Standing for rights, not on the right

[Algorem]

http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf?/base/living/1138873394253690.xml&coll=2

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Connie Schultz
Plain Dealer Columnist

With the simplest of gestures, any woman in America can lay her hands on the battleground here at home.

It's beneath the soft flesh of her own body, the area nestled between her hips where babies are conceived or not, carried to term or not. By merely resting her hand across her abdomen, a woman can find the combustible intersection of politics and religion where the mighty turf war is being waged.

If you listen only to those who scream the loudest, you might think that most Americans of faith believe abortion is a sin against God. It's a common misperception, and one that deeply troubles the Rev. Dr. Carlton Veazey, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and founded its Black Church Initiative.

"The majority of religious people in this country support choice, but you wouldn't know it by the noise and ink in the media from the other side," says the 69-year-old Baptist minister. "People tend to identify religious people with anti-choice, but that is the opposite of reality."...