Focus on the Family reaching out for common ground with pro-choice organizations
They’re not an agenda’ed meeting….
It’s a chance for us to say who we are, what we are about and for other folks to do the same.
We think that will bear fruit down the road.
~ Focus on the Family President Jim Daly discussing the organization’s outreach to pro-choice groups in search of common ground to reduce the number of abortions, The Gazette, September 13
Sep.14, 2011 9:35 am |
Apologetics |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Well Mr. Daly, I think you’re a tad misguided. Those who believe it’s ok to kill children in the womb also tend to be FOR everything FOTF is against, and vice versa. You know – like Biblical principles and all that jazz.
If people believe abortions should be reduced, the question should be “why?” Why seek to reduce something that isn’t even a thing of consequence? Those who actually consider themselves pro-choice and yet desire a reduction in abortion might want to ask themselves why they believe reducing a “simple surgical procedure” is important to them….
Sorry. No common ground.
That’s like the slaveowners writing to the blacks (who could read) that they wanted to find common ground, like having a good crop season. That’s common ground!
Shheeesh.
How is he misguided? From the article:
Daly asked his listeners, “How do we sit down with people who may disagree with us, so that we can eliminate 10,000, 20,000, 300,000 of the 1.2 million babies lost every year?”
Schneeberger ( vice president for communications for Focus) noted that some activists say they want abortions to be “safe, legal and rare.” Focus on the Family doesn’t agree about making abortions safe or legal, he said, but it does want to see fewer of them.
“So we’re going put those issues aside and focus on ‘rare,’” he said.
I guess I agree with Michael Cromarti (an evangelical scholar with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C):
But Cromarti added that if the two sides are indeed coming to some agreement, it’s better than the division Americans are seeing on Capitol Hill. “The very idea that they’re saying ‘Look, we’ll be glad to talk with anybody’ is a different tack. As opposed to saying, ‘Everybody out there who disagrees with us is our enemy and we don’t want to talk to you.’”
I guess I don’t see sitting down with people that have a different viewpoint, trying to identify what you have in common, and working to make those things happen is misguided. I would love it if abortion became rare. I won’t stop working to have it become illegal, but in the meantime, rare would be wonderful.
Hitler to the Jewish hierarachy: Let’s figure out how we can kill fewer Jews. I SWEAR that’s what we both want.
I don’t think so.
Pro-abortion groups don’t want fewer abortions–they want more, and without restrainst or apology. That’s how they get their money and their power. Why rare? If it’s a person, why rare? BECAUSE IT IS A PERSON and if we can’t agree FIRST on that, WE HAVE NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT.
Many abortions occur because of things any decent person finds deplorable such as the sexual exploitation of young females whether by teen boys or adult men. We should certainly find common ground in wanting to reduce exploitation.
Does anyone really WANT girls and women to feel TRAPPED by pregnancy instead of joyous about it? There certainly should be common ground there.
I for one want to see a DRASTIC reduction in abortions through the prevention of problem pregnancies.
How does anyone here think people’s minds get changed? How many people go out saying, “Please change my mind on this topic”?
As if they want to chat with FOTF about how their million (or is it billion) dollar enterprise can make less money!
Any babies saved is good. If it changes some minds to be pro-life, that is also good. As long as FotF doesn’t lose sight of the end goal, I don’t really see the problem.
One never knows what sort of fruit this may bring.
Perhaps FothF might persuade Catholycs for Choice and their ilk to divert some of their funding from lobbying and toward abstinence programs, teaching young people how to respect their own dignity. There should be some common ground in respecting the human dignity of and helping adolescents.
Perhaps a few individuals might be persauded to think about life first, even if the organizations do not change their positions.
Let’s have hope, people!
I really like Focus on the Family. How will this tactic play out? I really don’t even want to hazard a guess, but I hope it works the way they want it to. Perhaps they may change a few hearts and minds – at least they’re trying.
If they can agree on programs that are designed to reduce promiscuity and delay the onset of sexual activity – that would be a common ground. Programs that strengthen young girls’ sense of worth beyond physical beauty. Programs that change the culture away from its obsession with sex. For crying out loud, they market bikini underpants to seven year old girls. This has to change.
Don’t know what so-called “pro-choice” groups FOTF is reaching out to – but I’m not at all confident Planned Parenthood will budge.
They make their money from treating people with STDs and unintended pregnancies.
Barb says:
September 14, 2011 at 9:27 pm
If they can agree on programs that are designed to reduce promiscuity and delay the onset of sexual activity – that would be a common ground. Programs that strengthen young girls’ sense of worth beyond physical beauty. Programs that change the culture away from its obsession with sex. For crying out loud, they market bikini underpants to seven year old girls. This has to change.
(Denise) HOORAY! HOORAY! HOORAY! HOORAY!
There’s no common ground between pro-choice and pro-life philosophies, as far as I can see. To the extent there’s common ground between pro-choice and pro-life people, I think that’d be because people are more than either pro-life or pro-choice — they’re pro or anti this or that and this sometimes has a bearing on life/choice issues.
Alas, what I’ve learned talking to Doug is that one thing not shared in common between pro-lifers and at least some pro-choicers, is [at least making an attempt at] persuading women to value their unborn child and carry it to term. Nothing in a pro-choice worldview contradicts such action, so it seems many pro-choicers resist finding common ground with pro-lifers even where they’re entirely free to do so.
Sad.
Yes, Barb, it isn’t about the babies but it is about the promiscuity, right? Another’s alleged promiscuity is none of your concern.
rasqual says:
September 15, 2011 at 3:18 am
There’s no common ground between pro-choice and pro-life philosophies, as far as I can see. To the extent there’s common ground between pro-choice and pro-life people, I think that’d be because people are more than either pro-life or pro-choice — they’re pro or anti this or that and this sometimes has a bearing on life/choice issues.
(Denise) Do you believe that many people on both sides of this issue would like females who become pregnant to greet this news with joy? Yes, there might be individuals so cold and cynical that they actually want females to panic or be sad at pregnancy so the abortionist and others can make money. But don’t you believe that many of those who believe abortion should be legal would like to see a situation in which fewer females get pregnant who didn’t want to get pregnant?
If the views of the ‘pro-choice’ group were not so sad they would be funny.
Perhaps we could start a conversation with them along the lines of:
“If you do not want a baby by this person at this time, if you do not want to deal with their disease (sexually transmitted or genetic) and/or you do not like their family, why are you going out with this person much less why having sex with them? Why set yourself up for what will be a problem for you? Who profit$?”
RE: John “Another’s alleged promiscuity is none of your concern.”
Common courtesy would be pointing out that one has toilet paper stuck to one’s shoe. Sounds like it would be uncommon courtesy for you to get someone to reflect on where their behavior is leading them.
Wow, they’re trying something DIFFERENT. Let’s see how it pans out!
He is right about the common ground and it is easy to find if your mind is open just a sliver… It is in the “Rare” and “safe” parts. Pro-choice people have been saying “safe, legal, and rare” for years now. We all want women to be as safe as possible and we all want abortion to be a rare thing. Let’s concentrate on those two shall we.
What we need are programs in place that make parenthood a more viable option for women. Also I would like to see some incentives to carrying a pregnancy to full term for adoption purposes. The adoptions process needs to be beefed up and streamlined to get these children to loving parents much quicker and with more supervision/follow-up counseling for both adoptive and birth parents.
As for safe, There is something to said for a bit better regulation on women’s health clinics as some of them have been in the shadows for too long and they need some sunlight disinfectant. However there is also something to be said for beefing up FACE laws. There was yet another women’s health center bombed in Texas a few weeks ago. This is not safe for anyone.
So if you put the whole baby murder/women oppression argument aside for just a minute you will see how we could make our situation as a country better and honestly that is what this country was built on. Democracy requires compromise and finding common ground in order to make this country function and this Tea Party mentality of no compromise and my way or the highway is un-American by its very concept.
“It is easy to admire uncompromising men, but it is the ability to compromise that makes us noble.” – Braveheart
Pro-choicers like me aren’t pro-choicer because we LIKE abortion and WANT abortions to happen. We don’t like abortion any more than anti-chocers do. We just have the sense to realize how disastrously counterproductive trying to stop abortion by making it illegal is. It doesn’t work.It never has and never will. It only increases the number of abortions and endangers the lives and health of pregnant women. And it leaves many,many poor and helpless children who HAVE been born without mothers. It only makes a bad situation far worse.
Comparing abortion to slavery is beyond ludicrous . It’s a totally specious ,unfair and intellectually dishonest comparison. Slavery can be ended. But abortion cannot. No society has ever been able to stop abortion,and none ever will. And don’t compare it to murder, because it’s not done for the same reasons as murder. Trying to stop abortion by making it illegal is like trying to stop a forest fire by pouring gasoline on it and lighting cigarettes. It only makes the fire even worse.
The only way to prevent abortion is to prevent women from getting pregnant at bad times.,which is more easily said than done. And to see to it that more help is available to poor pregnant women. And there is a definite connection between abortion and poverty. The more poverty there is in a country, the more abortions. The less poverty,the fewer abortions. It’s as simple as that.
Furthermore, it’s absolutely impossible to enforce laws against abortion, unlike laws against murder, which CAN be enforced. There is absolutely no way to keep track of every pregnant woman or woman who might get pregnant and monitor so that she does not seek an obtain an abortion. To try to do this would not only cost a prohibitive amount of money and create a police state similar to Orwell’s 1984. And it wouldn’t work any way.
Today, conservatives want the government to cut spending as much as possible, yet they foolishly expect it to be able to enforce laws against abortion. At a time when we have such a serious problem with debt and government finances, trying to enforce laws against abortion, if it were to end tomorrow, would only waste TRILLIONS of dollars needed for other things.
If Roe v Wadeis overturned, and women lose the right to control their bodies , we are guaranteed a catastrophe on unimaginable proportions.. Be careful of what you ask for, anti-choicers.
Common ground?
Oh, would that be the burial ground that miscarried babies are allowed to be buried in?
Or would that be the garbage dumps into which aborted babies are bulldozed under?
Now, the remains of both kinds of human children are biologically identical in everyway, but we put one group in one ground and another group in another ground.
Which common ground are we talking about?
Three words.
Waste.Of.Time.
Mildly disconcerting that FOTF doesn’t realize that.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” ~ Paul
Can we find common ground in believing that females should be free of sexual exploitation?
Can we find common ground in wanting to spare girls and women the trauma that inevitably accompanies abortion?
Can we find common ground in working to reduce the number of problem pregnancies?
Perhaps FOTF could suggest that females coming in for abortions have to see pictures of what the unborn looks like at their stage of pregnancy. “Truth in advertising.” I’ve heard that many females carry to term after seeing a sonogram.
John says:
September 15, 2011 at 3:31 am
Yes, Barb, it isn’t about the babies but it is about the promiscuity, right? Another’s alleged promiscuity is none of your concern.
(Denise) The sexual exploitation of vulnerable teen girls and young women is society’s business. Reducing this evil would reduce the number of abortions.