When One Freedom Is at Risk, All Freedoms Are At Risk

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”     --President Ronald Reagan

Here’s the struggle I am having in the shadow of July 4^th, the day in our nation more than any other all year, when we as Americans are supposed to celebrate our freedoms. Our personal freedoms. Our legally protected freedoms. Freedom, as in freedom to…freedom to worship and freedom to speak out and freedom to peaceably assemble for protest and freedom to marry and freedom of the press.

That is a short list of the very long list of freedoms we enjoy as citizens of this land.

But with the overturning of Roe v. Wade a week ago last Friday by the Supreme Court and the negation of 50 years of settled law; now we are talking about taking a freedom away. Where once a “freedom to” existed now it is a non-freedom if you will, an anti-freedom, freedom cancelled. Before this decision, this particular freedom to choose was not wholly unregulated or one-hundred percent free, unfettered.

No freedoms are.

Most speech is “free” but, as one court ruling declared, that does not give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie house. You can protest but not to the point of violence. And until the Supreme Court’s ruling, reproductive rights were not absolute either. States could regulate abortion. That restraint of freedom reflects public opinion on this complicated moral issue. Most Americans want to keep this right while also regulating it in ways that are reasonable.

But now that freedom is no more.  Forget reason. Forget compromise. Forget any middle ground.

That freedom, the law of the land since 1973, for almost two full generations: it is gone, sent back to the states for them to re-debate, thus guaranteeing a patchwork of laws, often confusing and complicated. Step over a state line and everything changes.  You can take a pill in one state but not another. You can send away for pills…. wait, maybe you can’t. What’s your address again? You want to help a woman struggling with this choice? You better lawyer up. You might end being fined thousands of dollars or even put in jail, along with doctors and maybe pharmacists and women too.

You see that’s what happens when you go backwards, as opposed to forwards, when we regress as opposed to progress, on freedom. One step forward but then two steps back.  I’ve always believed in the theory that socially, mores and values change, and often for the greater good and the common good. There once was a time not long ago when women could not vote. When suspects were not entitled to legal counsel. There was a time when it was settled law that schools could be legally segregated by race and a couple in love could be arrested for being married because their skin color did not match.

Thank God those days are over! They are over, right? Who is to say? Can you imagine the chaos if (or maybe even when) other freedoms are also taken back or cancelled in the same way by the courts?   

I’m old fashioned and even corny when it comes to freedom and the American story. In a way being free is our shared American aspiration. I’ve always believed that freedom—the ability of a human being to make choices for one’s self, the ability of you or I to be free to do something or to not; the ability to have the privacy to make a very hard decision, with only God as the witness and counsel: for me, all of those ideas stand for true freedom. Stand for the best kind of freedom, freedom that is finally given to every single human being by God.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….” 

But, on this July 4^th, 2022, I’m sad to report that our country is less free than on July 4^th, 2021.  Millions of our sisters and moms and neighbors and friends and spouses are much less free now. 

And that is not a good thing. Not at all.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.