Category Archives: Practical Dialogue Tips

After going through the fire of 3,000+ conversations with pro-choice people, we’ve learned a lot of things that create an environment in the conversation where the other person is more likely to change their mind. These are some of those nitty-gritty dialogue tips.

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The Rational Nature Argument for Equal Treatment

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The change we’ve made to the way we argue for equal treatment for the unborn, and why we made it.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.

It’s been almost a year since I started this blog and by far my most popular post is my explanation of the basic Equal Rights Argument that I and my colleagues at Justice For All have been using in conversations with pro-choice people. It became so effective that I called it the “most undervalued argument in the pro-life movement.”

We’re arguing that if adult humans deserve equal treatment, that must be because they all have something in common, and it must be a property that they all have equally. We try to figure out what that property is that seems to be grounding equal treatment, and then ask whether the unborn also has that property equally. If they do, then the unborn deserve equal treatment.

What is the property that human adults have equally? Originally, we were saying that it seems like we all have “humanness” in common. If someone asks why “humanness” matters, I would say something like, “I believe there’s this guy who walked out of his own tomb 2,000 years ago. He believed in the Torah, which says that God made humans in His own image, that He did something special with humans that He didn’t do with other animals, giving me a reason to believe that ‘humanness’ might morally matter.”

But as I’ve used this argument lately, I’ve noticed there’s a pragmatic problem: it’s not terribly convincing to pro-choice atheists who immediately brush off the argument as inherently religious. That’s a practical problem, but I think there’s an even greater problem philosophically: the “humanness” argument can’t account for the right to life of fictional aliens.

Remember that scene in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jones is hilariously interrogating Frank?

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Dialogue Story: Rachel and Chloe at Aquinas College

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I want to share one more dialogue story from our outreach last month at Aquinas College. Two fantastic students from the Students for Life club at University of Michigan, Rachel Crawford and Chloe Alberta, spoke to several pro-choice girls. This is what happened.

Pictured: Dialogue story - Rachel and Chloe talking to students at Aquinas College.

Rachel (left) and Chloe (right) talking to students at Aquinas College.

Chloe begins the story this way:

Towards the end of our day of outreach, Rachel and I had a conversation with two girls, who I’ll call Amber and Linda. Initially they were very hesitant to participate in the poll, because, as Amber informed us, they didn’t really like to think about the issue of abortion and didn’t really have an opinion on it.

Grabbing my handy fetal development chart from the ERI outreach brochure, I asked: “Would you mind if I tell you why it is extremely important to me that people think about abortion?” I showed them the fetal development chart and told them that I believe that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and that that human life deserves to be protected.

I asked them in the name of having ALL the information possible, in order to make the MOST informed decision, would they be willing to look at a picture that shows what an abortion looks like? They declined because, “It’s probably really disturbing.” “You’re right,” I said. “It’s extremely disturbing and I really have trouble looking at them too.” I explained to them that I see that horrible image of the death of an unborn child, and I see one of the biggest human rights violations of our time. And I cannot be silent about that, and I think that is why it is so important to have an opinion about abortion and not let those human lives be looked over.

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Bring Structure to Your Dialogues by Making Little Agreements

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In the spring of 2013 I was standing in front of the Justice For All Exhibit at Colorado State University, trying to start conversations about abortion. I was struggling that day because most of the time I tried to invite someone into a conversation, they reacted suspiciously. I decided to try something different.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.
Photo credit: Justice For All. Used with permission.

Photo credit: Justice For All. Used with permission.

Four girls walked past me and I called out, “Hey, would you like to share your opinion about abortion?” Three of them ignored me and kept walking, but one of them, who I’ll call “Jill,” turned and paused, trying to decide if she wanted to take the bait. Her friends, now a couple of yards ahead of her, called back, “Come on, you don’t want to talk to that guy!”

I looked Jill right into her eyes and said, “If I promise to only ask clarification questions to try to understand your view unless you give me permission to do otherwise, will you talk to me and share your view?”

She thought about my offer for a few seconds and then hesitantly said, “okay,” and walked over. For the first ten minutes of our conversation we discussed difficult circumstances women find themselves in, and the nature of the unborn. She made some indefensible claims about embryology, the kinds of claims I couldn’t correct without making statements. I asked her if I could make some statements to clarify some things she was getting wrong, and she easily said “yes.” It only took me a few minutes to show her I was compassionate and reasonable, so by then we had built enough rapport and trust that she was willing to listen. Jill had to go to class about fifteen minutes later, but we had a valuable twenty-five minute conversation in which I helped her to understand why people like me are pro-life and what the unborn are.

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Responding to the Astute Observation That I Am a Man

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

Any time I go to a college campus to do a pro-life outreach, I can count on three things: 1) I will forget to wear sunblock, 2) I will not drink enough water, and 3) I am going to be reminded that I cannot get pregnant. Inevitably, then the pro-choice person will ask, “how can you have an opinion about abortion when you can’t get pregnant?”

While I do not consider this to be a significant intellectual challenge, it does make for a very important rhetorical challenge. I have seen the fate of many a conversation hang on how well the pro-life man responds to this question. His goal cannot merely be to give a logically valid response. In order for the conversation to remain productive, he must be reasonable, and he must be winsome. [Tweet that!]

It should be obvious that saying men can’t have an opinion about abortion is, at a strictly logical level, merely an ad hominem argument, an attack against the person. It is also about as clear an example of sexism as I have ever seen. But the pro-choice person that is inclined to use this argument does not see it that way. Logically speaking, it is that way, but trying to convince her of that is quite a gamble in my experience.