Acceptance Remarks by Rev. Michael Smith
Reverends Davis Distinguished Service Award, Planned Parenthood Interfaith Breakfast and Plenary, March 29, 2007
Planned Parenthood Federation of America honored Rev. Dr. Michael Smith with the 2007 Davis Distinguished Service Award at its Interfaith Prayer Breakfast and Plenary, held during the Planned Parenthood Annual Conference in Los Angeles, CA in March 2007. The award is given annually to honor a member of the clergy or a lay religious leader who, as a volunteer, occupies a leadership position at a Planned Parenthood affiliate and has made significant contributions to the affiliate and to advancing the Planned Parenthood mission and program. The Davis Award was established to recognize members of the religious community whose support of Planned Parenthood reflects the teachings of their respective faith, as exemplified by Rev. Tom Davis and his late wife, Rev. Betsy Morgan Davis.
Rev. Dr. Michael Smith has been a longtime friend of Planned Parenthood. He has been a vocal, active, and passionate ambassador for reproductive rights in the religious community since before Roe — spreading the word in Arizona, Iowa, and across the United States.
Excerpted from Rev. Dr. Michael Smith’s acceptance remarks
First, I express my deep gratitude to Planned Parenthood for the Davis Award and to Rev. Tom Davis for linking the work of justice-loving clergy and Planned Parenthood in the struggle for reproductive justice. In his historically important book, Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances, Tom rightly characterizes efforts to bring about reproductive justice as “sacred work.”
Justice is a central to religion. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Amos says, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Justice and righteousness are inseparable. Righteousness means right-relatedness, being rightly (justly) related to God, one another, and the whole of creation. Justice work is sacred work.
Our work together as clergy and Planned Parenthood concerns reproductive justice, and I wish this morning to state my conviction that at the root of the issue is sexism. There can be no full reproductive rights for women without an end to the injustice of male dominance and control. This is particularly important for religious persons to understand and a difficult challenge for virtually all faiths, ridding our houses of every vestige of injustice in the form of patriarchal power.
It is equally important to see the connection from the other direction, something Tom Davis “gets.” “Not enough clergy have fully accepted the feminist warning that without reproductive rights, none of women’s other rights may mean much,” Sacred Work, page 25.
Pro-choice clergy must stand firm in our support of reproductive justice, amidst all the temptations of the day to compromise, whether in the secular or interfaith arenas. I like to ask the abortion question this way: Are there any circumstances under which you would force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will? It cuts through the weaseling. Our answer must remain an unqualified NO.
We must carry on the courageous work of Margaret Sanger who, facing a prison term if found guilty at her 1917 trial where she was accused of violating birth control laws, turned down an offer of leniency if she would promise to adhere to the laws and said, “I cannot promise to obey a law I do not respect.” That part of her reproductive justice work cost her 30 days in jail, after which she continued her efforts without compromise.
We can expect the sacred work to bring about reproductive justice to be long and hard. But let’s be positive and even grateful. Feminist author Kate Millett, in her 1990 introduction to the reprint of her 1969 book, Sexual Politics, says, “We have seen … abortion won and then nearly lost — a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child or not, become once again something men quibble over. … If it isn’t easy, it’s always interesting. And the work of enlarging human freedom is such nice work we’re lucky to get it.”
Are we lucky? And will we carry on the sacred work? If so, let the people say AMEN!
Published: 04.20.07
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