the abortion debate at church. The main reason is this: it isn’t a debate that is settled among conservatives. If anything, the Supreme Court inadvertently opened up a can of worms for conservatives and they’re divided hugely over the issue of life at conception. There are many anti-abortionists who insist that rape and incest are not valid reasons for abortion. And the official church position is that those are valid reasons. But if life is defined at conception, then it naturally follows that the termination of a rape-caused pregnancy is just as much a murder as any other abortions. The Louisiana governor just made a law that allows for no exceptions on rape and incest. The Mississippi House Speaker just said that a hypothetical 12-year-old victim of incestuous rape should be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. LDS members who believe similarly have to realize that they are actually at odds with official church policy.
The divisions within the Republican electorate have bled into the church, which consists of a large number of more moderate Republicans who are only reluctant Trump voters and also reluctant to embrace more radical politics that are becoming popular in the conservative movement. Folks at church may mostly be on the conservative side, but the conservatives know they’re divided on some serious issues, not just life at conception, but over racial issues and over whether to believe a range of conspiracy theories. Conservatives at church have felt increasingly less comfortable talking about issues at church. And for that reason, I highly doubt we’ll hear much about abortion.
Same goes for gay marriage, if that comes into the crosshairs of our current radical activist Supreme Court who is hellbent on overturning precedent, letting polluters pollute and contribute to climate change, and letting shooters shoot. Conservative culture itself has seen a shift on gay rights in just the last decade. Many conservatives, while not fully in support of same-sex marriage, are simply more sympathetic to lesbians and gays than they used to be. Homophobia used to be common and accepted at church. Now it isn’t so much.
I’d like to pick up on hawkgrrl’s comments about the US turning into a Christian theocracy, and John W’s mention that some conservatives are now having to face difficult issues – like the rape exception for abortion bans.
Christianity and faith “work” if they’re voluntary. Forcing someone to do good works is a useless endeavor, as the Book of Mormon so clearly teaches in Moroni 7:8, which says “For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.” A woman who is forced to carry a pregnancy to term doesn’t get any brownie points in heaven if she would have had an abortion if that option had been available. Pro-lifers aren’t saving any woman’s soul by preventing abortion.
Insisting that everyone live by conservative Christian beliefs is going to stir up resentment and make the Christians look like the bullies. Some conservatives won’t care, but more moderate Christians might. The more the conservative Christians get to enshrine their moral beliefs into law, the more resentment and pushback they’re going to experience. It isn’t going to be a good result for churches in the long run.
I’m reminded of when the Temperance movement got alcohol banned by the 18th constitutional amendment, and then repealed by the 21st amendment about 13 years later in 1933. Passing laws about moral behaviors is a bad idea. Of course, banning alcohol affected men in ways that banning abortion doesn’t. The effect on men will take longer to appear – men who would have been relieved if their girlfriend would have an abortion are now going to be fathers.