<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t pay attention to everything in this boom-buzzing confusion called life. We necessarily focus on some elements and omit others. \u00a0So we \u201cframe,\u201d (The primary text is Irving Goffman\u2019s 1974 Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience<\/em>)<\/p>\n To frame is to capture something well, but to omit other points \u2013 which, as time goes on, prudence might teach us are key. Individuals constantly project onto the world around them the interpretive frames that allow them to make sense of it; we only shift frames (or even realize that we have been framing) when an inescapable incongruity calls for a \u201cframe-realignment.\u201d We only become aware of our habitual frames when something challenges us to replace one frame with another.<\/p>\n Frame alignment happens when we find that we must leave the security of our moral tribes and present our interpretations to skeptics in a way that makes the most sense to us, and then to them, both in terms of first principles and their prudent applications. Within our moral tribes we mostly do tactics and brand the enemy as thoroughly disreputable.\u00a0 In frame alignment, we persuade by listening in dialog to the \u201cmorally other\u201d and then seeking common ground with them. Frame alignment becomes frame deepening, a broadening of perspective by taking seriously the claimed values of the opposition.<\/p>\n \u201cCommon ground\u201d doesn\u2019t mean any loss of moral deepening, but after the experience of dialogue, finding creative ways for both sides to better advance their moral core. In the abortion controversy, that means advancing the pro-life goal of non-violence and the pro-choice goal of human equality.<\/p>\n Making Free Choice Real Choice: The Need for Common Ground<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s begin with an example from the more brutal real world of hard politics \u2013 the New Jersey \u00a0\u201cFamily Cap.\u201d In January 1992 the New Jersey State Legislative, under Democratic Party control, passed a welfare reform bill with national significance. In its pre-Donald Trump embodiment of a mistrust of government programs, of tax revolts, and of an \u201cindividual-moral-failure\u201d explanation of long-term poverty, New Jersey (NJ) included in its welfare reform a novel Family Cap. Its premise was that the single most important cause of poverty was unmarried women having children. Now, any woman on welfare who became pregnant and gave birth would receive no additional state monies to cover her increased costs (although she would continue to receive food stamps and Medicaid for herself and her \u201cadditional\u201d child).<\/p>\n The monetary pressure to abort offended both pro-life and pro-choice sensibilities and led to some common ground political cooperation. The NJ Right to Life chapter, NJ Citizens for Life, and the NJ Catholic Conference immediately announced their opposition. And because it seemed self-evident that the cap subverted a poor woman\u2019s \u201creproductive freedom,\u201d the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and the NJ Civil Liberties Union announced their opposition. Their joint opposition was endorsed by dozens of other NJ activist groups.<\/p>\n The initial pro-choice\/ pro-life collaboration was tentative and resulted only in a joint press release. When NOW and the ACLU filed a civil rights class action suit, it didn\u2019t include any pro-life members.<\/p>\n By 1998, 20 states had followed New Jersey\u2019s example. But that was not the end of common ground.<\/p>\n More Common Ground Efforts<\/strong><\/p>\n At its heart, common ground signifies the possibility that adversaries can engage in joint ventures without either side compromising their essential principles. \u201c<\/em>Common ground\u201d is not<\/u><\/em> a synonym for \u201ccentrist.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0If common ground jeopardizes integrity, it\u2019s no longer common ground, but compromise.<\/p>\n Common ground is difficult to accomplish, and even more difficult to maintain. Since legal abortion is the status-quo, abortion opponents are wont to find the notion of common ground veering ever closer to compromise.<\/p>\n Dr. Wanda Franz<\/p><\/div>\n In his Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes<\/em> (1990), pro-choice Harvard Professor of Law Laurence H. Tribe has a section entitled \u201cTowards Common Ground\u2019\u2019 which designates a future which, while there are no restrictions on abortion, is \u201ca world of only wanted pregnancies\u201d achieved by better sex education\u00a0 and better and more available contraception. Tribe\u2019s outlook resembles President Clinton\u2019s meme of making abortion safe, legal and rare. Mainstream pro-life organizations viewed such \u201csafe and rare\u201d outlooks more as trench warfare than as dialogue invitations. In her March 16, 1993 National Right to Life News <\/em>editorial NRLC President Wanda Franz cautioned her 3,000 chapters in 52 states that common ground was a \u201cclever pro-choice\u201d strategy seeking \u201cto gain acceptance of the pro-choice position as morally equivalent (or morally superior!) to the pro-life position.\u201d<\/p>\n Both sides feared the term would mean compromise and at least a tacit endorsement of their adversary as morally legitimate. One of the first pro-choice members of the first common ground venture (in St. Louis Missouri, July 12, 1990), B. J. Isaacson-Jones, recalled \u201cthe barrage of resentment from her pro-choice colleagues that left her cuddling up in the fetal position for her days in her Planned Parenthood office.\u201d<\/p>\n Loretta Wagner listens in a legislative hearing<\/p><\/div>\n But in her arguments to her pro-life critics another member of the first common ground effort, Loretta Wagner, pointed out that both\u00a0 sides ought to acknowledge and do something about the high rates of abortion among the poor who felt they had no real choices. \u201cWe need to relieve some of the pressures that cause many women to choose abortion and to make it possible for a kinder society for them and their children. There are many things we can agree on: more and better quality pre- and post-natal care, providing more access to treatment of substance abusing mothers and their children, welfare reforms, day-care, affordable housing, adoption, improved recruitment of foster parents, helping women find jobs and educational opportunities. Neither side wants to see poor women economically compelled to have abortions.\u201d Wagner\u2019s analysis and policy suggestions are far more aligned with the typical Democratic platform than with the Republicans.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The concrete achievements of common ground in its St. Louis birthplace were short-lived. B. J. Isaacson-Jones, director of St. Louis Reproductive Health Services, could not find the additional financial resources to support its adoption placement services for her predominantly poor Black clientele. Loretta Wagner acknowledged that \u201cThe media thinks common ground is a really dramatic new story but I can\u2019t say we\u2019ve done anything dramatic \u2013 just getting the idea out.\u201d<\/p>\n Stories appeared, for example, in USA Today<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, the Washington Post<\/em>, the Boston Globe<\/em>, the Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, Glamour Magazine<\/em>, and countless local media.<\/p>\n One of the early efforts was by the Family Institute of Cambridge (FIC) which in September 1992 initiated a \u201cPublic Conversations Project\u201d whose aim was to improve the debate about abortion through a dialogue that would enable opponents to come to see each other as \u201cpeople just like themselves.\u201d The Public Conversations Project eventually comprised 72 people. But in and interview I had with her, the project director, Laura Chasin, acknowledged that although their goal was to move to problem solving action, the conversations remained \u201cone-shot experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n In February 1992 a grass roots group comprised of six pro-life and six pro-choice women published the North Carolina Piedmont Area Directory of Pregnancy Support Services<\/em> which was distributed in the area\u2019s churches and<\/u><\/em> family planning clinics. \u00a0<\/em>In 1993 Washington DC the Common Ground Coalition for Life and Choice was initiated by a conflict resolution organization founded in 1982 to help international diplomacy. CGCFLC co-coordinators were Mary Jacksteitt, a lawyer with experience in arbitration, and Sister Adrienne Kaufman, OSB, who coordinated the Peace and Conflict Resolution program at Washington University. In 1995 they published a manual entitled Finding Common Ground in the Abortion Conflict,<\/em> explaining that their work is simply the facilitation of dialogue and not any specific proposals or policies.<\/p>\n With their assistance a Buffalo (NY) Coalition for Common Ground was formed to help mitigate the anticipated community conflict that was expected by a \u201cSpring of Life Campaign\u201d announced by Operation Rescue. One of its founders, Rev. Sanford, the executive director of the Buffalo Council of Churches, reports very slight impacts.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n While disheartening for its promoters, the ebb and flow \u2013 and it\u2019s mostly ebb \u2013 of common ground efforts makes good sociological sense. Leaders of social movements, who are preoccupied with daily concerns, are making tactical gains that encourage their membership that they are winning, albeit slowly, the abortion wars and, not incidentally, justifying their most recent fund raising appeal.<\/p>\n Besides, the man-bites-dog media appeal of common ground \u2013 that abortion opponents can actually talk to each other \u2013 has lost any front-page reader appeal.<\/p>\n It’s sociologically na\u00efve to expect that any social-movement organization that can still plausibly promise its membership at least some tactical incremental victories will endorse a common-ground approach. Sociologically, common ground is tangential ground.<\/p>\n But tangential does not mean marginal. In the long run, the common ground frame realignment is highly significant. For abortion adversaries their moral culture \u2013 non-violence and justice for women – is far, far more important than seeking tactical gains and fearing tactical losses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The rest of our series of blog posts from presentations at our 30th<\/sup> anniversary conference in August, 2017:<\/p>\n The History of Framing the Arguments<\/a> (Jim Kelly, the first of three)<\/p>\n The Vital Need for Diversity\u00a0<\/a>(Sarah Terzo)<\/p>\n Making the Case for Peace to Conservatives\u00a0<\/a>(John Whitehead)<\/p>\n My Difficulty in Voting: Identifying the Problem<\/a> (Monica Sohler)<\/p>\n The Mind\u2019s Drive for Consistency<\/a> (Rachel MacNair)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n See\u00a0the list of all our blog posts<\/a>, put in categories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by James Kelly Editor\u2019s Note: This is the fifth in the series of blog posts based on presentations at our 30th Anniversary conference, held August 4-6, 2017. It\u2019s also the second of three posts that come from Jim Kelly. This was at the session of the Consistent Life Network\u2019s research arm, The Institute for Integrated… <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/blog-common-ground-300x295.jpg\")
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