Silencing Women With Shame: The Supposed Sin of Pregnancy

I cannot stay silent or be a neutral observer in the face of abuse, hate, oppression, and injustice. I manage a maternity home for pregnant and homeless women. The other day a comment was made on our posts that “those women need to keep their legs close.” I’ve since deleted the comment, but I cannot ignore the bitterness of those words. I’ve gotten better at choosing my battles, this one, however, called out to me to take my place to protect and defend.

How cowardly and hateful are those armed with a keyboard and a cold heart who spew hate from behind a screen? Is there evidence that shaming and casting harsh criticism at silent sufferers is more effective than nurturing love? Why do we rush to rescue the babies of those who should have kept their legs closed but communicated a message of unworthiness to their mothers? How many women have had their legs forced open against their will? Let’s talk about those women who hurt women even when their legs are closed.

How many of those girls and boys have become adults and have had to carry the burden of shame and trauma from being preyed upon? How have we held those who pleasured themselves on their innocence accountable? Yet in the name of advocacy, we shame them with bitter words spoken with the malicious intent to silence and victimize those brave enough to seek help. Words that shame and discredit their humanity. Words that we, ourselves may have heard and now repeat, “You should have kept their legs closed.”

How many of you have trusted your children to adults who were supposed to protect them, but instead, those same individuals were the ones who forced their legs open? Maybe those same individuals have also forced yours open. How many times have these men and women tried to tell their stories but were not believed? How many screams and cries for help have gone unheard and unanswered because they were expressed in unexpected ways? How many of you have chosen to believe and forgive abusive pastors, partners, or bosses over the safety of your children? How many of these women were trafficked by their own parents? Yet, here we are as cowardly keyboard warriors, hiding behind a virtual wall of protection, masquerading as God’s voice of the unborn, casting judgement upon the innocent and the abused.

We have bought into accepting judgement of others as a deterrent or cover-up for our own failures. We have accepted a false sense of security in promise rings for fear of facing the fact that we may have opened our own legs outside of marriage, tarnishing the purity and modesty promise. We hold our children and our friend’s children to a standard that many of us could not keep. Yet, here we are, some of us parents. Are we not also worthy of love and forgiveness? Then why don’t we start from what we’ve learned that works: love, information, truth, and a readiness to forgive? Should we be shamed for the hard lessons of our youth? Should we walk around with a scarlet letter of our past mistakes? How have we become a nation of little judgemental gods who make no room for grace, forgiveness, and love?

Why should mothers, some who were born into poverty, crisis, chaos, and abuse, who are making efforts to try to learn new skills and tools of life be shamed with bitter judgement? What if a woman decides to open her legs voluntarily and does so repeatedly? Does her life cease to have value? What if she terminates? Is she no longer deserving of forgiveness? What if she’s caught in adultery? Is she disqualified from receiving love? Should she live in guilt and constant shame of the life she conceived? What if she led a promiscuous life? Is she less worthy of love? Have you listened to her story? Have you sat with her? Have you heard her pain? Or is her pain too much like yours? Is it too much of a reminder that shame is used to silence?

Who has given you the authority to apply judgement that disqualifies another from experiencing the love of God? No human holds that authority. We have been called to love. In a time when we have learned that the countless women who were sent to grandma’s house for nine months weren’t on vacation but a sentence. A sentence that ended with either termination or giving away of a life that would have been too shameful for the family’s name. A sentence for some that has caused irreparable mental and emotional damage. A sentence that has produced enough evidence to be a catalyst for change to help others in similar situations instead of condemning them. This a sentence that women often take to the grave because of shame from society, the church, family, self, and other women, particularly older Christian women.

To the millions of people suffering from the guilt and shame of opening your legs, you are worthy. Stand up, speak out, tell your story, and share your truth. You were not meant to live in the shadows or under the weight of someone’s judgement. To the countless women and men who have suffered and endured pacifying your parent’s ego to be a good boy or good girl, free yourselves. Your parents are adults. Let them work out their own mistakes. To the women and men who have been held in bondage by manipulation and the incorrect wielding of scripture and holiness, God forgives. His mercies are true, and He doesn’t require you to receive man’s approval to experience His love and grace.

Some platforms and movements may rush to save your babies from termination, all while leaving you unattended. Don’t despair; you have not been abandoned by God. There are people waiting to meet you, to love you well, and to help you heal. There are many who have hidden their scars well. Don’t be intimidated by their words or bitterness. Some are masking their pain with fancy cars, clothes, jobs, neighborhoods, gated communities, and mega-churches because they are afraid.

It’s time to stop shaming. It’s time to start rebuilding ourselves and each other to begin the healing process. Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, writes, “We have all been broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness, even if our brokenness is not equivalent. Our shared brokenness connects us. Our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurture and sustain our capacity for compassion. We have a choice.

We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. So many of us have become afraid and angry, fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak — not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken.

We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken — walking away from them or hiding them from sight — only ensures that they remain broken, and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: