The Anti-Manichaeist

I decided to post a link to my How to be Pragmatically Prolife post over at TPMCafe.  I did this at a liberal blog, because I knew that it was critical to see how the approach would fair with prochoicers.  It is critical that their opposition be reduced for the idea’s success.  I have had a good deal of response and, while they did oppose the idea(after all, they are prochoice, not prolife.), I believe I’ve been able to respond to them well.  And, what has been more important for me, the dialogue has largely been courteous.  And that, sadly, is something that does not happen often when people deal openly about their differences over the politics of abortion.  Normally, it’s an exercise in futility as people talk past each other or things get heated easily rhetorically.  And so I’m willing to say that so far, I think things have been relatively successful. 

But it is interesting that if you read through my replies at this blog, which have mainly involved prolifers so far, and then my replies at TPMCafe to prochoicers, you might think I was talking out of both sides of my mouth.  However, I think it’s common in politics, or even in more dialogical approaches to apologetics, that we emphasize more those things that agree about with the people we are dialoguing with. 

Now that can be taken too far, but I’m not deviating in either case from what I’ve stated in my manifesto.  I’m being Pragmatic.  I’m being Purpose-Driven wrt the goals of spreading the word first, then getting together a broad coalition in favor of the Constitutional amendment that would contain my idea to depolicize abortion as well as many other local efforts to affirm the rights of females and to prevent abortions.  After all of which, there would begin a general public dialogue, interspersed with some nat’l referendums, about the implications of the human fetal developmental process and what makes us human beings and their implications for the legal and moral framework within which women may choose to elect an abortion. 

dlw