April 2, 2001
Opponents on abortion forge private dialogue
___By Jeffrey MacDonald
___Religion News Service
___BOSTON (RNS)--Hours after gunman John Salvi opened fire on two Massachusetts abortion clinics on Dec. 30, 1994, Nicki Nichols Gamble and Fran Hogan stood face-to-face at a local television studio, calm enough to address millions but too passionate to speak to each other.
___ As president of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Gamble was "furious" to see Hogan standing there in her capacity as president of Women Affirming Life. The two were archenemies, split by high-profile abortion politics. Hogan was too reserved at the time to offer Gamble condolences: "I just went into my shell because that's where I was at that moment." A deafening silence reigned in the studio's "ready room" until cameras finally rolled.
___What a difference six years can make.
___Today, Gamble and Hogan talk regularly and claim to appreciate the depth of their enormous differences. The secret has been lots of secrecy and structured dialogue--150 hours' worth over the past six years--within a group of six women leaders from opposite sides of America's most divisive social issue.
___"Most of us spend all of our lives talking with people with whom we agree," Gamble said. "What this has been for me is an experience of exploring the depths and the profundity of diversity."
___"I think it is the love that held us together" through six years of talks, Hogan said. "I realized there is a tremendous chasm that is bigger than the abortion issue. ... There is a difference in our worldviews, and that was an understanding I didn't have. I'm hopeful, however. I don't think it is an unbridgeable chasm."
___Dialogues on abortion or other highly charged issues aren't especially new. What makes this particular endeavor so remarkable, though, is the sustained participation among top-level leaders in abortion activism for a period of many years.
___"I think this is the first (dialogue) to be done on such a high level," said Anne Doyle, a spokesperson for the group.
___Participants got some high-level prodding back in 1995 from then-Gov. William Weld, who supports legal abortion, and Archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law, who opposes it. Both called for talks to diffuse tension in the wake of the Salvi shootings, which left two dead and five injured. But at the time, no one expected talks to last more than a few months.
___Each team sent heavy hitters. In addition to Gamble, other supporters of legal abortion were Anne Fowler, an Episcopal priest and longtime activist, and Melissa Kogut, executive director of Massachusetts NARAL, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Abortion opponents joining Hogan included Barbara Thorp, director of the Archdiocese of Boston's pro-life office, and Madeline McComish, past president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life.
___Despite theirstatuses, though, group members were fearful of what the talks might bring.
___Hogan expected "a scandal if people thought I was treating abortion merely as a matter of opinion on which reasonable people could differ." Gamble said she "wondered if the talks would divert my energies" away from her cause.
___The group met for three-hour intervals in windowless rooms where tension was sharp from the get-go. Two facilitators prohibited the use of "hot button" words--"unborn child," "termination of pregnancy," "murder" and "fetus" among others. Participants agreed to use other terms, such as "human fetus," and not to argue for their positions. They sought instead to "de-escalate the rhetoric" and "reduce the risk of future shootings."
___"We started having a lot of silent meetings," Gamble joked.
___Over time, those at the table came to see the contours of two incompatible worldviews. McComish spoke of a chasm that "turned out to be much deeper and wider than anything I had ever imagined." Others agreed.
___"Over time, I began to see 'pro-life' as descriptive of the others' beliefs--that life itself, more important than quality of life, was their pre-eminent value," Kogut said. Complicating matters was the fact that all of the abortion opponents were Roman Catholic, while none of the legal-abortion supporters shared that faith.
___Common experience helped bridge some gaps. All were white, middle-class women living uncommonly contentious lives.
___"There was lots of talk about what they have in common as women in the public eye as advocates on a controversial issue," Doyle said. They also bonded by sharing information from their lives.
___"While we struggled over profound issues," the group wrote in a Boston Globe article in January, "we also kept track of personal events in one another's lives, celebrating good times and sharing sorrows. As our mutual understanding increased, our respect and affection for one another grew."
___As the group hoped its efforts would trickle down and diffuse pitched rhetoric, news organizations noticed a change at the first anniversary of the Salvi shootings.
___"Has the past year brought the lowering of voices called for by Cardinal Law, Gov. William Weld and others? The answer seems to be a qualified yes, at least among some activists," wrote Globe reporter Don Aucoin in December 1995.
___Though the group intends to keep meeting and to bring its talks into national settings, some conclusions are already known. One is that no one's budging from her original position.
___"We all have become firmer in our views on abortion" through the dialogues, the group wrote. Yet even with deep differences intact, the group is hopeful for other types of progress.
___"In this world of polarizing conflicts, we have glimpsed a new possibility--a way in which people can disagree frankly and passionately, become clearer in heart and mind about their activism, and, at the same time, contribute to a more civil and compassionate society."
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