On abortion, "religious leaders should be asking for your forgiveness" -- not the other way around

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : "This wedding of Catholic identity with anti-abortion politics, it only happened in the last few decades," Manson said.
57% : The conversation especially among progressive Catholics has to move to a place where abortion is not intrinsic evil -- it can be a moral good, and it's a freedom that allows women and pregnant people access to other kinds of freedoms, political power, economic power.
52% : Rabbis for Repro exemplifies widespread support for abortion in religious Jewish communities, with over 1,000 Jewish clergy who "have pledged to teach and preach about reproductive health, rights and justice, and show up and do advocacy work," according to Ruttenberg.
47% : It's only because of the wealth and power of the Christian right wing, which is extremely "well-funded, even though it's a minority," Manson says, that abortion is understood as anti-religion, and religion as anti-abortion.
47% : "Two of the most important theologians in the church's history, Saint Thomas Aquinus and Augustine, both believe there were certain stages of fetal development where abortion should be fine, and had different standings about when a fetus got a soul," she said.
45% : Tohan recalls initially struggling to justify her decision internally, and knowing abortion was "frowned upon" in religious spaces, despite the lack of clear scripture on it.
45% : This action, of course, is just the latest of near daily political efforts to shape abortion policy around the religious views of some, to the extent that abortion and reproductive care are widely seen as at odds with Christianity and other religions.
44% : "That's part of the problem with the way abortion is being framed.
42% : Reproductive rights and justice advocates have long seen Hyde as an abortion ban for poor people, yet, for years, the ban was upheld by many politicians as a compromise -- abortion is still legal, they suggested, but through Hyde, we protect the delicate consciences of people of faith who don't have to pay for abortions.
41% : Different translations and word choices presented very different stories, that's now being used by some religious leaders to stigmatize abortion.
41% : Manson says the Bible and prominent theologians have demonstrated that abortion isn't as open-and-shut as today's religious right would have you think.
39% : At the time, Rusk was only 17 and wasn't too familiar with the complex politics of abortion within the church, within America, or even within Texas.
37% : Abortion was no big deal up until then.
36% : For as long as the religious right has mobilized against abortion, conservative politicians and religious leaders have constructed a narrative of people of faith overwhelming opposing abortion, and have asserted the Catholic Church and other religious institutions have always condemned abortion.
35% : "Up until school segregation they were like, 'Oh, abortion is an issue of personal choice,'" she said.
35% : Politicians and religious leaders have often tried to compromise, or present the image of compromising, around abortion, when in reality, there is no middle ground on whether pregnant people should be forced to give birth.
34% : Ruttenberg says the religious right "picked up" abortion solely for "craven political ambition and white supremacy."
28% : Then they started coming up with these 'proof texts' for why abortion was bad."

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