Each year since 1973, abortion rights activists have gathered on This weekend- on this day- January 22 for Roe v. Wade Day to celebrate the Supreme Court decision that granted a constitutional right to abortion.

But now, 50 years after the decision, Roe v. Wade Day will be different: today marks the first anniversary of Roe since the ruling was overturned.

And so on this day and all the days moving forward let us proclaim and vigorously defend these rights:

• People have a right to have children and to choose when.
• People have a right not to have children.
• People have a right to raise their children in safe and healthy environments.
• People have a right to health and self-determination regarding their bodies and sexuality, free from oppression and shame.

Whatever choices we might each make for our own bodies… our own lives…the freedom to chart the course of our own reproductive life is sacred and is an essential human right.

Together let us keep fighting to push the government back out of the private lives of every woman, and every person in our country and empower and resource each one’s right to their own private and personal choices of both when to conceive and when to carry a pregnancy to full term.

Reproductive rights Are human rights!

May the day dawn SOON in our life time that no one any where will ever again be terrorized by lack of choice and power over their own reproductive health in their own precious life.

May it be so!

Rev KB