By Bob Allen
Liberal clergy rallied Oct. 1 in Memphis, Tenn., to add a dissenting voice to Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist and other faith leaders seeking passage of an amendment to the Tennessee constitution giving lawmakers more power to curb abortion rights.
“People have been misled by this amendment,” Senior Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel told Fox 13 station WHBQ in Memphis. It’s not about whether you’re for or against abortions. It’s about who decides that question. Government, or your faith? Politicians or doctors? And this well-funded amendment is very deceptive.”
Greenstein joined more than two dozen clergy at a Vote No on 1 Tennessee event billed “Vote No on 1: The Clergy Perspective,” at Evergreen Presbyterian Church in Memphis. The group opposes Amendment 1, a ballot initiative up for vote Nov. 7, to allow legislators to enact laws restricting abortion not protected by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Supporters of the amendment, including leaders of the Tennessee Baptist Convention and Southern Baptist Convention ethics czar Russell Moore, say abortion rights in the Tennessee constitution broader than those in the federal Constitution are turning the Volunteer State into the “abortion capital of the South,” with one in four abortions performed in abortion clinics involving women from out of state.
Countering that position, Gina Stewart, senior pastor of Christ Missionary Baptist Church; Earle Fisher, senior pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Whitehaven; Eugene Gibson, senior pastor of the Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church; and John Gilmore, pastor of New Hope Institutional Baptist Church, joined Episcopal, Methodist Presbyterian, Unitarian-Universalist, United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) clergy in labeling Amendment 1 “a flawed and dangerous initiative.”
The Vote No on 1 website warns passage of the amendment “would allow government interference in our personal, private medical decisions” and “could even ban abortion without exceptions for rape, incest or health of the woman.”
“You don’t have to be pro-choice to agree that Amendment 1 goes too far,” opponents say.
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