B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 7 , 2022
RELIGIONmother can say, ‘I choose life,’ ” he
said. “There’s a unique role that
churches can play in this.”
Richard Land, a longtime
evangelical ethicist and former
head of the ERLC, said he was
ecstatic to hear the news that Roe
may be overturned.
“I have been working on this
since 1973,” he said.
Land agrees more work will be
needed at the state level. He also
said both churches and the feder-
al government should do more to
support families — extending the
child tax credit and offering in-
creased deductions for depend-
ents.
“The most important thing a
citizen can do is create a stable
family,” he said. “We should do
everything we can as a society to
do that.”
The Rev. Angela Williams, lead
organizer for the Spiritual Alli-
ance of Communities for Repro-
ductive Dignity (SACReD), said
religious organizations have a
much more expansive role to play
than supporting legislation. The
Arkansas Presbyterian pastor
said religious people have helped
to create a stigma around “our
sexualities and reproductive
lives.” She sees it as her duty to
“undo some of the harm that is
done in the name of my religion,”
and she wants others to take
action as well.
SACReD recently launched a
training program that allows
houses of worship to receive a
designation from the group that
shows the congregation affirms
that “reproduction is a sacred
responsibility, and prayerful deci-
sions to have children, to not have
children, or to end a pregnancy
can be equally moral.”
Houses of faith would provide
pastoral care, counseling those
who have given birth or had an
abortion and helping them with
meals. Congregations would also
commit to being politically in-
volved in reproductive rights ef-
forts.
Williams said SACReD has
worked with clergy and others
from more than 30 religious tra-
ditions and denominations in
both blue and red states across
the country in these practices.
This includes many who are Uni-
tarian Universalist, rabbis, Mus-
lim leaders, Buddhist or Hindu,
as well as those who are Presby-
terian, Methodist, Episcopalian
or Catholic.
“It is the work of all communi-
ties, but in particular Christian
communities, to tackle some of
the harm that is done in the name
of Christianity,” Williams said.
— Religion News ServiceCarolyn Davis, a D.C.-based
faith advocacy strategist working
on reproductive health, said ac-
tivists are also working with state
legislators to protect access to
abortion.
Most Americans — and many
religious people — support keep-
ing abortion legal, but few legisla-
tors seem to be aware of the fact,
Davis said.
She pointed to data from the
Public Religion Research Insti-
tute (PRRI), showing that nearly
two-thirds of Americans say
abortion should be legal. That
includes 59 percent of Catholics,
70 percent of mainline Protes-
tants, 59 percent of White Catho-
lics, 57 percent of Hispanic Cath-
olics and 80 percent of Americans
from non-Christian religions.
Only 30 percent of White evan-
gelicals say abortion should be
legal.
According to March PRRI data,
28 percent of Americans say
abortion should be legal in all
circumstances. Only 9 percent
say abortion should be illegal in
all circumstances, down from
15 percent in 2018.
Davis sees abortion in the con-
text of growing financial inequal-
ity in the United States, where she
says many pregnant people feel
they do not have enough support
or resources to support a child.
“What does it mean to make sure
everyone can be healthy and take
care of their families in the way
that they need to?”
On the other side of the debate,
religious leaders have expressed
cautious optimism that the draft
opinion spells the end of Roe. But
Brent Leatherwood, interim
president of the Southern Baptist
Convention’s Ethics and Reli-
gious Liberty Commission
(ERLC), said that even if Roe is
overturned, there is still more
work to be done.
Leatherwood said he would
like to see a “right to life” en-
shrined in federal law, something
he said the U.S. Constitution
would support. He also said op-
ponents of abortion will have to
turn their attention to state legis-
latures, where the battle over
abortion would be focused post-
Roe. While Bible Belt states
would probably ban abortion or
significantly restrict it, activists
elsewhere would push for more
incremental change in states
such as California and New York.
Leatherwood also pointed to
the larger issue of providing sup-
port for women and other indi-
viduals who are pregnant and
struggling. He said churches
need to step up and help. “We
need a model of support so that awas a lot of support for legal
abortion.”
But today proposed restric-
tions to abortion could punish
abortion providers, those who
have abortions and — in Texas
and other states where “copycat”
legislation similar to S.B. 8 is
being considered — even some-
one who accompanies a person to
an abortion appointment.
Last month, a 26-year-old Tex-
as woman was arrested and
charged with “the death of an
individual by self-induced abor-
tion.” Those charges were later
dropped after public outcry.
“It’s almost like the loss of any
pregnancy becomes suspicious
now, and I think that that’s a real
problem,” Zeh said.
Zeh would like to see pastors
who support abortion rights
push for the passage of what’s
known as the Women’s Health
Protection Act, a proposed feder-
al measure that would protect
abortion rights. She also said
those clergy should work harder
to make a connection between
faith and abortion rights and
reduce what she called the stigma
of abortion.
“Ultimately, this is about trust-
ing people who are pregnant who
need to make a reproductive deci-
sion, that they are allowed to
express their moral conscience
about what they should do with
their own bodies, rather than
legislating that on their behalf,”
she said.going to see the rise of progres-
sive faith communities around
this issue,” he said. “Not with the
goal of political power, per se, but
with the goal of helping real
people and real lives.”
The Rev. Amelia Fulbright,
pastor at the Congregational
Church of Austin, has provided
chaplaincy support for women
grappling with whether to con-
tinue with their pregnancies. She
said she fears the legal conse-
quences of doing so may be great-
er if Roe is overturned.
As a faith leader, Fulbright
said, her “role is always to help
the person get clear about what
the options are, and then to listen
to their own moral conscience.”
“That to me is like my moral
ethical imperative to do that,
regardless of what the law is,”
Fulbright said.
If Roe is overturned, said the
Rev. Katey Zeh, CEO of the Reli-
gious Coalition for Reproductive
Choice, it may lead to a reboot of
groups such as the Clergy Consul-
tation Service, begun by Chris-
tian and Jewish clergy in the late
1960s to help women find safe
abortions. The network was
made up of pastors in 38 states,
Zeh said, and helped as many as
half a million women.
Those clergy often had the
support of their churches and
denominations. “It was seen as a
public heath good — as people
were dying of unsafe abortions at
the time,” she said. “And thereger law, according to the Texas
Tribune, would make performing
abortion a felony and force the
Dallas clinic to close. “They’re
going to have to find us through
other channels,” Kanter said.
But Kanter said the clergy will
continue to help people get safe
and legal abortions in New Mexi-
co. “Nothing about this law
makes it illegal to help someone
get an abortion in another state,”
he said.
First Unitarian of Dallas has a
long history of making abortion
rights a priority. The church’s
Women’s Alliance was an early
supporter of Roe v. Wade, which
originated in the Texas court
system. Cecile Richards, later
president of the Planned Parent-
hood Federation of America, was
raised in the church, Kanter said.
“My faith as a Unitarian Uni-
versalist says that every person
has dignity and worth, and that
no one should be condemned for
their actions or relegated to not
being able to make decisions
about their bodily autonomy,”
said Kanter, who provides pasto-
ral care and private counseling to
women as they make decisions
about abortions.
If Roe is indeed overturned,
Kanter envisions an emerging
“progressive movement of repro-
ductive dignity,” which includes
religious people.
“We saw the rise of this issue in
evangelicalism with the goal of
gaining political power, and we’reBY BOB SMIETANA
AND ALEJANDRA MOLINAWhen the Rev. Kira Austin-
Young, an Episcopal priest in
Nashville heard that the Supreme
Court may overturn Roe v. Wade,
she began thinking about her
congregation. She also began do-
ing the math, figuring the time it
takes to drive to southern Illinois,
where abortion will probably re-
main legal if the landmark deci-
sion falls.
“As the pastor of a community,
that is what I am thinking about
— if someone in my congregation
is in need of an abortion, how do I
help them?” said Austin-Young,
priest-in-charge at St. Ann’s Epis-
copal Church.
For clergy who support abor-
tion rights in states like Tennes-
see, which has already passed a
“trigger law” that would make
having an abortion a felony if Roe
is overturned, the leak of Justice
Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s draft majori-
ty opinion is already putting their
religious convictions to the test.
While they want to respect state
law, they also say their faith
requires them to support access
to abortion.
“If 1 in 4 women have had an
abortion, then people who have
had abortions are in the pews on
Sunday mornings,” she said.
“How do we as pro-choice clergy
make sure people in need are
getting safe ones and not being
taken advantage of?”
In Texas, where a restrictive
abortion measure known as S.B. 8
has been in force since Septem-
ber, Rabbi Kelly Levy said she has
already been helping pregnant
people who are traveling out of
state for abortions after six weeks
of pregnancy, the limit imposed
by the state Senate bill that comes
before most people know they are
pregnant.
“For thousands of years, Jews
have supported medical access to
abortion for any individual who
finds themselves pregnant,” said
Levy, an associate rabbi at Con-
gregation Beth Israel in Austin.
“It is something our ancient text
requires. To take away this life-
saving medical procedure away
from individuals is going against
my religious freedom.”
Five years ago, the Rev. Daniel
Kanter, senior minister of First
Unitarian Church of Dallas,
founded a multifaith chaplaincy
group that serves the Southwest-
ern Women’s Surgery Center, a
Dallas abortion clinic. Since S.B.
8 passed, the group’s members
commonly accompany pregnant
people to get abortions in neigh-
boring New Mexico. Texas’s trig-
Possibility of Roe’s end is clergy’s call to actionSHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Abortion rights and antiabortion clergy members debate in Washington on Tuesday. Religious leaders
are grappling with the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that could overturn R oe v. Wade.biological father. He died when
she was 3, and her mother never
wanted to speak of him, because
his death was too painful.
Albert Belmont voluntarily en-
listed as a private in the Army
when he was 32, in 1944. He
arrived in Europe on Nov. 1, 1944,
and he was fatally shot within a
month, on Nov. 30.
Barbara Belmont said she visit-
ed her father’s grave at Lorraine
American Cemetery 30 years ago
when she was traveling for work,
and she remembers not seeing
many Stars of David among the
gravesites. She was busy raising
her two girls, so she never
thought to do anything about the
Latin cross above his grave.
During their recent Operation
Benjamin trip, some of the other
families said they shared Bel-
mont’s experience: No one in
their families would talk about
the soldiers who had died.
“Whenever the song ‘When
Johnny Comes Marching Home’
was played in grade school, I
would start crying,” Belmont said.
“I don’t think I understood why
this would happen.”
Belmont’s daughter Erin Mc-
Cahill said she watched as her
mother took a big breath and
remarked how it was probably the
last time she would see her fa-
ther’s grave. She said she and her
mother feel that his burial under
a cross wasn’t wrong, necessarily,
but that burying him under a Star
of David was closer to what was
right.
“For her, it’s less about how he
was under a cross for 70 years,”
said McCahill, who lives in
Bethesda, Md. “It’s about reflect-
ing what was closer to him.”
Operation Benjamin was creat-
ed after Jacob Schacter, an Ortho-
dox rabbi and professor at Yeshi-
va University, was leading a tour
BURIAL FROM B1 of a cemetery in Normandy,
France, in 2013. While there,
Schacter looked around and
thought the number of Stars of
David seemed low.
Shalom Lamm, the chief execu-
tive of Operation Benjamin, said
it estimates that about 2.6 percent
of U.S. casualties in World War II
were Jewish, and thus, there
should have been about 250 head-
stones with Stars of David at the
Normandy cemetery, not 149.
He said they picked a random
soldier who had been buried at
Normandy who had a Jewish-
sounding last name: Benjamin
Garadetsky. They dug into his
family’s history and found out he
was a Ukrainian immigrant who
grew up in the Bronx and led a
Jewish life. After two years of
work with the American Battle
Monuments Commission, the
U.S. government agency that
oversees foreign cemeteries for
soldiers who died in the two
world wars, Garadetsky’s head-
stone was changed to a Star of
David in 2018.
Ali Bettencourt, spokeswoman
for the commission, said that it
has a unique relationship with
Operation Benjamin, because
headstones are not changed of-
ten.
Bettencourt said that when the
military was creating the World
War cemeteries, the Latin cross
wasn’t necessarily chosen for reli-
gious reasons. It was intended,
she said, to be a symbol that
“someone died here for a reason.”
Soldiers who had been killed were
buried under a Latin cross by
default, but at the time, the Jew-
ish community asked the military
to bury Jewish soldiers under a
Star of David. However, there
were cases such as Albert Bel-
mont’s, in which soldiers wanted
to obscure their identity for safety
purposes, or sometimes there was
an administrative error, Betten-
court said.
“We really, truly want to get the
story right,” she said.
Now, Lamm said, Operation
Benjamin has a relationship with
the commission in which they
know what pieces of evidence
they need to confirm someone’s
Jewish identity — birth, census
and bar mitzvah records, among
others — and it takes about 30
days to get approval. He said the
group estimates there are about400 to 550 veterans who are in-
correctly buried under a Latin
cross. Thus far there have been 19
headstone changes, and correc-
tions for 27 more are in the works.
Some people ask why the bod-
ies aren’t moved to Israel, but
because the soldiers are part of a
national monument, their bodies
can’t be moved, Lamm said.
Barbara Belmont’s mother,
Ruth Bohm Belmont, met Albert
Belmont in the mid-1930s whenshe worked for him in his photog-
raphy studio in Youngstown,
Ohio. After they married, they
moved to Kansas City, Mo., where
they had Barbara’s older sister in
1937 and Barbara in 1941.
Ruth Bohm Belmont was a Re-
form Jew who would go to syna-
gogue on high holidays, but the
family wasn’t very observant.
Barbara Belmont considers her-
self Jewish and believes in a god
of some kind but doesn’t belongto any institution. She said she
was surprised when a rabbi from
St. Louis contacted her through a
request from Operation Benja-
min. The group finds the closest
relatives and often asks a rabbi to
reach out to them.
Belmont’s mother remarried
when she was 6, to a World War II
veteran, and she never talked
about her first husband with her
daughter. When Belmont was a
senior in high school, her grand-
mother sat her down to tell her
more about her father. She told
her he was a generous man, that if
he had a dime in his pocket, he
would give it to anyone. He gave
thousands to the Red Cross, she
said. They were going to talk more
about him, but she died shortly
after that initial conversation.
Belmont’s uncle gave her a clip-
ping from a newspaper in Syra-
cuse, N.Y., where his family was
from, that published an obituary
with the title “Pvt Albert Belmont,
Jewish Fund Donor, Is Killed in
Action.” The obituary focused on
his contributions to Jewish or-
ganizations, refugee efforts and
local charities.
The recent ceremony in France
for her father lasted only about 15
minutes, she said.
Masonry workers had dug
around the cross at his gravesite.
During the ceremony, the work-
ers took the cross and laid it down
next to the Star of David. Then
they picked up the Star of David
and put it where the cross had
been. Belmont spoke about her
father, and her daughters each
read a prayer. They said the kad-
dish, a Jewish prayer recited at
funerals.
“I haven’t felt like I’ve had
closure until now, that this has
been on a continuum,” Belmont
said. “I probably know a sufficient
amount of information where I
understand who this man was.
That makes me happy.”Operation Benjamin works with U.S. to correct headstones
ERIN MCCAHILL
Barbara Belmont touches the newly installed Star of David marker at the gravesite of her father, Albert
Belmont, a World War II soldier killed in France, a t Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold.