Higher Ground
The murder, just over two weeks ago, of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller has deeply wounded and enraged the pro-choice community while also, some would argue, providing it with further reason to mistrust anti-abortion activists. Perhaps a different kind of wound has been inflicted on the anti-abortion side, and in particular on those moderates who dislike abortion, but don't tolerate violence, which includes most of the pro-life movement and public. Now they are sometimes treated as if they, too, are extremists.
And so, in the aftermath of this senseless attack we risk losing something else dear, the momentum of the growing common ground movement; the search for a different, more constructive way forward in the abortion debate. Shortly before Dr. Tiller's murder, President Obama had just begun to usher this movement through the White House doors. His appointees had started calling together leaders from both sides to sit at the same table. His argument has been that the two sides can disagree sharply on a fundamental issue and yet still find areas of agreement on which they can work together.
The brutal murder of Dr. Tiller threatens to poison the nascent dialogue Obama initiated. More pervasively, it threatens to make cynicism about another's motives acceptable even rational. After such a heinous act it is easy to grow remote, to give up on efforts of understanding, to believe the worst of one another. The violence perpetrated against Dr. Tiller is an attack on common ground, too, whether intended or not.
But, especially in the aftermath of the murder, a common ground movement must persist, and grow stronger. If not, we surrender reasoned and civil debate at gunpoint. If we retreat to our respective corners, we cede control of the dialogue to extremists, and with it any hope for a better and a different, more constructive way of reconciling, and living with differences.
Obama is the first President to actually take steps to bring some diplomacy to this national conflict and invite us, together, to dream up a better process. We must take up the invitation. We need common ground more than ever. Improving the national dialogue is one way to prevent future acts of violence.
The majority of Americans long for some progress on this most intransigent of issues. A recent Pew Research Center poll found two out of three want both sides of the abortion conflict to explore areas of common ground. And while a majority of Americans are unified behind the idea of common ground, many activists on both ends of this issue are justifiably critical and suspicious of it; suspecting these are code words for concession and compromise on deeply held and long-fought-for convictions.
So it's important to be clear. Common ground isn't a panacea, and isn't supposed to be. Signing on to this experiment, and it is an experiment, doesn't mean we will stop working to protect legal abortion or overturn it, depending on where we stand. And yet, even if we will not resolve our fundamental disagreement, we should agree on ways to prevent unintended pregnancy and help reduce the need for women and girls to have to make the, often difficult, decisions that accompany it.
In doing so, we are not searching for compromise. It's not an attempt to find the lowest common denominator. But as the organization The Search for Common Ground writes, an effort to locate a " 'highest common denominator.' Not having two sides meet in the middle, but having them identify something together that they can aspire to and are willing to work towards."
Already there are some leaders on either side of this issue gathered together around the table and committed to finding areas of agreement. RHRealityCheck, the leading online source of news, commentary and community for reproductive health and rights, this week launched OnCommonGround, an online forum for those interested in exploring common ground. I am moderating that online discussion, selecting posts that I believe will help move the dialogue forward. This is an experiment that we know may not work. But, as President Obama advised, the only way it can is if we come to the conversation with "open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words."
This will seem a too-lofty aspiration to some. And I've been told that. But I think of the last time I saw Dr. Tiller, just a few weeks before his murder, at the National Abortion Federation conference. He and about 120 providers and clinic staff came to a panel I helped organize on making adoption a more accessible choice for women confronting unintended pregnancy. Our session was wrapping up when Dr. Tiller rose and addressed the audience of abortion providers, saying "If you have not helped a woman place a baby for adoption, I encourage you to. It's the most powerful thing. It's just the most powerful thing. It's the most powerful thing." He went on to explain that several times he had patients who were too far along in their pregnancy to terminate but were unable to parent. He and his family took them in, provided them a home until the time of delivery. He said that helping these women come to terms with placing a child for adoption, then delivering their babies and helping them through to placement were some of the most emotional and, clearly, among the satisfying, experiences he had as a provider. He will always be identified with the abortion services he provided. To me, it seemed that Dr. Tiller was urging people to expand their own experiences and their own perspectives of the pro-choice movement. After hearing his impassioned speech about adoption, I wondered if reasonable pro-lifers and Dr. Tiller would have discovered some rich areas of common ground.
The best answer to extremism and hateful murder of Dr. Tiller is for reasonable people on both sides to build a national conversation focused on progress, a national dialogue on common ground. If we each bring even a sliver of the passion to the search for common ground that we have dedicated to our causes, we can be hopeful about the possibilities.
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I truly hope there is common ground to be found, but it's getting harder and harder to guess what that might actually be. We pro-choicers say, let's avoid this situation as much as possible by avoiding unwanted pregnancies in the first place - great - let's talk sex ed - we get a NO - let's talk accessible and affordable contraception - NO. Ok, where do we go from there? When the pregnancy occurs - whether unplanned or a pregnancy frought with medical problems for the child or mother - do we agree that the woman has a right to decide what is best? NO. Do we agree that since it is legal abortion should be available and safe? NO. Do you all agree that you will take care of all of these children - either personally or via increasing taxes to make sure that the families have the things they need to try to make the situation work for them and the child? NO. Hm. Not sure any avenue has an easy 'common ground' answer here.
I honestly don't think there is any common ground, just wishful thinking. I believe abortion to be murder so what could we reach "common ground" upon?
That does not mean it will or has to ,,,certainly in the first trimester, a fertilized egg can still be removed with no dramatic consequences or pain to the fetus, which is barely formed and has no feeling or concept of self at that stage.
Its funny that so much attention is given to a fetus yet we treat live animals who we slaughter daily , and raise in pityful conditions, as inconsequential as though they have no right to think, live or feel pain,,,why is a damm fetus so superior?, do we not think too hightly of ourselves as humans.? We are just animals as they are, just a bit higher developed . do we deserve such a superiority status?
God is in no way in our own image,,,how preposterous to believe such a myth! somebody just wrote that to make us feel good. God can only be the force and power of nature itself. everything else is plain imagination! or wishful thinking.
Why do people assume that a child should be "grateful" for being born? I was unwanted; I endured abuse and exploitation, my efforts to get help were rebuffed, and my misery ignored by the people who "love" me. I think I will stick with enemies.
Who are the enemies?
No common ground unless there's an understanding going in that women have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies. It isn't even about 'abortion' per se. As a husband and father of a daughter I am tired of the restrictions being placed on choice and I feel no common ground with anyone in the so-called 'pro-life' movement, no matter what their motivations. Sorry. F them and the horse they're riding.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I still identify with the label "Pro-Life," but my position has evolved over the years, to the point where I understand the need for legal abortion.
The biggest area in which Common Ground should be able to make progress, is improving access to birth control and perhaps, economic assistance, so that there is less need for abortions, which is an admirable goal for both sides.
Another area that will be more problematical to reach agreement on, is when birth control is not successful, improving access to treatments that end a pregnancy early, rather than later. Some on the Pro-Life side see a fertilized egg as a human life, period. They will not be the ones at the table. It will be people like me, who are willing to move the dialogue forward, so that women are given more options and support, and there should be much less need for late-term abortions.
Why is it so hard to understand about a fertilized human ovum?
It has all the necessary Chromosomes and left to it's own devices barring
any difficulties...produces a human child born in about 9 months.
You and I and every other human being started this way...
What's not to understand?
It is true that you and I and every other human being started this way, however every start did not result in a human being. Less than 50% of fertilized eggs make it all the way through the entire process to a living, breathing baby (and 2.5% of those babies have some birth defect).
Your insistence on looking from the wrong end is restricting your understanding.
Every performer at Carnegie Hall took music lessons but not every person who takes music lessons gets to play at Carnegie Hall. Every human adult started as a fertilized eggs but not all fertilized eggs are capable of or even more likely than not to become an adult human.
Your point is ridiculous. Under that logic, most women -- who frequently shed fertilized eggs that don't attach themselves and develop in the womb -- would be constantly holding funerals for their "dead children" that were purged from their bodies.Just because a zygote has the potential to become a human or a duck or an eagle doesn't make it a human or a duck or an eagle until it develops substantially.
Women are people, not incubators. Each person must control his or her own body. The real tragedy of abortion is that it is not possible to treat mother and baby as equal. Those who value women, support choice; those who don't, support what boils down to state-imposed slavery.
"Perhaps a different kind of wound has been inflicted on the anti-abortion side, and in particular on those moderates who dislike abortion, but don't tolerate violence, which includes most of the pro-life movement and public. Now they are sometimes treated as if they, too, are extremists."
Thanks for acknowledging this. The murder of this man (in a church, no less) is directly antethetical to the philosophical beliefs of pro-lifers.
"The brutal murder of Dr. Tiller threatens to poison the nascent dialogue "
Only if you let it.
"Seeking common ground" is merely waging war by another means -- in this case, steering the conversation away from the key issue of whether a woman has a right to control her own body during the early months of pregnancy. No one should be fooled by the anti-choice movement's shrewd propaganda efforts.
Just to say that Merlin7 gets it exactly right: there is no common ground.
...and talking about finding common ground on contraceptives obscures the fact that the anti-abortion crowd wants to criminalize abortions. Changing the subject is *not* finding common ground. It's changing the subject.
There is no common ground with those who are on a mission from god.
"Seeking common ground" isn't from the anti choice movement, it's Obama's suggestion. We should work together so that women can feel empowered to make the choice that is truly right for them rather than making a difficult choice that they don't want to out of fear and/or poverty. I agree that this would reduce the number of abortions significantly which should make anyone who is truly "pro -life" happy.
Women can only be "empowered to make the choice that is truly right for them" if the full range of choice is available to them. Anti-abortion supporters wish to criminalize at least one of those options (and possibly more, considering how many have expanded their criminalization campaign to contraception). We can not work together so long as they continue to lobby for making it illegal for a woman to have full control of her own body.
See first post.
I can never get over the phrase "right to control her own body"...
WHY?
Well because if a woman finds herself to be pregnant, she already lost that ability...
Because a GUY made her pregnant...
And now is no where to be seen:(
It has been my observation and I have told my daughters too, that if you let a guy impregnate you, you will NEVER be able to get rid of him - he will be part of your life from then on.(so be careful who he is)
Look, I'm willing to meet anyone on common groung, but here's the thing that doesn't get talked about anymore and needs to be the center of attention again IMO, instead of "dead babies."
What women gained from Roe was the recognition by the SCOTUS that a privacy right exists in the constitution and it applies EQUALLY to women and their bodies as it does to men.
Either I have the same damn rights as a man to privacy in my body OR I don't - it's either/or and believe me, I fought for this right and I am not giving it up.
THe discussion needs to go back there - to the constitution right to privacy in our own damn bodies.
Privacy equally? Can you explain that one please? What exactly do guys have that girls don't?
No womb is exactly what guys have that girls don't.
One comment on adoption. If a person is not willing to consider adopting a baby with severe disabilities and/or deformities he or she needs rethink their stand on abortion.
Adoption has been offered as the "happy alternative" to abortion - well let me tell y'all something:
IT ISN'T.
I know that personally - you force a young woman to give up her baby and her life is never the same again forever.
Get it? It really goes all over me that people seem to think nothing of the woman who walks away, as if it was easy.
Adoption is fraught with problems from beginning to end. If you haven't lived it, don't even try talking about it.
Adoption still forces a woman to spend several months very publicly pregnant, and then to go through labor and childbirth.
Guess what folks? "Juno" is fiction.
I think there are rare situations where it works out well for everyone, but they are few and far between (for the birth mothers) My mother gave up a baby for adoption (had him taken away from her) in 1953 and I am still hearing about her heartbreak.
"And while a majority of Americans are unified behind the idea of common ground, many activists on both ends of this issue are justifiably critical and suspicious of it; suspecting these are code words for concession and compromise on deeply held and long-fought-for convictions."
That is exactly what it is. There is no common ground. The anti-abortion crowd wants to outlaw it. I think women should control their own bodies. There's no common ground on gay issues, either.
This is all about religion and there's nothing more divisive than god.
There are deeply devout people on both sides of the issue. The problem is when the god in the mirror obscures the teachings of the One they profess to follow.
Thanks, Cristina. I remember when Dr. Tiller said that at the NAF meeting. I don't think many pro-life groups realize that there are a lot of abortion providers who support women choosing adoption. There is no easy answer here, and I imagine achieving any form of common ground will be a long and frustrating process. I do know that you cannot reach common ground with extremists, and I think that it is critical that the pro-life movement completely disengage from their lunatic fringe in order to keep common ground efforts moving forward.
"...any form of birth control is also murder."
Even those forms which prevent the sperm from reaching the egg, which means there is no one to murder?
Including abstainence?
What is common ground?
what has the common ground movement accomplished?
Didn't your book Cristina show that the other side didn't want to reach common ground? that your counterpart got slammed by her side after working with you?
ProChoice people want people to choose adoption. ProChoice people want to prevent abortions by providing birth control and comprehensive sex ed.
It's the anti-choice people that are not stepping up to the plate and working for those goals (prevention of the need for abortion).
Rather than pushing the "common ground" pipe dream of adoption (I think people are either "abortion people" or "keep it" people. If you are going to carry something to term, to give it up, is really really hard), let's spend our time and effort on where there is maximal bang for buck - contraception and sex ed.
I don't think that common ground can be reached by the blog. It needs to be done in focus groups with a facilitator per Frances Kissling's post
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/06/15/how-talk-about-abortion
Agreed, the only common ground is to reduce the number of uniintended and unwanted pregnancies - and, as proven by Bush's administration - abstinence only education does not do that. We need free and readily available birth control and comprehensive sex education. As a woman who placed a child in an open adoption when I was in high school, and who still volunteers at the non-profit agency that helped me do that: we could also use more resources for women who chose adoption. It is not an easy choice. I have struggled with it far more often and forcefully than the abortion I had - but I see my beautiful daughter and I am proud of the CHOICE I made. I spend several hours a week just driving girls around (who have decided to place or parent - both are welcome at the agency), or talking to them, or plannign snacks for the meetings. We always need more money (lawyers, counseling, helping girls who chose to parent go to school and set up a home) and more volunteers, more homes willing to host girls who have been turned out of their homes. I would think that both sides would want adoption to be easier and less prevalent.
Why are you generalizing here? Not all pro life people are Republicans you know.
Please DO try to do a little research, you might have a happier day because you did!
Actually, the common ground movement has hardly gotten started.
My neighbor--nicest woman you would ever want to meet--feels that not only is abortion murder, any form of birth control is also murder.
When I ask her what should happen to unwanted babies, she says it is in god's hands.
There is no common ground with people who believe that god will punish those who use birth control.
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