The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice:
35 Years of Partnership with The United Methodist Church

United Methodists Take Bold Actions, in Concert with RCRC

For more than 35 years, The United Methodist Church has provided moral leadership in the area of reproductive healthcare and worked in partnership with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) to achieve our shared values. United Methodists have affirmed with compassion that women and men are moral decision-makers and taken bold actions to protect reproductive health services and options that are central to the lives of women, men and families:

• United Methodist clergy and laypersons who had witnessed the suffering and death of countless women from illegal abortion procedures believed that - as people of faith - they had a moral responsibility to ensure that women had access to safe, legal reproductive healthcare. In 1973, they founded the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which has grown into a multicultural organization addressing health, poverty alleviation and social justice issues.

• Deeply concerned that more than 500,000 women in the world’s poorest countries die each year from pregnancy-related causes - most of which are preventable - the General Board of Church and Society and Women’s Division have worked with RCRC to increase religious support for family planning, safe motherhood, and community development programs.

• Alarmed by the impact of unintended pregnancies, teen births, HIV/ AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections on women and families, the General Board of Church and Society and Women’s Division - in accordance with the denomination's Social Principles and Book of Resolutions - advocate in Congress and state legislatures for prevention programs such as comprehensive sexuality education and family planning. Representatives of the GBCS and Women's Division work with other denominations in the RCRC coalition for these programs.

• As threats to democratic values deepen, United Methodists have worked closely with RCRC and its member groups to foster respect for diverse religious views on complex reproductive issues. While RCRC member groups have diverse views on the issue of abortion, grounded in their religious traditions, they work together to ensure that individuals will be able to follow their own conscience and beliefs.

Please visit Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice staff and volunteers in the Common Witness area at First Christian Church, 6th and Throckmorton. We look forward to meeting you, answering your questions, and discussing your issues.