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RCRC expresses its beliefs through judiciary, legislative, and regulatory activism at the federal and state levels. In our congregations and communities, RCRC clergy also preach sermons, pray quietly with women making reproductive decisions, work for adequate education about sex and sexuality as a moral responsibility to our young people and welcome LGBTQ people into religious life.
Examples of RCRC's Advocacy Include:
Judicial activism
- Filing amicus briefs in key U.S. Supreme Court cases on abortion including the landmark 2016 case Whole Women’s Health vs. Hellerstedt.
- Rallying outside the Supreme Court at times of key decisions
- Raising our voices to oppose the confirmation of justices opposed to abortion rights such as Samuel Alito and John Roberts
Federal activism
- Endorsing a version of the Affordable Care Act including contraception with no co-pays
- Supporting the successful passage of the Violence Against Women Act
- Assuring access to abortion care for women in the military
- Petitioning U.S. Health and Human Services to stop blocking abortion access for unaccompanied teenage immigrants
State activism
Helping to:
- Prevent the enactment of abortion bans twice in South Dakota
- Defeat a ballot measure banning abortions after 20 weeks in New Mexico
- Crush a Florida bill that attempted to prevent the use of taxpayer dollars to support abortion care
- Defeat MIssissippi’s “personhood” amendment that would have granted equal legal status to fertilized eggs and persons
- Oppose Oklahoma’s law permitting religious exemptions that deny adoption to LGBTQ families
Education, prayer, preaching and pastoral care
- Giving sermons about the moral agency of women to make decisions about their lives
- Praying quietly with women as they make important and very personal decisions
- Calling for and introducing adequate education about sex and sexuality as part of our moral responsibility to our young people
- Overcoming the stigma of sex and sexuality in a religion by welcoming LBGTQ people into religious life
Grassroots work of state-based affiliate groups
- Hospitality for women traveling to obtain abortion care
- Escorting women entering abortion clinics that are picketed by abortion foes
- Raising money to help women who cannot afford abortion care
- Lobbying in Indiana’s legislature against a ban on abortion in cases of fetal anomalies such as Down Syndrome
- With allies, successfully pressuring an Ohio hospital to sign an agreement with a local abortion clinic, keeping it open for women in Ohio and Indiana
- Showing resistance in the Ohio legislature by joining in a silent handmaids demonstration
- Working with allies to advocate for a security zone around Kentucky’s sole abortion clinic
- Lobbying state legislators in Colorado, New Mexico and other states on reproductive health, rights and justice issues