While many conservative White evangelicals rejoiced after the draft opinion was revealed, the reception in Black churches has often been more complicated. Some leaders of Black churches say they can’t help viewing the debate through a racial lens.
, an associate professor of Africana Studies and Religious Studies at Georgia State University, who is examining the intersection of abortion and faith, has interviewed dozens of Black women in North Carolina who have had abortions. Most reported that their pastors had never addressed the issue, she says. They knew God loved them, she says, but also “they knew what they did was a sin. … God would not be pleased with it.
Roberts Henley says her approach to counseling women on abortion reflects her own evolution on the issue. She remembers one pregnant 14-year-old girl who wanted to have an abortion but whose family persuaded her against it by citing the Bible. The promised family help came less often than she expected, causing further stress and limitations to her young adulthood with motherhood as her new focal point. Roberts Henley says she stayed neutral when counseling the teenager but watched her struggle afterward.
“I grew up in the Black church, and we were always taught that murder is a sin, period. For a long time, I viewed it specifically as that,” she says. But as she grew up, “I realized that people have to make a choice that’s best for their life dependent upon what the situation and scenario is. That is how I became more open to people having the right to choose for themselves.”Roe v.
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