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.

Posted on

Dialogue Story: Rachel and Chloe at Aquinas College

by

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.

Posted on

Bring Structure to Your Dialogues by Making Little Agreements

by

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.

Posted on

Responding to the Astute Observation That I Am a Man

by

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.

Posted on

Is Abortion Justified by an Inalienable Right to Sex?

by

I wrote an article two weeks ago describing the first part of my conversation with a student I’m calling “Brent.” If you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to check that out first. It has the first half of this story as well as four practical dialogue tips I think you’ll find helpful in your conversations.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

IMG_0224-Blog

Trigger warning: This is a story of me grappling with the view Brent had that abortion is necessary so that people can have sex without consequences. I challenged Brent to change his view with a thought experiment. I had to push Brent pretty hard though, and the thought experiment became pretty grim. If you’re sensitive to dark thought experiments involving born babies being killed, this may not be the article for you.

I had a suspicion that there was a part of Brent’s view that we hadn’t talked about yet, so I took a chance and asked him:

Tim: I have a guess about something that’s going on in the background for you. Do you think people have a fundamental right to have sex?

Brent: Yeah I do. It’s like, one of the most important things in life.

Tim: That’s really interesting. I think if the right to have sex is inalienable and if limiting that right is immoral, then you’re right, abortion does needs to be legal. Birth control fails sometimes, and sometimes people don’t want to have kids. In order to protect an inalienable right to sex, legal abortion is necessary.

Brent: Yes, exactly. And it’s especially necessary for women to have equality. Men can have sex without being forced to take care of children, they can skip out, but women need abortion to be equal.

Tim: Yeah, I think this is an important point, and I think it’s one of the reasons people want so strongly for abortion to be available. The way pregnancy works, it doesn’t create symmetrical responsibilities for men and women. You can curse God if you want, maybe it isn’t fair, but you’re right, it’s not symmetrical. This is one of the reasons I’m strongly in favor of harsher punishments for men that don’t pay child support. Given this asymmetry, a just society should compensate by protecting women from being taken advantage of. It’s similar to how a just society should respond to the fact that men are generally physically stronger than women by working as hard as it can to stop men from assaulting them, sexually or otherwise.

Brent: Yeah, that makes sense.

Tim: I don’t think the right to have sex is the kind of fundamental right that justifies killing children though. Sex is important, but the right of one person to live has to be above the right of another person to have sex.

Brent: I disagree. Stopping people from having sex is like slavery. It shuts down their ability to live life in a human way.