In a recent op-ed for Time Magazine, Baptist pastor Reverend Lauren Jones Mayfield made a bold claim, saying, “I can’t do my job as a pastor with abortion laws like Texas’ S.B. 8 in place.” Mayfield is referencing the Texas Heartbeat Act, which restricts abortion after a preborn child’s heartbeat is detected.
Mayfield wrote of recently joining Vice President Kamala Harris at a roundtable discussion:
I was grateful for the opportunity to represent the tens of thousands of clergy around the country who strongly support access to reproductive health care—including abortion access—as a moral issue and a calling supported by our faith’s first teaching to do no harm and love our neighbors.
wanted the Vice President to understand how a law like Texas’s radical Senate Bill 8–which bans most abortions after around six weeks and empowers private citizens to sue anyone who helps a pregnant person get an abortion after that period–might make my job more difficult in Kentucky.
The fact that Rev. Mayfield thinks that abortion restrictions make her job as a Christian pastor more difficult is problematic.
In claiming that her faith’s first teaching is to do no harm, Mayfield is ignoring the fact that there is immeasurable harm done through abortion — the harm of taking an innocent human life. Abortion is a traumatic procedure that often involves ripping the preborn child apart limb by limb or starving her within the womb. There is nothing loving about it.
Of the Texas law, Mayfield says that “we certainly should never pass laws that prevent us from showing love and care to our neighbors.” But both a mother and her child are our neighbors deserving of love and care, as Scripture makes clear that God sees the preborn as human beings. It is unclear why Rev. Mayfield thinks she cannot show love and care without promoting abortion. In fact, abortion is never something that a Christian pastor should be advocating for their congregants. It is in direct violation of the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. Furthermore, post-abortive women are increasingly opening up about the trauma and regret they experience as a result of abortion. Counseling a woman to commit abortion is neither loving nor caring.
According to the bio attached with her editorial, Mayfield is a pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the vice-chair of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Clergy Advocacy Board. As Live Action News has previously discussed, this clergy advocacy board is a panel of pro-abortion clergy members Planned Parenthood uses as a marketing ploy to legitimize its pro-abortion and pro-population control agenda. If a panel of religious leaders agrees that abortion is a necessary right, then Planned Parenthood believes that congregants will follow. However, one thing is clear — abortion is the murder of a preborn child, made in the image and likeness of God. Just because a member of the clergy chooses to ignore this truth does not make it morally or ethically right to take another life.
It’s unfortunate that Mayfield is using her platform as a pastor to promote abortion instead of real assistance for pregnant women and new families. Offering support, not advocating death, is the loving way to help pregnant women.
“Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!
