Theology in the Raw - Resembling Jesus in the Abortion Debates: Angela Weszely

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Exiles in Babylon Conference! Join us in Minneapolis, April 30-May 2, 2026. Register hereAngela Weszely, Founder & CEO of “Pro Grace”—an organization that seeks to be is a trusted guide for Christians seeking to resemble Jesus in the abortion conversation. Angela is the author of the recently released book Becoming ProGrace: Expanding the Abortion Conversation Beyond Life Versus Choice. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I am focused on the morality of the church. I want the church to look like Jesus, to look exactly how he looks in the scriptures when he encounters human suffering. I don't believe we have a consistent Christian witness in the abortion conversation that looks enough like Jesus because we've been bound up by this political rhetoric. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Arama. Guest today is Angela Wesley, who is the founder and CEO of Pro Grace, an organization that seeks to be. be a trusted guide for Christians seeking to resemble Jesus in the abortion conversation. Angela is also the author of the recently released book, Becoming Pro Grace, expanding the abortion conversation beyond life versus choice. All right, folks, you ready for a engaging

and provocative discussion. I loved how Angela engages. She's not afraid to push back, and neither am I. We had a really good, healthy, honest, uh, dialogue. about this really controversial topic. And I just, I love, love, love, love how she points us back to Jesus and the church. How can the church be the church in this really important conversation? Don't forget to register for the exiles in Babylon conference by heading over to the theology in raw.com. Space is filling up. It's just a couple months away. Again, April 30th to May 2nd, we're talking, I can't believe this, but a year ago we planned to

conference and one of the sessions we planned, we're like, hey, let's talk about immigration and let's do it in Minneapolis. And anyway, here we are. We're going to be talking about immigration and the gospel in the heart of Minneapolis with everything going on. And we're also talking about AI and the church. We're talking about mental health in the gospel. We're talking about Christians in war. And we're talking about the reliability of the Bible. I can't wait for the conference. I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a special time talk about some very, very serious issues. So again, Theology and the raw.com.

Okay, please welcome to the show for the first time. The one and only, Angela, Angela, I am so excited to talk to you. We've been trying to set this up for a long time. I think it was last summer in 2025 when we first connected. And now you have a book coming out, which I'm excited to talk about.

But I would first love to hear your story in terms of how and why, you got interested in this topic of, I mean, for lack of our terms, you know, abortion or pro life, poor choice, and that whole, you know, very volatile space. Why would you wish this upon yourself to dive into some of the most heated, I'm sure, conversations? Yeah. Yes. Well, it's great to meet you, Preston. It's great to be here. I love we have so much time and we can really go deep into this. And you may relate to this in your story. I didn't intentionally choose to do what I'm doing. So just really quickly, I lead pro grace, which our vision is that Christians would more

closely resemble Jesus than a political party in the abortion conversation. Let's just close in prayer. Let's let people meditate on that for an hour. I thought I'd start with that because people get really nervous when they hear someone's going to come on and talk about abortions. So I just want to get out there. That's our vision. And so what we do is help Christians really disrupt that pro-life, pro-choice paradigm, exactly what you said, with a new way to think and talk and engage. So I did not plan for this. And I consider myself more of a peacemaker and a bridge builder than controversial. So what happened for me is just I grew up incredibly legalistic. So my church was, you can lose your salvation pretty easily, I thought,

as a middle schooler and a high schooler, that I lost my salvation a couple times. So that creates a framework of God and how he relates to us, right, that impacted me until I learned about grace. And so I've had a couple what I call grace awakenings in my life, which means that I am now just a grace. I was going to say junkie. That's a terrible word. I'm not going to say that. Just, ah, grace. I am all about grace. Yeah, yeah. Actually, all those terms, yeah, okay.

I get it. You understand. Because it completely changed my relationship with God. So I spent some time in ministry and we left that we were with like a organization for almost nine years. But I was incredibly legalistic. So we left that. Just did some jobs in the marketplace. And when I wanted to go back into ministry, I found an organization in downtown Chicago that said,

we help women facing unintended pregnancy from a Christian perspective. And I was like, my experience was fundraising. I was like, I could be director of development. This sounds non-controversial. This sounds non-political. I had had no involvement in the pro-life pro-choice debate because of all the noise around it. But when I entered this job or started working there immediately, I started getting niggles, I called them, or tension. And ultimately, that tension was around how we were in terms.

engaging women and how that was both message to the women, how it was messaged to our supporters and the churches we are partnering with, and then how people in my community perceived that. And it was an entire new world that I wasn't aware of that when I would say Christian, unintended pregnancy, serving women, it was not a beautiful, holistic picture. imagining. Actually, some people they were imagining destructive. So I started hearing all of the thoughts out there about how Christians are engaging in this issue while I was also observing how we did interact with women and how we did message along political lines, right? And some of that. So this was just an unintentional by me journey, but I think God had his hand in it of just

coming in cold turkey not knowing anything about it and just experiencing all the tension, all the challenging my own assumptions, everything I had been taught to think about abortion growing up and really go on a journey with God through a lot of conversations with others and through a lot of research on the experience of abortion unintended pregnancy to eventually land at the place where I was like, I really think the answer is the church looking more like Jesus. And we can talk in more detail. So I did that work at the pregnancy organization for 10 years,

and we were piloting with local Chicago churches, what would become the Pro Grace curriculum. And my passion for that just grew. So now I've been with Pro Grace almost 10 years as well. So it's almost 20 years of this vocational calling. What is the purpose mission focus of Progress? Yeah. It really is to help Christians have an approach or response to a

that is rooted in Jesus, that's rooted in his heart for humanity, and is free from political rhetoric. Because I think if, I believe if we do that, we can unite across denominational lines. We can unite across political lines because, really, as believers, we have more shared values and more in common with each other, or we should with each other, than we do with the extremes on either political party. So I'm working and engaging with Christians who are pro-life or pro-choice

because there is no other option, but they don't sense that that political framing really matches their faith view of this, how Jesus interacted with people when he was here. And so that's why they're drawn to pro-grace and why we work across all these lines to say, hey, we have so many shared Christian values that if we came together and,

focused on those, I mean, ultimately Preston, that's what's going to bring the most change in the world. If I didn't think that, I wouldn't be doing this work for 20 years. So it's this idea of uniting believers around our shared values and not defaulting to only having an approach to this incredibly important issue that's rooted in rhetoric, anger, and simply passing laws or not passing laws. Okay, good. Oh, wow. All right. Does Does pro grace have like a position on abortion? Like is that, do you see it as, yeah, do you have a position on it? Yeah. So we have a framing that we use that we can walk through and two points of theology and two points of methodology that we use. And the overarching piece of this really is Jesus as our model. So the first one is our first theological core is equal value, equal dignity.

So that speaks to the Amago Day in every person and how God calls us to work for all people. So right there, you can start to see the breakdown. If we're just sitting in political framing, that framing can feel like it pits one against the other. The other piece of progress because of my experience in direct service is I ask people to sit with the mystery of God's design of pregnancy. Because he didn't have to create life this way. I believe every Christian agrees God creates all life. So let's sit with that for a minute. Why did he choose pregnancy?

Why are there two people intertwined for nine months? Anything you do to one impacts the other, right? You can't try to bypass one and help the other. It's never going to work per God's design. So coming together with that first theological commitment, whether Christians feel that they need to vote their conscience, tipping over to the pro-life or pro-choice side, we can still agree on this value for all people. So that's the first place of theology. And I'll stop and see if you have any questions.

No, no. I think I'm, yeah, keep going. I'll probably have questions, by the way. I want to hear the whole package. Okay, great. So then the next one is grace, obviously, the name pro-grace and just what I said, which really was taught, you know, we can see pieces of grace definitely in the Old Testament, but really burst on the scene with Jesus. So in John 1, it says the law came through Moses, grace and truth together came through Jesus. So he really embodies grace. And one of the main scriptures we use early in our course that people go through and I talk about in the book is John 8, verses 1 through 11, because it really is the contrast of law versus grace in this conversation.

Keeping in mind that we're not just talking about the woman in this story, we're talking about the crowd, We're talking about the religious leaders, and we're really looking at Jesus as our model. So when we break down that story, we see the religious leaders dragging a woman in front of Jesus. It's a huge crowd saying, we caught this woman in the act of adultery. The scripture uses a word that means in the act. So it's very clear. In the law, in the Bible, Moses told us to stone such women, now what do you say? And it says they were using this as a trap.

They were trying to entrap him. So that shows the problem that I actually see mirrored in a lot of abortion conversations. And we can break this down too. But the answer is found later in Jesus. But the problem is, you know, from what I just said, what are some things that stand out to you about the first part of that story? What stands out when you were hearing it? Well, for one, I mean, if she's engaging in the act of adultery, in the act. She's not the only one involved. Why is she the one that's dragged away? Like,

where's the man? Thank you. Yes, that's a huge point. And you can see already the correlations to the abortion conversation. I will talk later when we get to the ethics piece, but it's not just the man. It's everything else surrounding an abortion decision. Why is it all on the woman isolated when there's so many things happening in culture and so many stories, as well as the men. This is something we accept as normal. And both political sides accept this as normal. That it's all about this one woman at this, and possibly a partner, but the one woman at this time making a decision all alone, you know, and that is actually not what's going on and causes part of the problem. So that is one piece of that. The second piece is with that, I think they might have done

that on purpose because they actually misquoted the scripture. Do you know what the scripture says in the old testament. You got me. No, I don't. I don't have a... Yeah. Well, it's only there twice, but they blatantly omitted that it says the man and the woman should be stoned. So they literally, to the son of God, misquote the law, right? And think they're going to get away with it. And I just, again, want to stop here and say, scripture, scriptural principles, can be weaponized. They can be misquoted. They can be misapplied. We see that. So again, I have an incredibly high view of Scripture being the Word of God. Let's remember that the Word of God shows us who God is. So if we're acting in any way that doesn't look like Jesus, when we say we're

holding to the Word. So those are the two pieces of what happens when grace is not present, right, when the law. And there's a lot more we can say. But the answer comes in Jesus, right? So what does he do next? Do you know the story what he does after this? I mean, it's a pretty like, boom, they drop this bomb. Yeah. He's there. He who is without sand. No, it's before that. Yeah. What's he do before that? Is that where he draws in the sand? Or? Yeah. Is that okay? But Jesus. Yeah. But Jesus, they said, what should we do? that gets heated, they're in his face. He bends down and starts riding in the sand. And it says when they kept on questioning him.

So who knows how long he did this? He brought down the temperature. You know, all of this is interesting for our conversation. When they kept on questioning him, it says. Then he finally stood up and said, let he who's without sin cast the first stone. And everybody wants to know what was he riding in the sand. I know.

I know. simply do not know, I don't think, right? But that's a... We don't know, and we don't think there's any time that he ever did that. Now, there are some scholars. I'm going to forget which scholars, so we can put this in the notes. I knew this is going to happen. I'm really good with Meta thoughts. But there's a scholar. It might have been Augustine, but there were two scholars, I quote in the book. I can't remember which one thinks that it could symbolize the finger of God writing the law. Again, they had misquoted the law. to God, Jesus, God himself, and he bends down and starts writing with his finger.

So that is the one correlation people see that it could be representative of that. Other people say maybe he was writing their sins. I don't know about that. But the word he uses there is an interesting word that isn't used that much in Scripture. That means he who is incapable of sin or has never sinned. It's a very high, you know, it's not our typical word we use for missing the mark. And so that's a very interesting point he's making there because of everyone there, who's the one who fits that description?

Yeah, him. Only Jesus, right? Only Jesus would be the one. And so right in there you see grace embodied when he who could have thrown the stone obviously doesn't because what's he there to do? What's grace? He's going to take our place, right? This is the heart of God we see.

coming out through this story. And only after everyone leaves, does he turn to the woman? So they're gone. Like he has literally protected her, saved her life, turns to her and says, where are they? Does no one condemn you? So he leads with no condemnation first. She says, no one, sir. And he says, neither do I. Go and live a different life. You know, and I think the last thing to say about this, And I've had a lot of conversations with Christians that want to camp out on that last part. And I think that last part is beautiful because what he's saying is you actually can go live a different life. Because I have just bestowed on you value, dignity, grace. I've leveled the playing field with these religious leaders who were considered, you know, the top of society.

You can now have a framework that you matter. And whether you were trapped into this situation so they could find you or whatever, we don't know her story. But that's a beautiful picture of you can live a different life, as opposed to you go now and don't sin, which I think it's misinterpreted through our modern lens. So that's the grace. Her obedience or potential obedience, we're not sure if she did go and live in. We don't know. But it was a response to prior grace. Yes.

I mean, he stood up for the woman when she did commit sin. Now, again, there's tons of hypocrisy going on here. Of course. But she, but, you know, it's not like she was wrongly accused. Like, no, she did do something wrong. And Jesus still stood up for her and said, I do not condemn you. That's a, that's a, he's not excusing to sin, but he's entering into relationship with the sinner, right? With this profound, public, very public display of disruptive grace.

And it's in response to that. Like, that comes for, I do think. the priority there. It's the same with Zacchaeus. Jesus enters into his home and relates with him. And then he sort of, you know, grace pushes obedience out the other side, as I sometimes say, you know. I like that. Yeah. It's grace first. Yeah. That's good. I like that. So that story and the way, the interaction between the law, grace, even the place of the female in that story, this is kind of a framework you use for pro grace. Yes. And one thing I'll comment on before we move on into the methodology is, you know, this story is called Jesus and the adulterous woman. So, and that isn't in the original scripture. That's like the header that the translators put in.

Yeah. Whose sin are the translators focused on? Yeah, the woman, yeah. Yeah. But no one talks about the sin committed against her. Now, basically, everything we're seeing now with abuse of power. Yeah. Clergy abuse. What has? happened to this woman. This was clergy abuse. I mean, again, how did they know these folks were engaged in the act of adultery? Was it one of their own? Was it a setup? I mean, think about it. Were they walking around? Yeah, were they walking around just piggy? I can't imagine that. And so there's so much abuse of power from the powerful, from the religious leaders. And I just want to say, we all sin.

We all sin. What we see Jesus doing and he never says to vulnerable people like this woman, woe to you. You hypocrite. But he does say to the religious leaders, woe to you over and over.

And so again, in the abortion conversation, we have to sit with how much abuse of power has happened, how much gender dynamics, which is what you alluded to, which we can talk about. There's a whole host of messes stuff having, it's happening. But we are not going to just focus on the person at the point

of decision. As Christians, again, this is where God's view is so much greater than the human view. The human can go myopic. God is always looking at this big picture of humanity. Right. Oh, it's so good. I didn't even think about that. Like, if there is a protagonist and antagonists in the story, it's the antagonists, antagonists are the Pharisee, are the religious leaders. Yeah. It's not the woman. No. It's like Jesus versus the, he's a protagonist. They're the antagonist. And the woman is sort of the setting of the story and Jesus's response to her. But it's not, you have to title it, the adulterous woman. I mean, I get it. Okay. Yes, sort of. But it's not. Yeah. She's not the antagonist. Yeah. Well, and I would encourage you as you're having more people on. So Jennifer Powell McNutt wrote this in that book about. Mary Magdalene. There's a lot of people, I also quote the Samaritan woman, Karen Reader. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot out there, a lot out there about what early translators or church folks

did that over-sexualized women's saints that isn't actually true. Right. And again, so now we're talking millennia of issues that we have to be really gentle and thinking about when we enter this. And you're right, it is religious leaders, trying to trap Jesus, the woman to them, she's a pawn. Right. Like, she's a pawn. Yeah, I've had Karen Reader on. Oh, good.

And, yeah, the Samaritan woman, that's becoming pretty wide, pretty well established now, at least in a scholarship that she was not an immoral woman, a serial adulterer. She was a victim of probably multiple deaths of the husband. Maybe she was divorced. She was divorced, not her divorce. I mean, she was a victim of being a first century woman who got dealt a really bad hand of cards. Yeah. And Mary Magdalena, there's zero mention of her being a sexually immoral woman.

The only description we have is Jesus cast seven demons out of her. Exactly. That's it. But it's funny because in Luke, oh, anyway, we're getting off track. But there's a story of a sinful woman in the story. prior she's unnamed in gospel Luke. And then I think through history, they kind of just said, oh, this must have been Mary Magdalene or something,

but there's zero, zero evidence for that. Anyway, that's, yeah. Do you find life to be more difficult than you like? Is something keeping you sad or sick, stressed out, or just plain stuck? But so far, nothing has given you a reason to believe things can be significantly better, especially if you struggle with anxiety, depression, grief, for ongoing relationship issues.

What if you have more power over how you experience your life than you think? Well, it's possible with self-brain surgery. No, that isn't a metaphor. In his new book, The Life-Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery, Dr. Lee Warren, a neurosurgeon and trauma survivor, teaches you how to rewire your brain with the power of your mind. In this very practical guide, you'll overcome anxiety and depression, conquer limited or negative thinking

and become an empowered, hopeful person no matter what you're facing. To learn more about the life-changing art of self-brain surgery, visit w.leawrenmd.com or purchase the book wherever books are sold. I love, yeah, man, I love the posture that you're taking here and the emphasis on grace. Is it?

So I hesitate even like, because you're trying to push, side the political rhetoric. So I don't like want this to be a political question. It's more just the moral question. Like do you see abortion as morally wrong? And that's is part of things you deal with. Yeah. Great question. Great question. Yeah. I'm exactly. I'm sure people are thinking, yes, but does she, you know, it's kind of like when I, when I, when I talk about grace toward the LGBTQ community, blah, blah, you know, welcome and this and that and people like, okay, okay, But what do you believe about marriage?

I'm like, totally. Like, I believe in traditional marriage, and I'd make that really clear, you know. And all my grace rhetoric stems from kind of my belief in, you know, God's design for marriage and sexuality. So anyway, yes. Yeah. No, I think that's great. So that speaks to the methodology that we use in this framework, which both of these are also modeled after Jesus. The first one is what you said about politics.

The reason I don't lead with politics is because. Our kingdom affiliation, our citizenship in heaven, our identity as Christians transcends our political affiliation. And we see this in the life of Christ, and we see this in how he changed the world. Did he overthrow Caesar? Did his disciples overthrow Caesar? Yet they radically changed the Roman Empire. God's way is this way of the heart. And I love Dallas Willard, who talks about that.

So it's character. He changes our character from us. flows a likeness of Jesus, which will transform institutions and systems. It will. It can't help but not. But when we put that backwards and we align with political parties that use words that aren't in scripture, that used posture that isn't Christ-like, that creates a false binary of the woman against the child, and that becomes our primary identity. That's why this is broken in the church. So that is the reason why I don't say how I vote. I take my vote very seriously. Everybody in the progress community does, but we don't talk about it because it's a different, and I'm glad

people do talk about it and other people are called to that, but there's been so much of that and very little of a kingdom framework or a kingdom posture that we focus on that. So then with that, secondly, is the ethics piece. So, and I've already alluded to this. We, take a comprehensive view of ethics, meaning, again, what is society like for people who are facing an unintended pregnancy? So are they just, because this is a totally different framework in our ethics, are these people that are just making a selfish decision that they don't think it's a life, they need educated, they're just, they're different somehow than the rest of us, Or do we think we have real issues in our society that make having a child incredibly difficult?

Were we in the shoes of any one of these people, we would consider the same thing. There's a narrative about people that are raising children on their own. There's words we use. There's ways we speak about that. We are making it more difficult. So we also have an ethical responsibility to reckon with our own. in this area and to bring justice. And so that's the thing is broadening the moral conversation to not be what should this

person do at this moment and how should we legislate about it. That is an important conversation to have. The pro-grace conversation widens it and says, why? That's one of the first questions I started asking way back nearly 20 years ago was, why are women having abortions? And has anyone asked that? Now, we were serving women who were facing unintended pregnancy, and I couldn't find in the archives anywhere. Questions that had been asked to them about why they were considering abortion, research

that had been done, understanding, I found, hey, your job working here is to persuade her gently, nicely, but persuade her not to have an abortion and share the gospel with her. That was the focus, the verbal gospel, like, you know, for spiritual laws, that was the stated methodology. Rather than stopping back and saying, and this is where equal value, equal dignity comes in, that sends a message that she only matters. The child really matters, right? But if we're going to send a message that women and children matter equally, we have to ask the question, why do people have abortions? So, broaden ethics to that. So I will tell you, and I disclose some of this, my personal moral view of abortion is it's an interruption to God's creative genius in the way he creates life.

I think it is not particularly empowering to women to be told we have to control that part, control of reproduction, and become like men. Like, I am not, and I really don't like the way some Christians call other people pro-abortion. I personally have never met a Christian who's pro-abortion, so I just want to say that. I also understand that things are broken, and I can 100% understand why someone would think this is their only option. I've probably had, I was wondering how many conversations I've had with people who've had abortions, at least a couple hundred, over 20 years. and everyone just moves me in my soul. I hear thoughtfulness. I hear pain.

I don't even hear their political. And this is what's interesting. Their political doesn't come up. Now you're asking the ethical question. That does come up. And there are people that think about, you know, what is God's intention? Is this just a blob of tissue inside of me or is this another life independent of me? People have that wrestling.

It's just with so much pain around it. and so much, sometimes trauma and narrative that you can't help but sit with the entire package and think everything needs to change. So I guess that's my answer to ethics. I think the church has gravely wronged women and children. Yeah. Gravely. And I would like, and you probably have this same in your field, right? Yeah.

Leading with that. I'm going to model myself after Jesus, and I'm not going to weigh in, first and foremost, on the woman who's been brought out. I'm going to look at myself in the crowd and the religious leaders, and I'm going to say, what's our ethical responsibility? Where have we contributed to abortion? And I'll stop there and let you ask questions, but I have story after story of how we do contribute to it. First, let me say I love the holistic approach. I am in my book, my book called Exiles at the very end, and I am not an expert on the abortion. I have enough controversy on my plate. This is not my area. But I use it as an example of

the political, that Christians do a bad job extending the kingdom of God and promoting, say, biblical values or ethics. When we reduce our work to achieving a political. goal. And I even used the example of abortion, which I was like, should I even go here, just open up this can of worms at the very end. But I said, you know, according to at least a massive lifeway survey, I think it was, don't quote me, I could look it up. It's in the final chapter of exiles. You can go check the stats. But it's something like 30% of women who have an abortion are committed Christians, many of whom do not believe it's morally right. And when they were asked, Why? When they were, when they were asked like describe your context, they were, many of them

described a context. It was highly legalistic. And the choice, the choice between having an abortion, which they did not actually want to do versus publicizing that they had sex out of wedlock, the social backlash for having sex out of wedlock would have been so much worse than, from their perspective, than choosing the abortion. So that's where I said, okay, you passed a law. you didn't pass a law, whatever. That's your focus. It's like, what are we doing about the social, the religious Christian social context in which people are even having to make these decisions? So I don't get too much hate. I don't know. It to me just seemed pretty straightforward because I even said, like I don't believe in abortion. And so I will, so I, just like I think there's moral clarity.

And this is my position. You don't have to have it. You maybe even, correct me if I'm wording it wrong. Everybody knows what I'm about to say is zero, nothing to do with politics. You know, scientifically, an unborn child is life. Philosophically, I would say it's not just life, but a person. And morally, it's an innocent person whose life is being terminated. 100% I want to understand the complexity of the conditions in which that life is being terminated. But I just, I don't, I've just, I've, I've yet to see like a compelling argument that this is not, yeah, an immoral act. In the same way that adultery is an immoral act.

While John 8, there's lots of complexities surrounding that. But if we're going to ask, is adultery right or wrong? Is it ever okay? Is it ever? It's like, well, no, like there's clarity on that, but there's complexity around the circumstances that surround that. Am I, and even in saying that, like, I almost would, you know, when I'm dealing, if I were to deal with, as I'm sure you have, you know, a 15 year old girl that made a mistake and now she's pregnant with some, you know, boyfriend's baby that, you know, let's just say it was even consensual, but he's off on his third girlfriend by now. and she's in a religious context where she would be probably kicked out of the house if she were found out she had sex with her boyfriend and doesn't have any money and she's scared and, you know, like I would absolutely want to say, how can the church be the hands of feet

of Jesus in this situation? But I don't know personally. I would still have moral clarity on if she did terminate the child. Like that in and of itself, that is, the same kind of immoral act. I don't know. Is that, yeah, I'll stop because I'm fumbling around. So there's lots of questions on that. There's lots of questions on that. So does she bear the burden of that immoral act alone? Because this is your view. So let me ask you. No, I would say no. Just I could answer that now. No. No. There's lots of layers of immorality, including the very environment that she is in that, in a sense, it's playing a role. in her decision.

Yes. So I am going to speak to your moral question, but let's go, because I do like to say Christians first, like Christian community first. The stories I've heard of Christian people having abortion, I'll never forget, it was a couple. His dad was a pastor, her famous Christian, came into one of our sites in my particular neighborhood, which Chicago is big, but this was in my community, and said, our parents have told us never to come home pregnant. So we're going to have an abortion. Now, now, okay, and I'm not, now, let's not even blame these parents. Let's be the, let's be good bystanders.

And let's zoom back to all of us. What is the communication, what is the conversation in our own homes, in our own families? This happens so often, Preston. So again, again, And Jesus doesn't say, he doesn't say nobody's sinning. He's saying we're all sinning. So that's the conversation I want to have is what are we doing? We say we value the Amango Day in every person, but if we're doing that, we're not valuing the Amongo Day in either person. So that I want to lead with.

Now to your question about morality. This is the pro grace stance. We don't, here's what we say. We believe God creates all life. And I would go for, and that's the official progress stand. I would go further, and I talked about this in my book, that I believe most Christians would agree that creation of life and a separate life happens sometime during pregnancy. Right? I mean, so that is where we start.

Like between conception and birth. Some people would say right at conception, some people shortly after, whatever, and yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, and we can, but could we as Christians start with, God creates all life. And at some point in pregnancy, this is what's happening. It's his design. Can we honor that? And I would ask you, so where, at what point do you think that happens? Life? Yeah. I don't know enough. I mean, my assumption is at conception, but I don't know. I have not waited. into this. That's just, you know, I would, so like you, and you don't have to, you don't have to fully answer. It's more to make an illustration of where we can come together. So don't go beyond your, I always use, I always use the illustration. I always use the illustration. If we went to Mars and discovered what is, you know, um, you know, whatever, whatever that can, you know, let's just say the day after conception, whatever that is. And we discovered that on,

Mars would we probably try and kill it because that's kind of what we do. But we, you know, would we be like, I don't know, just, now we found another rock. It's kind of a, or we'd be like, oh my gosh, we found like, it seems like we'd probably say we found life, but. Right. So then you would be against IVF. And I'm not going to ask you that. Oh, gosh.

I don't even. I know. I know nothing about. I'm not trying to get in an argument. I'm just trying to say, we just had this beautiful conversation of what we. we can all agree on that God creates all life. There are going to be nuances among Christian believers, people who love Jesus. If that happens right at conception, which would make IVF not allowable, it would rule out

certain types of birth control that irritates the lining of the uterus so a fertilized egg can't implant. Like you would say that is, and sometimes people will call those abortifacians, you'd be against the morning after pill, which is different than the RU4. 36. Okay, so then another Christian would say, no, it's implantation. Right? Then they would say, no, it's just that. So it's not conception. It's implantation. Okay, yeah. I don't know. I love this. I love this, Angela. I love it when people open up the complexity of these questions. So, well, you've also got our Catholic brothers and sisters who say, no, it's actually preconception,

and we don't take contraception. These are all people who love Jesus. We've already had three. Okay, so let's say someone says implantation. Let's say someone says it's at, week when the heartbeat starts. Week eight, week nine, whatever, yeah. And then let's say someone says it's at, and I don't, I've not like had conversations with Christians who say this to me. So this is completely hypothetical because we don't talk. I don't talk about this. But let's say a Christian says viability. Okay. These could be people who love God who have searched the scriptures who, you know, and they are coming up with different times, which is going to put them on opposite political sides. That being said, could we all come together? How much good would

be done, Preston, if we could come together as Christians first and say, God creates all life, let's advocate equal value, equal dignity for the woman and the child. Let's take our ethical responsibility and make a world where it's welcoming to having children. We're so individualistic. we put so much pressure on the person having the child as opposed to making ourselves this community. My point is there is value in having these discussions with people we trust. You and I don't know each other very well. In our own homes, in our own churches, to think that we are going to get every Christian aligned on that, I don't know that that's necessary to bring the type of kingdom change that Jesus can bring.

that I just think he has so much more to bring and our energy gets into this. When does it happen and what political side are you? While people are receiving these horrible narratives, we don't have social conditions. We don't, birth is not free. It's expensive. We don't say, hey, if you test positive DNA, you're the father, you go halfsies for 18 years with this child. We don't do that kind of stuff that would actually make it more likely for people to continue pregnancies. Honestly, nearly six out of ten people, women who have an abortion already have a child.

They already have a child. They just feel like they can't have another. That's on us. So that's all I'm saying. Have those conversations. But let's have the entire ethical conversation, which is what's our role? Okay. Just on the last point.

that may be true in some cases, but there could be other cases where the woman is being irresponsible. She has a child and she is not coerced or abused. She willingly engages in a sexual activity. And maybe wasn't, maybe both of me either, you know, like if you choose to have sex, you are choosing to possibly have another child. And while there are some people in certain conditions where it's way more complicated, there's other conditions where it's not. She just wanted to go sleep with her boyfriend again and was irresponsible. Could that be, that would be a possible scenario. She was irresponsible? She, they, again. Sure, yeah. Right? So let's have this again, they. Okay. So we did research with women and we can

talk about that later, the experience of the unintended pregnancy, four different bodies of research. Sorry, I, I, they were fascinated. Let me just say. this, the women talk about getting pregnant as if he's not there. The social narrative, the level of shame, the scarcity that falls on a woman's shoulder for something that happens when two people engage in sex and it's an egg and it's, it's two people. But they are, women are even putting this completely on themselves, which is why I'm trying to interrupt it in this piece. That is the problem. The problem is, is that it's two people, it's a whole community, but yet everything is put on her. So you're saying she's irresponsible. I mean, I wouldn't use that. She and her partner

decided to do this. Let me tell you what happens in reality. There's a thing called the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium. It's, and I can, I can quote it, I tagged into the book so I'd have it. A man's lifetime earnings go up when he becomes a father. A woman's goes down with every additional child she has. So when she becomes a mother and then with every additional child, her lifetime earnings go down, even if she stays in the workplace the whole time. So again, it's not just these people making this choice. It's what the reality is for childbearing women out there for people, for a woman who gets pregnant, if the man decides he doesn't want to have any responsibility, he's completely alone. And there's two people. So again, it's never as simple as

just, wow, someone did this thing and they 100% did it alone, just with no social input, with no systemic injustice. They just did this thing. And now they're being super callous and, you know, have doing this. If that were to be the case, we won't actually find out until we write all the wrongs. So my point is, what if we write it all those wrongs? And now I told you, I get meta, but I do. I go really big. What if the church led the way in writing those wrongs, then someone later in another generation

could come back and be like, well, Angela fully didn't see the full story because all this is happening here. But I am making my hypothesis that it wouldn't be happening nearly in enough if we changed the narrative, the social nets, the reality. And it can be done. It's being done in other countries all over the world right now. We are incredibly far behind in America. So that's why I respond to that like one person being irresponsible. It's like we are a community. We are all playing a part in how hard it is for that person. Just to clarify before I get angry emails. Thank you for the correction. I, I,

Very much appreciate that. When you were describing this scenario, she already had one kid. For some reason, I just went to like single mom, has a kid, goes out and sleeps with the guy. And it's not, it's not. So there is a, there is a, both obviously are engaged in the act. But the guy, he's not, it's not his kid at home. It's, it's. You don't know.

Well, I'm just saying in it, okay, let's just say in a scenario, he's just a guy, boyfriend, whatever. Maybe not having a boyfriend. and maybe she goes out, you know, she's at a rough day, goes out to a bar, meets a guy, he sleeps with them, it's consensual. She's the one with the kid at home. Let's just say he's not the one at the kid at home. So it's not like he's rolling the dice, engaging an activity that could bring another life into a home that already has a life, whereas she is doing that.

Anyway, I don't want to get lost in the weeds. It's a, yes. I agree. I agree with what you're saying. I appreciate the pushback on making sure I use the language. So, and I thought you. could handle it and let me clarify. I don't question your intentions. This is for the community listening because language makes such a difference and we say things that don't sound like what we mean,

but they come out. And so that's all I was, I was not, I know from reading you that you would not think she was, you would not assign her anything. You would not assign the man. But, but the language came out sounding that way. And also, who of us don't, two of us don't do irresponsible things that could radically change our lives. I mean, again, it's just, it's a little more equal playing field. It sounds like your main mission is not to just focus on the morality or immorality of abortion, but to, if I'm hearing you correctly, reduce the number of abortions, partly by, addressing the complex social, socioeconomic, religious contexts in which people are even making

these decisions? Would that be inaccurate? So I am focused on the morality of the church. Okay. So this is the big difference. So I'm glad you clarified this. I want the church to look like Jesus. I want the church to look exactly how he looks in the scriptures when he encounters human suffering, when he encounters abuse of power. That I don't believe we have a consistent Christian witness in the abortion conversation that looks enough like Jesus because we've been bound up by this political rhetoric. That is my vision. That's my goal. That's the mission of pro-grace.

That is where I will die on that hill. We need to look more like Jesus. Now, because I go very, once we do look like Kisas, I can imagine fabulous scenarios of good happening, of human flourishing, of society changing, of people feeling like they do have agency. You said something, people don't want to have an abortion, they feel that they have no choice. That's not agency. That's the reality of what's happening in the culture. So we're talking on this peripheral stuff, but I want to go back to what we said first. This all lives and dies on the church changing.

And that's what I'm focused on. The ethics of the church being, feeling like Jesus, engaging like Jesus. There is, and I believe way more good will happen than any law being passed. And that's why I'm doing this. I love that. And the church looking like Jesus wouldn't, Jesus doesn't kill unborn babies, so it would include less of that. So why? Why do you need to, again? That's, I don't want to reduce it all of that. I'm just saying that's part of being like, Jesus.

Are you doing this virtuous? Yeah. Yeah. So God creates all life and in the signs equal dignity and equal value. So obviously, we want to see human beings flourish, you know, and I am not promoting abortion as a solution. You know, pro grace does not, we don't promote abortion, we don't. I'm just being very careful what I say, Preston, because there's been so much damage done by just camping out on what do you think about the act. So that's why you and I are doing this. You know, I can share my personal morals. But again, the mission of pro grace is to disciple the church to look like Jesus. And when people are coming to me saying, I saw how, literally someone said this, I saw.

saw how my church talked about and treated people pregnant outside of marriage. When I got pregnant in college, I was like, well, no way, am I having a child? I had an abortion. Pro Grace was the first time, she said, I heard Christians expressing equal value for the woman and the child. That's what we're about. Do I think fear of people will have abortion? I do, especially because I see so many more people who tell me people who don't want to, but are doing it because of these reasons.

So I think the empowering thing to do is to, yes, actually change the world and make it more friendly to having children. That's why I'm starting with the church. But I just want to be careful of not reducing myself to one side or the other because I want to maintain the spirit of unity among believers that we can agree God creates all life. We can have a little bit different voting and political nuances. Like, I'm just making some space for that while saying we have many. many, many more shared values. So that's, no, that's super helpful. I remember reading somewhere that, that many, many, most women who do have an abortion, it doesn't actually, it actually, like, they experience ongoing suffering that they didn't anticipate. They thought it was like,

have the, have the baby. And I can't, for whatever reason, they feel like this would be a disaster. the abortion is kind of the easier way out. That's even though. It seems like the best of the two options. How about that? But even then they have PTSD, trauma, gill, all this stuff. Like, is that, is that true? Can you confirm that or it's not like it's a binary of if I have the,

if I have the baby, if I have a lot's going to be miserable, if I have an abortion, it's going to be great. It's like. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It is impossible to find studies. that are not, in my opinion, I would love for someone in your community to send me a study

that is not tainted by political rhetoric because that, those facts of women who struggle emotionally after pregnancy are abused by both parties. Okay. The pro-life side says those numbers are very high with, I don't see a lot of documentation for them. the pro-choice side says they are lower. And actually, I have a story, I know I've shared a lot of pro-life stories, but I had a pro-choice friend who strongly believed in the right to choose,

ran what she called a feminist health center. They had women coming in after abortions that were emotionally struggling. They were having regret or they were having anxiety or dreams. So they started a support group for them. And other people in their community said, What are you doing? The pro-lifers will hear about that and use it against us. Now, Preston, what's heartbreaking about that is who is suffering? Women, right? And I'm not fully blaming the pro-choice people because, you know what, they're right. Pro-life people take that. I mean,

this is, when we're fighting each other, we can't actually find out the truth of how many women struggle emotionally after an abortion. But let me ask you this. Where's the best place for women to be if they do struggle emotionally after abortion. I would hope it would be the church. You would hope it would be the church. But that same life way study, it's a very low percentage of women whose church knows they've had an abortion. I hear, oh my gosh, the thing I've probably heard most of anything is

I've never told anybody this, Angie, or they stand up in a workshop or but I had an abortion. Or someone will go out during our courses. We say, go ask someone in your family, you know. What do we hear about abortion growing up? I'm taking this course on grace and equal value. And the sibling will say, the 60-year-old sibling will say, I never told you this.

I had an abortion. When the message of equal value in grace goes out, people with this lived experience feel their story is safe and they can come into a church community. That, to me, looks like Jesus. And we don't have to be arguing about what the research says because I'd love someone to do non-biased research. If any of your listeners want to do that,

but it just doesn't exist. Non-biased research. I, yeah, what area of anything that's politically charged has unbiased research? That's really helpful. That's good to know that it is, that that has been highly politicized. Absolutely, it makes sense. I've got a story. I've got a story that is very much in line with what you just said.

I remember years ago, we had a Bible study and, and I don't know. I like to kind of like throw things out there. Let's just talk about something tough. Let's, let's. You do? You do? Every now and then. sometimes every other Friday.

And I said, hey, let's talk about abortion, you know? And what was, okay, the cool thing was a lot of the kind of teenagers that were kind of just like, they're out, they're not even part of the, you know, they're there that came with their parents, but they're like not really engaged. All of a sudden, they look up and they all had opinions and stuff. Like, hey, I've been talking about this at school. I wrote a paper on this, blah, they mix it up. And we were debating, you'll really appreciate this.

because this was my first lesson that is very much along the lines of what you're pushing, how you're pushing us to think. We were narrowly focused on the morality of abortion. It wasn't quite political, although you can guess where people landed based under political leanings. And afterward came out that one of the moms in the group had an abortion when she was a teenager and hadn't, I think her husband knew or something, but the kids didn't know. And she was incredibly, she explained the scenario.

And it was one of these kind of like you said, like this impossible situation. I can't, I couldn't. And she was, I think she even said, like, I made a mistake, blah, blah, blah. But I, you know, I was terrified. I couldn't tell anybody. Finance. I couldn't. I was a teenager, you know.

And like, and I've lived with profound regret and shame. and she was just really triggered during that conversation. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, I thought I was doing a good thing by, oh, let's just mix it up, you know, talk about this intellectual issue, you know? And I was like, oh, my word, I am so sorry for that. And it was a lesson learned. And it's something that I've, yeah, I've learned in the sexuality space.

Like, when you reduce it to, is it sin, is it not sin, and debate that? You know, it's like there's so many layers of complex. that surround the environments and social context and how the church responds, doesn't respond, how the words they use, what thing do they emphasize over and over and over and over and over without emphasizing like you would decide the gray side. So anyway, yeah, that. Well, that's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, your response, your tenderness to her story is how I would hope. All Christians, especially that you're a man, it's very powerful, would enter into this conversation with recognizing the shared humanity and the numbers are very high. So it's like

one and four women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Like you said, it's high Christians. So chances are when we're talking to someone, even if we think we're just talking politically, they have lived experience or they're a partner. You know, this frees up a lot of men. A lot of men are free in the pro-grace community to talk about their experience of abortion, things they did and didn't do to support their partner, you know, and how they feel about it. So you could be talking to a partner, a parent, people with lived experience are in our lives. They just don't feel free to tell us. So what if that lovely woman you described, what if as a teenager she felt like she could go to her church community? And, you know, not even, let's think about her. What would it be

like for her? She made this decision by herself in panic, an incredibly different, difficult situations, what would it have been like for her to have her church community? What would have been meant for the child if she had a church community? This is the way of Jesus. When I talk about the church acting like Jesus, you just give in a perfect example of what the dream is. That's the dream, the ultimate dream. But I don't talk about it a lot, Preston, because last thing I'll say is we get so focused on the people making the decision. When you talk about what Christians emphasize over and over and over and over, what do I say to a woman who's making a decision, is Is it legal for the person who's making a decision?

What about the person making a decision? There's so much focus on them that I just, you know, one thing I say to people is, you're not going to get a chance to talk to a person who's making a decision because of everything you say the 20 years before, right? And also, this is why I keep saying over and over, let's focus on the church, let's focus on the church. It's just a piece that's been missing from the conversation. It doesn't mean I'm not passionately for the people with lived experience.

I am. But I'm trying to take some of the pressure off that and talk about the church and then how together we can see better outcomes for people with lived experience. Angela, I love the work you're doing. Thank you so much. And I could now see how narrowly focusing, obviously on the politics, but even if you only focus on the moral question, that could be a distraction from the many other moral questions that are integral to this conversation. Because we are not, we are social, and we make decisions based on a various array of factors in our social and religious contexts. And to reduce it all to one thing, you know, I would still say that one thing is still important. I don't want to neglect that. But we're not going to help the conversation if we reduce it all to that. Right. And we're interconnected.

We're meant to be in a community. And so I think sometimes in America we get so individualistic. We forget that. But the Christian community is meant to be interconnected. So we can't ignore our impact on people. That's why I just don't want to focus on. I love how you just said it. All the ethics involved.

That's all I'm asking the church to do. Angela, thanks so much for being a guest to the Algera. I really, really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great.