UU Clergy & Our History Helping Patients Access Safe Abortions

"Moral Obligations Transcending Legal Codes": The Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion

Tuesday, May 9, 2023 8:00 PM -  9:30 PM ET (Please note the Time Zone!)

Before the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade made abortion legal  across the United States, clergy from a wide variety of religious  traditions developed a coordinated, skilled, responsive underground network that supported people experiencing "problem pregnancies" to  access abortion care from trustworthy doctors and medical professionals.  This network of more than 1400 clergy and hundreds of providers --  which included many Unitarian Universalists -- helped hundreds of  thousands of people access safe abortions before the Roe  decision. Join us for this conversation with historians and organizers to understand the social and political context of the Clergy Consultation Service of  the 1960s (particularly examining the prominent role of UUs) of the  1960s while learning about similar work that is already happening in the wake of Dobbs.

Speakers

Gillian Frank is a historian of sexuality and religion and a visiting  affiliate fellow at Princeton University's Center for Culture, Society  and Religion. He is the author of numerous academic articles on the histories of sexuality, gender and religion (which have appeared in venues like the Journal of the History of Sexuality, American Jewish History, and Gender and History) and public facing scholarship (with bylines in publications including The Washington Post, Time, Jezebel and Slate). He is co-editor of Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20th Century United States (UNC Press: 2018). Frank is currently at work on a manuscript called A Sacred Choice: Liberal Religion and the Struggle for Abortion Before Roe v Wade (forthcoming UNC Press). You can listen to his podcast Sexing History, which explores how the history of sexuality shapes our present, wherever you stream your shows.