What do you do when pro-choice talking points feel so stupid or so evil that you don’t even know what to say? I talked in my last blog post about what to do when something is so far beyond the pale that even most pro-choice people would agree with you about it—like if someone actually straight up says it should be legal to kill toddlers to reduce overpopulation. Often if a pro-choice person says something like that, it’s because they feel trapped. So I talked about some strategies for helping them feel safe enough in the conversation to edit what they said if it’s not really what they think.
But there are some things that feel obviously crazy to a lot of pro-life people that don’t feel crazy to a lot of pro-choice people. If the pro-choice person you’re talking with says one of those things, it’s probably not because they feel trapped, but just because it just genuinely doesn’t feel obvious to them the way it does to you.
For example, let’s take a close look at “I know it’s a human being, I just don’t care.” Not every pro-choice person would agree with that (and many wouldn’t put it quite that starkly), but a lot of pro-choice people agree that a fetus is a living human organism, and some will even grant at least for the sake of argument that fetuses are people with equal rights, and they still think abortion should be legal. What’s happening when a pro-choice person says that?
Step 1: Clarify
Step 1 is the same whether you’re dealing with something that feels crazy to most pro-choice people or something that just feels crazy to you—and sometimes it can even help you figure out which of those two buckets you’re dealing with.
If you have lots of dialogue experience and training and you have some guesses about what they might mean, offering multiple plausible, smart options for what they could be saying is a great way to go. It will help reassure them that you’re not trying to straw man them—you genuinely want to understand the smartest version of what they think. But if in the moment you’re genuinely just flabbergasted, you can only think of one thing they might mean, and it sounds genuinely crazy to you, it also works to say something like:
“Do you have more words you can put around that? I want to understand your view accurately, and I’m guessing that the way I’m interpreting that isn’t what you actually mean. What I’m hearing you say is that you know abortion is a horrific human rights violation—that it unjustly kills an innocent person—and you don’t care. But I’m guessing that’s not what you actually mean—can you help me understand you better?”
As you do this, try not to come across as shocked. Fairly or not, pro-life people have a reputation for being sheltered and pearl-clutching. (Think every homeschool stereotype you’ve ever heard.) One really good goal to have in mind as you dialogue is to disrupt the caricature of pro-lifers that the person you’re talking with has in the back of their head. I don’t mean you shouldn’t be deeply grieved by abortion. And once you’ve built up enough rapport in a conversation, it can sometimes be helpful to be transparent about your grief with a pro-choice person. But get to the point where you know enough about what kinds of things pro-choice people tend to think and say that you’re not shocked when you hear them.
Step 2: Have a Map
As you get more dialogue experience and training, one super helpful thing you’ll get more and more able to contribute to the conversation is actually the smartest pro-choice arguments. That may sound counterintuitive—why would you want to make smarter pro-choice arguments? Doesn’t that lose you debate points or something?
But one thing that happens a lot in abortion conversations, especially with pro-choice people who haven’t thought deeply about their view, is that they say something fuzzy and inarticulate but know that there’s a smart, articulate thought there that they’re reaching for. Often a pro-life person who knows a little bit more about abortion arguments can easily dunk on the fuzzy thing the pro-choice person just said, but that very rarely changes the pro-choice person’s mind (even if you dunk on it gently and kindly). And it actually shouldn’t change their mind—it’s not because they’re being obstinate and closeminded, it’s because on some level they know there’s a smart argument they were trying to express, and you haven’t answered that smart argument yet. If you can help them get to the smartest version of the argument they’re trying to make, then you have a chance to actually answer it, and a much better shot at helping them change their mind.
It’s like having a map of the abortion dialogue in your head. If someone is trying to talk to you about a city and they say “It’s that one with all the movies,” you could make them feel stupid for saying something vague and inarticulate, but that won’t get you very far. Or, you could helpfully say, “Oh, are you thinking of Los Angeles, or maybe Hollywood?” If you can help a pro-choice person get from the fuzzy thing they actually said to the articulate thing they were trying to think of, you’ll be able to have a much more productive conversation.
Step 3: Learn How to Argue for the Obvious
The final skill you need to be able to respond effectively is arguing for the obvious. (For the specific example of arguing that it matters that fetuses are human beings, one really great tool is the Equal Rights Argument.) Usually, if something feels so obvious to you that you don’t even know how to make an argument for it, that’s actually a gap in your own understanding of your view. If you can fill that gap, you’ll be able to meet pro-choice people where they are in a way that can actually help them understand where you’re coming from, and ultimately change more minds and save more lives.
