On Sunday, August 28th at 9:00 a.m., join us for “Post Roe v Wade: Conversation and Call to Action” – a forum sponsored by the All Saints Women’s Community focused on the current reproductive rights landscape and the rise of White Christian Nationalism and its impacts on religious freedom.

Participants will include Juliana Serrano, Vice President of Advocacy & Equity Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley; Dr. Laila A. Al Marayati, Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at Keck School of Medicine, USC; Dr. Katie Clark, Chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus Greater Pasadena Area; Franci Levine-Grater from Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center; Tricia Gray from Access Reproductive Justice and the Reverend Mark Chase, Associate Rector at All Saints. Tabling for GOTV (Get Out The Vote) efforts with supporting groups will include the above and Pasadena Chapter of the ACLU, League of Women Voters, Pasadena for Rent Control, All Saints Action Table and Peace & Justice Ministry.

In the ASC Forum, Sunday August 28th at 9:00 a.m. – in person or via live stream at https://allsaints-pas.org/live-stream/.

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All Saints Church: Proudly, Prayerfully, Pro-Choice … for 30 Years and Counting

On May 3, 2022, the Office Of Government Relations of The Episcopal Church released this statement on reports concerning Supreme Court case pertaining to abortion:

Since 1967, The Episcopal Church has maintained its “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions [about the termination of pregnancy] and to act upon them.” In light of the recent report about a pending decision in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, The Episcopal Church reaffirms our commitment to “equitable access to women’s health care, including women’s reproductive health care,” which we view as “an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.” The Office of Government Relations will continue to advocate at the federal level to protect reproductive rights.

(See “Prayerfully Pro-Choice: A Brief History of The Episcopal Church & All Saints, Pasadena”)

Read about Friday’s vigil in Pasadena Now here.

See more photos from Friday’s vigil by Luwin Kwan here.

All Saints Church, Pasadena, has been proudly and prayerfully pro-choice since 1989. Please read the article below, originally posted in 2019:

All Saints Church has been officially a “prayerfully pro-choice” parish since it first adopted this pro-choice position statement in 1989. The statement — reaffirmed in 2004 — includes this affirmation:

That a pregnant woman is the moral agent in the profound and personal decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy; and convinced that this belief is consistent with the Judeo-Christian understanding of God’s empowerment of each person with the freedom to make choices, and the responsibility for those choices.

That was thirty years ago. And this was yesterday … as dozens of All Saints members joined the thousands across the nation who showed up and stood up and spoke out against the rising tide of legislation dismantling the right to choose and limiting access to abortion in state after state.

Among the great cloud of witnesses was our rector emeritus George Regas, and his presence sent us to the archives to revisit the sermon he preached in October 1988 in advance of the 1989 position statement linked above.

You will want to read the whole sermon here … but to get you started, here are a couple of quotes:

The Supreme Court’s ruling on July 3rd is an attempt to force abortion policy out of the courts and into the political arena – into 50 state legislatures. Justice Scalia wrote that abortion is “a political issue” more than a legal one. So from now on state legislators will grapple with those ethical, medical, and legal complexities that even the Supreme Court couldn’t solve. Walter Dellinger, Professor of Law at Duke University, said, “Virtually all the power in legislatures is held by men who will never be affected by the restriction they impose.” Yet their conclusions will have a profound effect upon one of the most important and intimate decisions of a woman’s life.

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Some politicians speak eloquently of their concern for the innocent fetus, but it is the cruelest irony how so many of these anti-abortionists have no interest in the things that make that newborn child healthy and beautiful. It’s brutal to force a poor mother to have a child and then deny her healthy prenatal care. For many poor people in America, life begins at conception and ends at birth. If we are to reduce abortions, we must reaffirm by work and action the rights of the born.

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The Constitution guarantees a woman the right to exercise some control over her unique ability to bear children. The Supreme Court on July 3rd ruled that the right to decide belongs increasingly to politicians. On the steps of the Court, Faye Wattleton, national head of Planned Parenthood, asked rhetorically about these constitutional guarantees: “When did it become a political matter whether Americans have privacy? When did it become a political question whether women had reproduction rights? When did it become a political question whether poor people have the same access to the constitutional rights as the rest?” The answer to the “when” was easy: July 3, 1989. And yet, as Justice Robert Jackson once said, “The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of … officials and to establish them as legal principles. One’s right to life, liberty and property … depends on the outcome of no election.”

And then on May 8, 2022 All Saints’ Rector Mike Kinman offered context for the new banner on the All Saints lawn reading: “Abortion is Healthcare” with these words from the pulpit:

In 1989, a church proclaiming itself as pro-choice was courageous. And … it is 33 years later. And we have learned a lot since then … and perhaps remembered even more …

When that brief leaked, we knew there was something else we could do. And so, we contacted our dear friend and partner, Juliana Serrano, at Planned Parenthood of Pasadena Inc, which is on the front lines of this battle, and asked “what can we put on a banner that would most help for a church to say at this moment in time.” And Juliana said immediately: Abortion is healthcare … a simple, important truth that destigmatizes abortion and moves it from the shaming category of necessary evil to where it belongs as an essential option for reproductive health and human autonomy.

[And] if the state decides to build a 20 foot wall between a pregnant woman or trans man and the abortion health care they need, we will be there with a 21 foot ladder to go over it until our bulldozers can knock it down. (You can read the whole sermon here.)