Posted by Helen on: 02.20.2007 /
The cover article of this week’s TIME Magazine is called ‘The Grassroots Abortion War’.
This article includes an encouraging story about how the staff of an abortion clinic and members of a nearby conservative church have formed a group that meets together regularly.
The group developed from a meeting the clinic leader, Lorrie, set up with church members, to talk with them about the behavior of one member towards clinic staff. Lorrie considered inappropriate. To her surprise the church, rather than being judgmental or defensive, began by asking her forgiveness for not dealing with it sooner. The meeting went so well they decided to have more. As Time reports:
Now they are out to show how people who disagree violently can debate civilly, even lovingly, and find some common ground. They know they won’t change one another’s core beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t changed.
The group members have the following shared goals: to decrease abortions, relieve the social and economic conditions that lead women to consider abortion, make adoption easier, condemn violence and keep talking.
According to Time, Jeff Hutchinson, a member of the group and senior pastor of the conservative church involved
thinks Asheville’s experiment in détente could be a model for any community to follow. He knows there will always be people who think it is wrong even to talk with people they disagree with. The hard-core “Culture-War Christians,” he says, “have no interest in finding common ground. Their constituencies don’t like it; they won’t send in any more money.” But that doesn’t mean the conversation about all these issues of mind and heart and body are fated to be reduced to a fund-raising tool or political weapon. “The good news is that the Culture-War Christian can actually change because God is alive and can change the heart,” Hutchinson says. “I know it. Because I was a Culture-War Christian once myself.”
From Time’s final paragraph:
Once you’ve come to know your adversaries personally, once the cartoon villains are brushed away, the conversation becomes more complicated–and more useful. “When we talk, we really have to examine our own beliefs and why we do what we do,” Lorrie says. “Abortion is a reality. For me, I feel it can be a lifesaving choice for a woman. But decreasing abortion is a goal we all strive for.” As for Hutchinson, “I still keep the ‘choice’ of abortion off the menu. But I hadn’t thought through how difficult a choice it is. I’d been pretty simplistic. I just think a lot more about the pregnant woman herself now than I had before.”
Comment by: Rachel
1Hallelujah!!! (angels singing)
Thanks for this encouraging article, Helen.
Comment by: NCxian
2This makes all the sense in the world to me. I saw Jim Wallis on tv yesterday saying something similar. I wonder why the two sides normally feel like they are speaking across an insurmountable gulf?
I like what the guy says about the effect of personalizing your adversary. I suppose that is the primary reason for dialogue, isn’t it?
Here is something I don’t know (among the many things, of course, but this one comes to mind reading this post). Are all people who favor outlawing or severely limiting access to abortions basing their decision on their faith? Or are there people who are ethically opposed (or for some other reason) who aren’t religious?
Comment by: jim henderson
3my short version, “when people like each other - the rules change”
Comment by: Helen
4Jim, I was glad to see TIME Magazine agrees with you ;-) (even though it wasn’t as concise as you!)
Comment by: Rachel
5NCxian, here are some groups who oppose abortion for non-religious reasons:
Feminists for Life
Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians
Democrats for Life
Consistent Life Network
Comment by: Eliza
6Helen, thanks for posting this. It’s unusual, and uplifting, to hear of ‘foes’ on opposite sides of an apparent chasm meeting & finding common ground. Even just a little bit.
Comment by: Tommykey
7I support abortion rights because for some women and girls who are pregnant but are not prepared for whatever reason to carry the pregnancy to term or become a mother, an abortion is for them the best of a limited choice of bad options.
That being the case, I would like to see the number of abortions decrease primarily because it is an invasive surgical procedure. Most people cannot even bear the thought of being pricked with a needle to draw blood, so I can only imagine as a man how much more difficult it is for a woman or girl to get through an abortion.
I didn’t read the TIME article, but to me it has always been obvious that the common ground between supporters and opponents of abortion rights is reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies.
As I wrote in the comments thread of another blog today, what gets in the way of finding the common ground is that pro-choicers and secularists tend to support access to birth control and sex education, opponents of abortion tend to support abstinence only programs and deride birth control as encouraging sexual promiscuity and that sex outside of marriage is SINFUL!
While abstinence, particularly for teenagers, is preferred, my problem with the abstinence only approach is that people make mistakes. I was reading Scientific American magazine today on the train ride to work, and in one article it mentioned that teenagers who make virginity pledges are less likely to have sex, but those who do take the pledge but end up having sex are less likely to use contraception and are more likely to contract diseases.
To use an analogy, passengers on a boat who are afraid or do not know how to swim still need to be taught how to use a life preserver just in case the boat starts to sink. Teaching them how to use personal flotation devices is not going to cause passengers to stary willy nilly jumping off the boat into the ocean for the sheer fun of it.
We also live in a bizarro culture in which the population is predominantly Christian and considers sex outside of marriage to be a sin, but where “getting laid” is considered a rite of passage for teens. We are bombarded with sexual imagery, but adults don’t want their children to see or read words like vagina, clitoris and scrotum.
Abortion is a symptom of this problem. If we want to see abortions decline in this country, we will have to deal with this problem. At least that’s the way I see it.
Comment by: NCxian
8I was following some of the links that Rachel posted to find out why non-religious people might oppose all abortion. I came upon an article at Democrats for Life which reported that Democrats, and some Democratic/Republican groups, were proposing legislation to support pregnant women and mothers so that they can make alternative choices. This seems to be in line with the collaborative efforts of the two groups in the original post here.
Anyway, the article said that 2/3 of Americans might be termed “greys”–folks who are not in favor of repealing the right to choose abortion, but who would like to see the incidents of abortion reduced. This is where my own views fall. So now I know I am a “grey”, and in good company!
So I am thinking, as I read, well, why haven’t the greys won the day on all this? Then I read the comments on the article. Not a single commenter concurred with the “grey” position described in the article. Here are two examples of what I found in the comments.
And
It makes me want to move to Gilligan’s Island! (I started to say Antarctica, but it’s too cold in NC for me this winter!)
Comment by: NCxian
9Oh, wait, I forgot my favorite comment on the “grey” Democrats article:
Cue the theme song . . . “six passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour . . .”
Comment by: Rachel
10I think part of the problem is that the most extreme and nasty people holler the loudest and thus get the most attention. It reminds me of being in elementary school and how there was always one extra challenging kid in the class who was always goofing off and getting into mischief. And the teacher had to spend more time paying attention to that kid than anyone else. But then sometimes you would get a really smart teacher who would just ignore that kid when he acted out and get all the other kids in the class to do the same. If people like those two commenters are going to continue being nasty, I think we should just ignore their naughty behavior and move forward with getting our work done. Why should we let them be the most powerful kids in the class?
The good news is that the “greys” are moving forward and doing it in a bipartisan manner. Here is some recent Congressional legislation:
Reducing the Need for Abortions and Supporting Parents Act
The Prevention First Act
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act
Comment by: NCxian
11That, and also the “slippery slope” arguments on both sides.
If we Pro-choicers say that abortion can be limited in any way (no partial birth abortion, for example) then aren’t we starting down the slippery slope to more limitations that may not be good?
If we Pro-lifers say that we will work together with people who would not prohibit abortion altogether, aren’t we starting down the slippery slope toward saying that abortion is not murder?
I never know how to deal with slippery slope arguments. It seems to me that every decision we make as a society starts you down a slope toward something negative, but it doesn’t keep us from making any decision. Perhaps it is a matter of trust. The folks at the far ends of the spectrum on abortion don’t trust the other side not to take a mile when given an inch. And maybe they are able to convince us greys that that probably is true. I certainly would not trust anybody whose comments I posted in my last two diatribes above!
Comment by: NCxian
12Rachel, these are really good websites and I appreciate your posting them. They have made me think about a lot of things (see previous posts).
I am still wondering, though, how people who do not adhere to any religious tradition come to a conclusion that all abortions should be illegal (which I understand “Pro-Life” to mean, or ” . . . for Life” on these sites). There are certainly Feminists, Gays and Lesbians, and Democrats who are people of faith, and as far as I know, that could be who populates these organizations.
My difficulty in understanding is this, I think. In order to believe that all abortion should be illegal, one must believe that life begins at conception (or, I suppose, believe there is such a good chance of that that there is no room for allowing abortion to happen since it might be destroying a human life). Without a religious tradition that tells you when life begins, how does one “know” with sufficient conviction that it is at conception?
It seems to me that when life begins is a “meaning of life” question that has traditionally been handled in the realm of faith. How does a person who doesn’t adhere to a faith tradition come to an absolute kind of “at conception” view that is required (I am thinking) to be truly “Pro-Life”?
I should spend more time looking at the material and see what I am missing in my thinking. So far, the Feminists for Life position, if I try to understand it in a strictly secular way, seems the most strange–abortion is a way that women are oppressed and their parenting roles are devalued and therefore . . . we should further deny them rights over their bodies?
Comment by: Rachel
13Certainly some of them are people of faith, just as there are many people of faith who belong to pro-choice organizations. But I still would still call these progressive pro-life groups secular because the arguments they are making against abortion are secular arguments.
Here are links for a couple of groups who oppose abortion and are explicitly not religious:
Atheist & Agnostic Pro-Life League
Libertarians for Life
Comment by: NCxian
14Ah, here are the arguments I was looking for! Thanks, Rachel!
Comment by: Helen
15NCxian, I found a link the other day to a debate between 2 atheists about abortion.
Abortion Debate
I had a quick look at it. The person who is against abortion seems to use some of the same arguments people of faith use, in defending the ‘rights’ of the unborn child. But I didn’t read the whole thing to see all of the argument.
In my experience there aren’t many people who are thrilled about late-term abortions, unless the mother is in serious danger otherwse or unless there is something very wrong with the baby so they think the baby can’t live a happy life.
With early abortions my impression is that many people are pragmatic and don’t count a ball of cells as a ‘baby’.
I think it’s awkward that abortions are allowed at a stage when premature babies can be born and survive. In England I’m fairly sure there’s a limit on how late you can have an abortion. It does seem strange to me that a healthy baby can be ‘aborted’ in the US at a stage where the baby could survive if born.
Comment by: Kathleen
16It doesn’t seem to me that such a view is all that difficult to arrive at by oneself. The most pro-life people I know don’t support an abortion at, say, 8 months. At that point, nearly everyone would consider it a(n unborn) child in question, rather than a fetus or “ball of cells.” So, for many people, birth is not the cut-off for deciding personhood. Your other options are conception or…”oh, sometime in the middle.” I think there are a lot of people who prefer the clean-cut choice of conception as the beginning of life because there doesn’t seem to be any other satisfying answer. Another reason could even be having known an extremely premature baby who survived - I know that it had a big impression on me when I found out just how early my cousin was born, once he was already a healthy and incredible smart 16 yo.
FTR, I’m one of the greys myself.
Comment by: Karen
17U.S. law also limits the time up to which a woman can have an abortion. From the Wikipedia entry on Roe vs Wade:
Eliza would know more about this than I, but I’m quite sure that second-trimester abortion is very rare in this country. Unfortunately, those who choose it are typically the poorest, neediest, most ignorant women - who either do not realize they are pregnant until very late in the game, or are fearful of telling their parents or boyfriends or are in total denial. New York state is one of the few states that still allow unrestricted access to second-term abortion.
Comment by: Meredith Eugene Hunt
18–From Helen’s introductory remarks.
How do you know that the one member’s behavior was inappropriate? Do you completely believe Time? Or the abortionist? (A sideline: What is the appropriate behavior towards a person who kills 50 innocent children every week?) Pastor Hutchinson criticized creating cartoon images of one’s opposite on an issue, but he and the article made the anonymous member of the church into a straw man, a non person, easily knocked down. I know this well, because I was that person. If you wish, Google search my name and the word -abortion- and read more about who I am and what I think. You likely will be surprised. There certainly is another side to this story that Time did not tell. For instance, my organization runs a Pregnancy Helpline and does Sidewalk Counseling outside -Lorrie’s- abortion business. (She is not just the clinic leader.) The letter I sent to her neighbors asked them to pray for her. And so on…
lifeadvocates@earthlink.net
Comment by: Helen
19Thanks for your comment, Meredith. I reposted it with my response here:
Meredith’s side of the story