Editor's Note: Since Libby wrote this piece last week, following the mass murders in Buffalo, we have been horrified to learn of more horrific mass murders at Robb Elem
entary School in Uvalde, Texas.  When will people of faith move beyond "thoughts and prayers" to take substantive action?
​

by Elizabeth Sholes, Director Emerita Public Policy

The mass murder of 10 Black Americans Saturday May 14 was sickening to all people of conscience. The shooter left massive evidence of his deliberate and calculated intent in his car and on his electronic gear. This was not an act of a mentally-ill person but one who carefully and deliberately planned the attack to get rid of as many Black people as possible.
 
We by now have read that he embraced the “replacement theory” propagated by extremists. It is the fear, that has been around since at least the 1960s, that the white race (as if it’s one solid block of people) is being replaced by people of color, especially immigrants.  Why that led the shooter to target Black Americans is unclear, but extremism is rarely rational. 
 
The shooting at a supermarket, TOPS, on the East Side has more than general horror for me. I lived in Buffalo for many years and was the originator of an effort to get a community-owned supermarket into that neighborhood.  “Our Market” was its name.  It did not succeed for a lot of reasons, the TOPS finally came to this food desert area. 
 
I’m glad of that, but the effort to build a community owned store was wonderful; it put me in contact with many community members and especially with the Masden District then-Council Member, David Collins who was a man of extraordinary vision and concern for his constituents.  He had a civil rights legacy second to few, and his actions were always principled and concerned for people and their needs.
 
Thanks to David’s friendship, I was involved in his campaigns, his activism for social justice, and through him met other good people, some of whom became friends. For years they were my “warmth of other suns”, anchors in my city to what was good, righteous, just, and downright fun.  I associate all we did as passionate justice coupled with raucous laughter, hard work followed by dancing, unending campaigning and delicious food.  It just doesn’t get better than that.
 
To have this area the target of such hate is incomprehensible. To have these people, these good, decent, hard-working, and loving people, cut down so disgustingly is almost more than I can bear.
 
How do we end these horrors?  For those of us who are white, where is our voice in all this?  How do our congregations and our voices matter?  
 
When do we make manifest that “All God’s Children” does not have qualifiers?  When we hear a congressional representative say children refugees at the border don’t deserve infant formula, when we read of hate crimes on the rise against everyone but especially Asian Americans blamed for COVID, when we see LGBTQ people targeted for simply being who they are, we see that too many professed Christians have “exception clauses” in their hearts.  When people die for the color of their skin, we have well and truly lost our way. 
 
It is up to us. We have to bear witness against hate.. We cannot be silent.  These are not political issues – these are the most profound values of faith and democracy. It takes courage, no doubt about it, but we will not honor either our faith or our nation is we are silent.  Silence is assent. And it is a moral cowardice we can no longer accept.
 
We have to challenge bias, prejudice, hate rhetoric, and acts of violence. We have to call out our elected officials who engage in such disgusting lies. We need to write to them, we need to challenge the media both locally and nationally to stop promoting “replacement theory” or any other biased and inhumane propaganda that serves to dehumanize anyone.
 
When Asian women were shot to death in Atlanta, the chief of police said the shooter was “having a bad day”.  A bad DAY?  The public outcry led to an apology from the chief and a renewed effort to investigate the hate-based murders.  
 
Here in Sacramento at a public meeting a city council member blamed the meth epidemic on Latin American immigrants. That is absolutely not true; meth is a local “cottage industry” in white communities around the Bay Area per the Department of Justice. I called him out on it for inflaming both anti-immigrant and anti-homeless views here in Sacramento. 
 
Word got back to me that he hates me. Fine. Oddly, I can live with that. Who would I be if that had gone unchallenged?  He can hate me. I bet he never says that again.
 
If we are going to sit in our pews on Sunday, we have to live the Word the remainder of the week. No one will stop this hate but us. We must do it with courage and without returning the hate.  But we must do it. 
 
We can be silent no more.

​Are we losing our democracy?  Only if we let it happen. Events of the past weeks are a call to action, to regrouping and recommitment to our founding principles.  Here is what we are seeing.
 
The Supreme Court’s ruling that was leaked showing the majority may overturn Roe v Wade was stunning for several reasons. Since it was settled law for 49 years, it seems inconceivable it could be removed. Second, the arguments contained in the leaked documents placed this decision on very weak foundations that are deeply troubling.
 
The issue of abortion is very personal. To that end, Roe had appealed to “common and customary” understandings about reproduction that existed in our nation’s Common Law history and principles that the first immigrants to this new world carried into the new settlements.

Common Law evolved over centuries with deep roots in Biblical principles back to the earliest days of England. Drawing on scripture, Common Law departed from Catholic theology by accepting that life begins not at conception but “first breath”. (see for example, Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37: 5-6).  First breath was thus the start of life. Prior to that, it is potential life.
 
Scripture put the woman over the fetus in terms of societal values.  In Exodus 21:22 it states that if someone causes a woman to miscarry, he is fined.  If he causes her death, he is put to death.  The Common Law carried the primacy of the mother into English societal values by valuing the mother above the fetus until “quickening” or, essentially, viability outside the womb. At that point mother and future child are equal in the eyes of society.
 
Abortion was legal and available in the colonies and new nation until the 1860s. There are many reasons why it became illegal, but it cannot be said that it was ever criminalized in the US prior to that period. It was part of American law and an accepted practice until then. This is important because assertions it has always been illegal are not accurate.
 
In 1973, the Supreme Court, resting on centuries of English Common Law, wrote the Roe decision in keeping with the legal differentiation of before and after “quickening”. The decision follows Common Law that in its turn had followed Scripture.
 
The arguments against Roe are frightening above and beyond the destruction of a woman’s rights.  Justice Samuel Alito asserts that abortion was always criminalized prior to 1973 and that Roe rested on no legal principles.  That is simply not true.  To support his own argument, Alito points to the 17th C. Barrister and legal scholar, Matthew Hale whose diatribe against abortion he cites and upon which Alito rests his opposition today.  The problem is, it was a personal opinion, not a legal principle. Hale was at odds with the law and society of his time, but his objections never found their way into the law. Thus it is not a legal precedent for Alito at all.  Roe rests on Common Law. Alito’s opinion today does not.
 
The five conservative justices who look prepared to overturn Roe are part of the Federalist Society that has offered many oppositional arguments against Common Law per se. Common Law allows ordinary people the right to challenge laws and facts through the courts. One can argue that it is part of the reason England and her colonies have far fewer revolutions – if you can make changes through the law without appealing to the Legislature, you as a citizen have effectiveness and agency without needing to overthrow your government.  The Federalists want the United States to be more like France and Germany where the Legislature is everything and no challenges can be made.
 
To meet this argument, we are now going to be called on to codify Roe in legislation. No one should have to, but if we are to preserve the principles of Common Law that have served us well, that will become a new standard with this court.
 
So what has to happen is to shape the legislatures – state and federal – to assure we can pass bills that uphold what we, the people, desire. It ought to be an unnecessary step, but it no longer can be avoided.  We must vote into office people who both uphold our immediate goals and who accept the operation and importance of our legal system as a safety valve for right of access to justice.
 
Voting, therefore, becomes far more urgent than ever. Roe is the first but will not be the last challenge to both the specific concerns – abortion, marriage equality, interracial marriage, and even access to voting – and to the survival of Common Law and our access to courts.  If our courts are not living, breathing bodies for change, we are surely going to be less free.    VOTE as if your life depends on it!

​Elizabeth Sholes
Public Policy Advocate
California Council of Churches/IMPACT