Statement from the Bishop on U.S. Supreme Court Decision Overturning Roe v. Wade

A message from Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley concerning today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson:

View the full statement at this link, or read below.

Dear faithful people of the Diocese of South Carolina,

I write to you this night with a heavy heart about the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court today in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson. This decision strikes at the heart of our democracy, overturning a fundamental right we have known in this land for half a century. The Episcopal Church has expressed as a body a clear affirmation of legal abortions since 1967, with carefully articulated parameters about how we engage the painful and important matter of abortion as people of faith informed by the experiences of women. This commitment was reaffirmed in an expanded statement giving theological and practical grounding to our position in this statement from 1976: https://episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution.pl?resolution=1976-D095&fbclid=IwAR0g_mF4CPbde8O4yT3BN1F7R4RletsWhNTolP4kLELpgCOjONHl7jVx4gs&fs=e&s=cl

​Today’s decision unravels decades of hard-won gains for women’s equality and removes fundamental agency for women of this country and impacts women who have the fewest resources, financially and otherwise, and women in the most dire circumstances of domestic violence and abuse, the greatest. 

We will, as a faith community, join with other people of faith across our country to support women most impacted by today’s decision and work to regain this critically important right for women in our country. 

​Faithfully yours,
​
Bishop Ruth