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Discussion
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Hello lovely people!
I own a business next to a church in downtown Smallburg, USA. My business is at street level and I live in the apartment above my business. My apartment has a \~30 foot balcony that has been proudly hosting a 3 foot banner that says “MY BODY MY CHOICE” with a 10 foot drop down that reads “Your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born, but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. That’s pro-birth, not pro-life.”
Yesterday my husband comes home from work and hands me a business card of the church next door with the name and number of a guy (let’s say Steve) who stopped him outside as he was coming in. Steve asked if my husband owned the building, and he said yes, me and my wife do. Steve asked about the banner, and my husband deferred to me, saying he fully supported my views but is less knowledgeable on the subject. Thus the handing of the business card, and a request from Steve for an open discourse with no animosity on his side, he just wants to understand.
Now, having had the night to think about it, I’m torn. On one hand, I think it’s great that he’s even willing to approach a conversation about an issue he probably feels very strongly about, as do I. I think education is our most powerful tool for softening hearts and changing minds, but I also just don’t understand the point of engaging in this conversation. We are both (probably) very strongly entrenched in our specific views, and I just don’t understand why he doesn’t just Google pro-choice arguments and do his own research rather than speaking to me, unless he thinks he can change my mind. I’m also not the spokesperson for abortion rights just because I have a uterus. I’ve never had an abortion. I’ve never had a child. I’ve never had a miscarriage. I feel wholly unqualified to speak about this (other than being a woman who could be effected), but I also feel compelled to because at least it’s engaging in a conversation about a very important issue.
Thoughts?
ETA: He doesn’t appear to be in any sort of position of power in the church (according to the church’s website), he just had a business card of theirs and wrote his info on it. 🙂
ETA2: He used a business card of the church that promotes the church on one side and their version of an AA meeting/worship hour. That recovery meeting was letting out at the time my husband came home, and this guy is involved with this program as a mentor, but has no official standing in the church. I gathered all of this through overhearing his conversations/watching him interact with people before and after the service. I think he has these business cards to hand out to people who might be interested in the recovery meeting, and jotted his name and number down for my husband to pass along.
Having now spoken with him on the phone he is **not** trying to say he is a representative from the church, that was simply what he had on him to write his number on.
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How do I approach an open dialogue about abortion?
updated 1 year, 9 months ago
2 Members
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I generally think the most important communication skill for anyone to learn is reflective listening. It’s the skill that therapists and other counselors use in their listening in order to accurately empathize with the client, and empathy helps people to refrain from judgement.
I’m a huge shill for W.R. Miller’s book, “Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding”, having bought seven copies so far and given away five, but there are other places to learn about reflective listening, such as this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIATzLf-y04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIATzLf-y04)
The basic idea is when you listen your responses are not any of these types of responses that Thomas Gordon identified as “roadblocks” to listening: [https://miinlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/4.-Document-Thomas_Gordons_Twelve_Roadblocks.pdf](https://miinlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/4.-Document-Thomas_Gordons_Twelve_Roadblocks.pdf) . Instead, your responses are a statement reflecting your understanding of what the person has just said to you. That could mean a restatement of the literal text of their message in your own words, continuing the paragraph for them, or stating some subtextual message such as their feelings about the message or what the message implies.
The basic idea is that the positions people hold make sense to them, so in order to understand them it works best to approach it with an attitude of understanding how they are right from their point of view. If it turns out that they aren’t right from their own point of view, they will realize it themselves without you pulling a “gotcha” if you continue to non-judgmentally seek to understand the part of their position that seems inconsistent.
You may have some ideas in terms of what you most need help understanding about their position, and I’ve also got a couple of suggestions for common areas that people on this issue simply do not understand each other. One you’re probably familiar with is of course the analogy between pregnancy and live blood/organ donations, but one I see explored much less often is why is murder illegal? I find that pro-life people tend to think that murder is illegal because it is wrong, and if abortion is a kind of murder then it is also wrong and must be illegal; this differs from my own understanding that murder is illegal because having it be illegal is believed to reduce harm, something that in my opinion a ban on abortion fails to accomplish.
If you have an opportunity to understand and practice reflective listening, it may help if you’re able to be the first one to take the listening role in the conversation so that you can model the listening behavior you would like them to show you when they are in the listening role, and it may also help to establish that boundary in advance, defining how you would like the person in the listening role to behave and asking for them to agree to stop you if you give a reactive judgment in response to what they’ve said, and permission to stop them if they do the same when you are in the speaking role.
At the end of your time in the listening role, a final step to help ensure you’ve understood their position is a somewhat longer summary that ties together everything that you’ve understood instead of a short reflection that only covers their most recent statements.
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I think you should honor how you feel. Give him a business card that refers him to sources detailing pro choice arguments. Give him a link to the Freakanomics episode that discusses the immensely positive impact reproductive rights have had on this country as a whole.
In my experience these people don’t want actual conversations and they don’t want to ‘agree to disagree’. Rather, they literally just want us to do as they tell us. -
My best self supports having the open dialogue, and perhaps if you don’t change his mind on abortion you might open some doors to the church providing some aid and advocacy for feeding and housing children. My gut, however, says he is asking you as a woman to do the work of educating him on something infinitely Google-able. If you do decide to chat with him, I would suggest starting with some hard boundaries on the conversation including time constraints.
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Others have given great responses. I also want to point out his ultimate goal is likely to have you take down the sign, especially because it’s next to his church.
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He is your neighbor. I don’t think you need to try to convince him you are right, or even explain yourself to him. I think if you can use your reflective listening skills, and let him feel like you respect him and understand his position, that is enough. He most likely doesn’t feel comfortable with your sign, which is what prompted his request for dialog.
Remember – this issue before us is not whether abortion is *moral*, but whether it is *legal*. Assuming there are some situations where, weighing the various factors, an abortion could be a not-immoral choice, the only question is who gets to decide which is which. And, for me, that isn’t a role the government should play. Are some abortions moral? Yes. Are some questionable, from a moral perspective? I respect that some people feel that yes, there are. So who gets to weigh the factors in a particular case? The mother, in consultation with her doctors and, if she wishes, her clergy and her loved ones. And if she makes the “wrong” choice, that is between her and her god, and she has to live with that. I can’t know all the factors in a woman’s choice, so I cannot judge it, or adjudicate it, and neither should anyone else, let alone some politicians who do not know her and who are not doctors.
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I’d start with a letter asking the ‘why’ you expressed above, and what he hopes to get out of a one to one conversation that he couldn’t get through reading all the statements on the Internet that outline why this is important.
It might save you the “sitting duck” scenario I fear you’d be set up to deal with if you went in good faith to talk to this person one on one.
If you *do* meet with him in person, take personal protection and don’t eat or drink anything he offers unless you get it yourself from the counter at a coffee shop, etc. w/ a lid on it.
That said, here’s a story that might help.
In my 20s I fell pregnant in spite of HBC. I think still being on my meds into the second trimester before I figured it out had something to do with the miscarriage that started around 14 weeks, but I’m not sure since I’ve since been diagnosed with PCOS and likely endometriosis. But back then, since I didn’t have many options for affordable healthcare, when the only doctors I could access said “Just let everything pass on its own,” and I was still miserable and bleeding a week later with, according to this doctor, a discernible but intermittent fetal heartbeat, I was denied a D&C to remove the remaining tissue. I had no more sick days left at work, and I worked on my feet (pharmacy) for upwards of 10 hours a day on average. It was the longest 50 hr/week “part time” job I’d ever had. The insurance covered next to nothing related to women’s health except HBC.
Off to the $400 abortion clinic we went, across a state line, with my mental and emotional health deteriorating and my job at risk.
Sitting in the lobby, most of the other people there were somewhere in their twenties, until a tall woman with salt-and-pepper braids came in with a tall, morbidly obese minor girl with her in pink pajamas with socks and black soccer sandals. The child didn’t look at anyone, didn’t have a book or anything with her. She just sat.
I didn’t want to believe which one was waiting for that kind of care until the two started talking. The child asked her grandma, “When the doctor’s done, there won’t be a baby in there no more?” and her grandmother said “That’s right, baby.” Then the child asked, “How’d it get in there anyway?” Glances shot from woman to woman all around the room. Grandma needed a moment to compose herself. I think we all felt the same flash of anger and regret that washed across her face in that moment. The men who were present, ostensibly to drive partners and sisters home, hadn’t noticed the exchange, but everyone within about 20′ of that unfortunate, confused child did. We added an extra layer to our own mourning at that moment.
Within a few minutes of that I was called back for my procedure and while the injectable sedative worked well, I also shake off pain relief and sedatives quickly, so in spite of the pain and nausea I was awake enough to do some quick math when they checked the girl’s chart.
She was less than 4 months into her 13th year of life.
They wouldn’t let me go sit with her in the recovery room while she sobbed her heart out into a plastic covered pillow. I just remember the toes of her pink polka-dot fuzzy socks hanging off the side of the cot where she curled up on her side like the little kid she had been before some jumped up boy, or worse “adult” man that belongs in jail to this day, somehow or another got her alone.
Grandma and that little girl were the only people of color at the clinic that day other than a couple of employees. Is that because it was only the white girls that could come up with the $400 to be there, or something else? Maybe we were all just “sluts whoring around without the benefit of marriage” and that poor child was the only innocent there that a xtian god feels “deserved” to be free of that burden?
But there wasn’t a single man in there listening to her cry, and she wasn’t praying to Jesus or anybody else, so I can’t be certain.
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If you don’t believe you can calmly educate him (which I’m dealing with right now), collecting resources for him would be fine. You are allowed to refuse a ‘debate’ about your rights, but I think it would be a good opportunity to educate. Mama Dr. Jones is an OBGYN youtuber who has some valuable resources.
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Saw a good tik-tok about logic based abortion talks. Fetuses are alive&abortion stops that=murder.. argument a fetus is a special form of life, like a coma patient is a special form of life. Agreed? Different but both wholly dependent upon another? Agreed. Turning off life support is a sad difficult decision carried out by that coma victims loved ones, not by the state, not even by doctors. Etc etc etc.
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I’ve skimmed responses so I’ll try not to repeat and simply add. I’m with you in that there are thousands of online resources that he could turn to instead of asking for your free time and effort. I might offer anyways, but be up front that you’ve honestly heard everything you need to from the pro-life argument, and unless he can offer something that isn’t rooted in his religion, which you don’t follow, then you don’t want to hear more. If it applies to you, you can explain that you used to be pro-life until you learned more, and you’re not changing your mind. If he truly wants to listen to you, with the knowledge that you don’t want to listen to him, then offer some of the perspectives shared here. Ultimately, you can also tell him that he’d gain a more in depth understanding by listening to the people who have more direct personal experience with the subject.
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I personally wouldn’t trust him. Maybe that isn’t helpful, but this screams bad situation to me. He could have knocked on the door at any time and talked to you directly. Yet, he chose to make contact through your husband. That tells me a lot and it is more about setting you right than about abortion.
I like the suggestions of others. Print out a list of resources. But I wouldn’t invite him to your home or have any kind of one on one. I don’t trust people like this.
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That’s a good opportunity! Be gentle. Remember: this person literally sees abortion as baby murder. They’re trying to be open minded, but they’ve been indoctrinated all their life, and they sincere see this as support for baby murder. So ne delicate and deliberate with your words.
I’d say have all the Bible verses that are pro abortion ready. Don’t rip them out randomly, just be aware of which ones they are, Incase it comes up.
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I imagine his goals for this conversation are to first get you to take the banner down, followed by letting you know their church engages in charity projects that help feed and house poor families (contrary to the sign). I doubt he expects to convert you in the dialogue – just wants to calm down his congregation.
Likewise to expecting him to google pro-choice points, you can search pro-life points, which from my understanding revolve around life beginning at conception rather than first breath. He sees himself as an empathetic person, so listen to what he has to say about how he got to his position of prioritizing non-viable fetuses over a woman’s life and how government can scientifically identify moment of conception.
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If this is a conversation in good faith I think it is worth having. You may never align on abortion but may agree on pro child/women issues.
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Ask the question,
In a burning fertility clinic, you can only save one,
a) a 6 month old baby
b) test tube of 1,000 embryos
No option c, option c is everyone dies
What who would you save?
This is completely stolen from another post btw
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BODILY AUTONOMY is the most basic Civil Right there is.
Freedom of spirituality, then control over your own body. The end.
There’s a million reasons a woman might need an abortion, let HER decide what’s right for HER body.
If someone is so concerned about ‘babies’ then let them volunteer at womens shelters and food banks. Let them organize diaper and formula drives for mothers in poverty. Let them adopt all the older, special needs kids that are stuck in the foster system. Maybe if they stay busy helping actual babies they won’t have so much free time to worry about hypothetical babies.
