wfn.org | NARAL honors UCC's Lois Powell as 'champion of choice'

[George Conklin <gconklin@igc.org>]

NARAL honors UCC leader as 'champion of choice'

> Written by J. Bennett Guess
> September 25, 2009

The Rev. Lois M. Powell, a team leader with the UCC's Justice and
Witness Ministries in Cleveland, was one of two UCC members honored by
NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio at its seventh annual 'champions of choice'
breakfast banquet on Sept. 25 in downtown Cleveland.

"With too many considering religion an excuse for hatred, the Rev.
Loey Powell is a refreshing and important voice for tolerance and for
reproductive choice," said Wendy Leatherberry, board president, to a
crowd of about 100 attendees.

Powell, who co-leads JWM's Cleveland-based program staff, is the
immediate past chair of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive
Choice in Washington, D.C.  A longtime advocate for legal and
accessible reproductive services, she has spoken openly about her own
decision to have an abortion in 1970, three years before the landmark
Roe v. Wade decision, and her own experience of traveling to New York
to have one.

"Loey provides an important voice by openly discussing her own
abortion," Leatherberry said.

"I believe those of us who can speak from a perspective of faith for
choice need to use that voice," Powell said. "The majority of people
who are religious in this country are in favor of keeping abortion
legal and offering a full range of reproductive health services.
Together and only together are we going to broaden our understanding
of reprodutive justice."

Powell earned her M.Div. degree from UCC-related Pacific School of
Religion in Berkeley, Calif., in 1977. In 1989, when named pastor of
United Church in Tallahasse (Florida), she became the first openly
lesbian or gay pastor in the UCC to be called to serve a local church
through the denomination's regular search-and-call process. In 1997,
she became executive director of the UCC's former Coordinating Center
for Women in Church and Society, one of the agencies that joined
together to form JWM in 2000.

Along with Powell, Ohio State Senator Dale Miller, a member of
Archwood UCC in Cleveland, also received the 'champion of choice'
honor. Miller's commitment to protecting a women's right to choose, he
said, is rooted in honoring the dignity of women, respecting their
decisions, and being concerned about the health and well-being of
women and children.

"It is important that we bring children into this world that, as Jesus
said, not only have life but have it abundantly," he said.

Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, is a
member of First Grace UCC in Akron, Ohio.