Kelly Anne, a Christian ripe out of ministry school, was confronted face to face with the abortion question when her friend told her she was having an abortion.
“Abortion wasn't necessarily talked about as I was growing up, but it was definitely understood that abortion was wrong. Like, if you get pregnant, that's on you to figure it out. And I was told that Christians are great because they adopt kids out of the foster care system, and so, we're solving the problem basically. That was kind of how I understood it. But when I moved away to ministry school at 18, the Christian stance on abortion was the thing that didn't actually make sense. No one actually [could] give me a good argument as to why this [was] wrong. And I wasn't openly supportive of being pro-choice, but I wasn't openly supportive of the opposite, if that makes sense. So, it was actually when I was 22 and out of ministry school that I had a friend who got pregnant and had an abortion. And I remember her sitting there and telling me and the little piece of Christian in me that still existed was like, “Hey, there's actually nothing you can do for that baby. It's your job actually, to take care of your friend,” and I think it was that moment for me that made me realize I actually don't align with women being forced to be moms. Because life happens, birth control fails, people get assaulted, all those things. And from that moment on, I started to kind of learn a little bit more policy, a little bit more ethics, and things like that. But it was never really a big struggle for me for some reason. I feel like it is for a lot of people, and I think it's rightly so. It's a very heavy, weighty topic. And it’s complicated, it's not simple, but it started for me with a friend that needed one, and ever since it was just like, okay, I get this.”
To hear more from Kelly Anne, and the other Woman Beings, about abortion, listen to our episode on the overturning of Roe v. Wade here.