This article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.
On Dec. 30, 1994, a gunman walked into two abortion clinics, just two miles apart in Brookline, Massachusetts, and opened fire. He killed two young women who worked there and wounded several others. The violence sent shock waves throughout the community and became a grim tipping point in the already overheated national debate over abortion.
In the days that followed, leaders on both sides of the abortion debate wrestled with how to move forward. William Weld, Massachusetts’ governor at the time, and Cardinal Bernard Law of the Catholic Church, both called for something different — a dialogue, however fragile it may be, between those who had long seen each other as enemies.
What emerged was an initiative by the Public Conversations Project, later renamed Essential Partners. Two professional facilitators invited six women — three leaders in the “pro-life” movement and three “pro-choice” leaders. The women began gathering in the basement of a house to discuss their views on abortion. They had agreed to meet in secret to avoid additional backlash and media spotlight, and initially only planned to meet four times.
Some in the group were religious — the three “pro-life” women were Catholic, including the head of the pro-life office at the Archdiocese of Boston. The “pro-choice” representatives included the head of Planned Parenthood in Massachusetts and a rector of an episcopal church.
While scrolling my social media last week, I came across the post about the documentary that tells the story of the six women and their “abortion dialogues.” It’s called “Public Enemies. Private Friends” and it’s made by Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins. As I watched it, I was struck by how timely and relevant the story is today.
After the first two-hour meeting, one woman said she felt a sense of relief.
“They didn’t have horns or anything,” Madeline McComish, a pro-life leader in the group, said. “They were just people. Just like us.”
What began as a plan for four meetings stretched into almost six years, and over 150 hours of conversations — an effort one woman later described as “an act of faith.”
To move forward, they had to set ground rules. Even language had to be negotiated: pro-life women wanted to use “unborn baby,” pro-choice women insisted on “fetus.” They settled on “human fetus,” a term neither side loved but both could live with. The women “made a commitment that some of us still find agonizingly difficult: to shift our focus away from arguing for our cause,” the women later wrote in a joint Boston Globe 2001 op-ed.
The paradox of the meetings, the women wrote, was that “while learning to treat each other with dignity and respect, we all have become firmer in our views about abortion.” Their differences did not dissolve; they remained, in their words, “irreconcilable.”
But what did change was the way they saw each other. They began to recognize and appreciate “the dignity and goodness” in their opponents. These meetings even stretched them “spiritually.” The women eventually became friends.
“The connection among them was energized by the clarity of the difference,” said Susan Podziba, one of the facilitators, who was interviewed in the film.
These meetings eventually began to shift the rhetoric in public life. A year after the murders, the pro-life women attended the memorial service where their pro-choice counterparts spoke. In her speech, Nicki Nichols Gamble, the state’s Planned Parenthood president at the time, expressed thanks for the prayers of all who agreed and disagreed with her, instead of advocating for abortion. Rev. Anne Fowler, the pro-choice rector, invoked “God who calls out to all who love peace.”
“We’ve experienced something radical and life-altering that we describe in nonpolitical terms: ‘the mystery of love,’ ‘holy ground,’ or simply, ‘mysterious,’” the women wrote in the op-ed.
Amid many takeaways from the “abortion dialogues” project, one stands out: a path to deeper understanding is rarely smooth. It demands patience, tolerating awkwardness, fear and, sometimes, a really long time.
It also calls for faith — not always religious, but a belief that these difficult conversations can ultimately lead to something good.
Fresh off the press
- Meet ‘Faith Ladies’: How a Jew, Muslim, Humanist, Catholic, Evangelical and Latter-day Saint found common ground and so much more. This is another example of intentional effort to speak across divides and finding understanding and friendship along the way.
- Opinion: When students choose silence and violence — the collapse of free speech on campus.
- Two Utah locals relive their childhood memories with a roller-skating journey from Orem to Sandy, celebrating the enduring legacy of Classic Skating.
Faith and politics
On Sunday, Erika Kirk, dressed in a white suit, addressed the crowd of thousands gathered for the memorial of her husband, Charlie Kirk. Speaking to tens of thousands, she wove faith throughout her remarks. (You can read the full transcript here.)
- Erika noted that Charlie Kirk often invoked the scripture from Isaiah 6:8: “Here I am, Lord. Send me,” interpreting it as literal submission to God’s will, saying Charlie had offered himself to God’s service and God “took him up on that.”
- She described witnessing “great mercy from God” in the fact that her husband died without suffering and noting that he had the “faintest smile” when he died. “He blinked and saw his savior in Paradise. And all the heavenly mysteries were revealed to him.”
- Charlie’s assassination spurred a spiritual revival, Erika said — people reopening Bibles, praying for the first time in years, attending church for the first time.
- Erika urged new converts and others taking “the first step toward a spiritual life” to be shepherded by existing believers. “Water the seed of their faith. Protect it and help it grow.”
- She recounted Charlie going through his contact list on his phone and sending daily Bible verses to the people he knew. “He knew that faith was a habit,” she said.
- She urged believers to shepherd new converts, protect the “seed of their faith,” and to live out God’s design in marriage and family.
- Erika said she forgave the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk. “I forgive him because it was what Christ did in his. What Charlie would do,” she said. The answer to hate, she said, is “love and always love.”
What I’m reading
- Three elderly Austrian nuns, unhappy in their church-run retirement home, staged a dramatic return to their medieval abbey. They were helped by former students who orchestrated the escape. —The Plot to Free the Nuns, The New York Times.
- What would a healthier relationship with your phone look like? Mary Townsend, a professor at St. John’s University, reflects on the daily choices we face when it comes to tech in our lives. “No tech is inevitable, everything we pick up with our hands is a choice. Take your hands off that stupid eschatology, and let the muscles in your hand hold the pen, learn to rest again, to see.” – Your Friends are Not In Your Phone, Plough Magazine
End notes
How religious is your state? You can explore the question by playing with the new interactive tool from the Pew Research Center. The tool allows you to compare how the states measure up on religious expression like prayer frequency, belief in God or a universal spirit, religion’s importance, and religious attendance.