“Do not show obedience to bishops who exhort you to do and to say and to believe in things which are not to your benefit. What pious man would hold his tongue? Who would remain completely calm? In fact, silence equates to consent.”
— St. Meletios of Antioch
July 17, 2022
Fathers of the First Six Ecumenical Councils
Your Beatitude,
Most Blessed Master, bless!
We are writing to express our extreme dismay and disappointment with your recent reflection on the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. The blatantly political character of this document gives pause to many of the faithful, and the tone-deafness of your assertion that “all Orthodox Christians should be rejoicing in this decision” betrays an utter lack of pastoral sensitivity and seeming ignorance as to the lived realities of your flock. The nature and tone of your statement reflect more the strident, impersonal, and unreflective nature of contemporary American political rhetoric than they do the compassionate, personal, and deeply nuanced message of the Gospel. We write this letter both to help Your Eminence see the deep complexities of this issue -- particularly the medical, moral, and legal complexities that distinguish abortion from simple infanticide -- and, in no small part, to remind you that you are not a political operative, but a bishop in Christ’s Church. We, the faithful, need you to act accordingly, particularly in these tumultuous times.
The full measure of disastrous consequences of the SCOTUS decision will take time to manifest; although, the massive legislative assault on women and families began within minutes of the announcement. It is, however, apparent that you, a primate of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA), a bishop bestowed with a responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of souls, give no consideration to the very real struggles that women in our country face every day. Certainly, you know, pregnancy and childbearing remain the riskiest thing that can happen to a human body. The hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy can affect a number of other health conditions, sometimes leading to permanent disability. Even today, in the most medically advanced countries in the world, women experience significant adverse effects of pregnancies and even die in childbirth. This is particularly true in the United States, which has the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. Considering these real dangers, there should be absolutely no compulsion for a woman to carry a child – pregnancy and childbirth must be an autonomous decision by the one whom it affects the most. After all, we are in effect asking a woman to risk her life with each pregnancy. Even the Lord did not compel the Theotokos to bear Christ but instead sought and received her consent. Her glory is in no small measure in her freely made choice.
We are certain that Your Beatitude, in your paternal love, is eager to hear the real-life stories of women (including Orthodox Christian women) now living under threat from conservative legislatures and courts. Here are a few such stories:
One Orthodox Christian woman experienced seven miscarriages before giving birth to a healthy child. After every one of these miscarriages, her only chance for restored health and a successful future pregnancy depended on the availability of a procedure that removes the dead fetus from her body (commonly known as a dilation and curettage or D&C in the first trimester), and twice, when she was in the second trimester, she needed a different more medically complicated procedure (called dilation and extraction (a D&E). These are the same procedures that are employed to abort any fetus, depending on the trimester of pregnancy. These procedures, which might well save a woman’s fertility or life, are now under threat in multiple jurisdictions. If the procedures hadn’t been accessible to the woman at the time, she could have been rendered completely infertile. She might even have died from the complications of having a dead fetus inside her body while being forced to wait for a “natural” miscarriage to complete, although since it hadn’t by the time she got the procedures, it was unlikely her uterus would have effectively done so. Her survivor baby was baptized in the Orthodox church in 2019, eight years after the first abortion of her very wanted, but failed pregnancy and less than two years after her last failed pregnancy.
An Orthodox mother of three young children was impregnated by a “traditionalist” husband, who doesn’t believe in contraception. She experienced a high-risk pregnancy and consequently faced the terrible, heartbreaking choice to either terminate a pregnancy that was endangering her life or to risk leaving her three daughters as orphans in the care of their abusive father. The decision you celebrate would take that choice from her.
Just days after the Dobbs decision that you celebrate, a ten-year-old girl who became pregnant following a rape was forced to travel from her native Ohio to Indiana in order to receive an abortion as a direct result of that Supreme Court ruling. Most experts agree this “final option” will soon no longer exist. This was a procedure deemed necessary to preserve this child’s physical and mental health by the whole of her medical and social service team. This little girl barely escaped being forced to carry this pregnancy to term. Do you understand the risks imposed on a ten-year-old child’s body by a process that the body is not yet fully ready to undertake? Are you at all sensitive to the horror a child, having already been violated and brutalized, might feel at having to carry a reminder of that violence for nine months? Currently, ten states have abortion bans that do not make exceptions for rape and incest and more may follow.
Along these lines, it is worth noting that at the recent conference “Women’s Orthodoxy and War” we heard from an internationally-recognized expert on war crimes against women and children, an expert who heads the committee on sexual misconduct in your own administration. She mentioned that the youngest child she had seen giving birth was nine years old and that there are victims of rape impregnated by the Russian soldiers in Ukraine who are younger than that. Some of the victims of these war crimes worldwide end up in the United States as refugees. The Supreme Court decision which you laud and celebrate will put their lives in danger, further victimizing the child victims of a genocidal war.
We can go on and on with these examples, but the overarching point is that you have signaled support for an ideology that objectifies women, criminalizes them solely for being women, and ignores the many factors that contribute to the tragedy of abortion in our society. Rape, incest, poverty, violence, and abuse are all contributing factors that victimize women and leave them to make difficult, often impossible, choices. You are undoubtedly aware that it takes two people to conceive, and that conception often enough does not happen by a woman’s consent. Yet it is always a woman who is forced by our society to bear the consequences – and the truth is that even in the situation where a man is identified and compelled to accept some of the responsibility, the physical consequences are still born by a woman alone by the very fact of nature. You noted that it does not escape you that this decision was handed down on the Nativity of the Forerunner. This feast focuses us in no small part on St. Elizabeth, the Forerunner’s mother, who while still in the midst of her miraculous (and deeply desired) pregnancy, welcomed her cousin, the Theotokos, an unmarried, pregnant teenager, quite literally in a position that could have gotten her killed in her time and place. What does not escape us is the chasm that exists between the welcome provided by St. Elizabeth and the lack of hospitality that women who find themselves with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies frequently experience in our communities.
Your Beatitude, we know that we live in a time and place when it is easy to see enemies where there are truly none. All too frequently the enemies created for us by the so-called Culture Wars are simply other human beings, who just like us, are struggling to live in this beautiful, but fallen, world. The Gospel of Jesus Christ rejects this alienation and dehumanization of our fellow creatures. The divisions we see in our country and world are not the work of Christ and His Church, but their adversary, who wishes to divide us from each other and from the Triune God. Your insensitive words do not provide healing for these divisions nor do they contribute to proclaiming the dignity and worth of all people against the onslaught of dehumanizing rhetoric. Instead, your words only help cement these horrific impulses. In addition, you contribute to the divisions in the Church by implying that “we” (the Orthodox who celebrate the SCOTUS decision) are the “true Christians” as opposed to those who do not. We implore you to remember that on the dread day of judgment, you will not be held accountable for the souls in your care by moralistic factions who rejoice in the sheep who are expelled from the flock, but by the Good Shepherd who desires that none be lost.
We implore you to reconsider your rash words and to ponder the effect they have on the Orthodox Christians who are being pushed out of the Church by the expression of such pastoral insensitivity. The last few years have seen an unprecedented assault on human dignity and freedoms led by the subset of American Christians whose objective is the establishment of quasi-theocracy and a repressive patriarchal system of government. Some of the Orthodox jurisdictions in America are being essentially overrun by these theocratic, fundamentalist elements. By signaling your support for one of the primary issues on the theocratic agenda, you are placing the jurisdiction under your omophorion firmly in the camp of the champions of a society that denies dignity and agency to half of its population.
In Christ,
Sarah Bartmannn (Machesney Park, IL)
Liesl Behr (San Jose, CA)
Nadya Bodansky (Belmont, CA)
Yelena Bolshakova (Antwerpen, Belgium)
Alice Carter (Corvalis, OR)
John Congdon (Oberlin, OH)
Rachel Contos (New York, NY)
Pauline Costianes (Detroit, MI)
Jehan A. Chase, Esq. (Alexandria, VA)
Seth A. Chase (Alexandria, VA)
Michael Berrigan Clark (Wilton Manors, FL)
Kera Dalton (Marblehead, MA)
Dr. Philip Dorroll (Wolford College, SC)
Dawn Heywood (Sacramento CA)
Martin Hollick (Wilton Manors, FL)
William Hood (Birmingham, AL)
Heywood Jablome (Chicago, IL)
Cécile Joris (Brussels, Belgium)
Pamela R Sanmartin Kalista (Alpharetta, GA)
Elizabeth W Karner (Barrington, RI)
Alexis Katsis (Seattle, WA)
Dr. Katherine Kelaidis (Denver, CO)
Toni Kelaidis (Aurora, CO)
Joe Kelaidis (Aurora, CO)
Irina Klyagin (Boston, MA)
Olga Kostoglou (Sydney, Australia)
Natalie Kuchta (Cary, IL)
Sarah Lantz (Kansas)
Inga Leonova (Boston, MA)
Abigail McCormick (Clinton, NY)
Stephen D. Montgomery (Ft Lauderdale, FL)
Theano Pantone (Salt Lake City, UT)
Kira Pilat (Cleveland, OH)
Nicholas Sluchevsky (Sea Cliff, NY)
Elleney Soter (Salt Lake City, UT)
Dr. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz (Boston, MA)
Tracy A Thallas (Sierra Vista, AZ)
Mary Jo Werbiansky (Mokena, IL)
Andrea Wallace (Centralia, WA)
Kirsten Westrate (Georgetown, MA)
Lisa Whitfield (Oberlin, OH)
Eugenia Wilson (West Chicago, IL)
Jennifer Wilson (Pasadena, CA)
Vera Winn (Naples, FL)
Joanne Zbravos (Queens, NY)
If you wish to add your signature to this letter, please do so here.