2014 marks my 15th year of doing public speaking and serious activism for the pro-life cause. And over this time, I believe the most important development this experience has taught me can be captured in the observation of a priest friend of mine who heard me speak in 2005 and not again until 2013: “There’s something different about your presentations now,” he said. “They’re softer. There’s a softness there that wasn’t there before.”
He’s right. The past few years I have learned to balance the head with the heart. Historically, when I would make an airtight (and I mean airtight) case against abortion (I knew how to navigate through the science and philosophy and argue so well that people would tell me to become a lawyer), I would observe that people would still disagree with me. “How is that possible?” I’ve wondered. “The pro-life view is so logical. It makes sense. Why don’t people get it?” Well I have come to see that, as I’ve written about here and here and here, peoples’ disagreement with the pro-life message often comes from a place of pain, suffering, and personal experience.
I have come to see this because my 600+ presentations have been complemented with thousands of one-on-one conversations whether after talks, on call-in radio interviews, or through CCBR’s activism projects. And when you actually engage the culture, when you actually talk to people “on the streets,” when you hear pro-abortion rhetoric actually coming from the mouths of people and not just in a philosopher’s essay, you start to notice things.
You start to notice that the angry guy who won’t accept that abortion is wrong has a sister who had an abortion—and what he’s really doing is defending the sibling he loves.
You start to notice that that girl who won’t accept that life begins at fertilization was conceived by in vitro fertilization—and what she’s really doing is resisting a devastating truth that would cause her to question her beginnings and necessitate that she grieve for the siblings she never knew because they’re frozen or killed.
You start to notice that the girl who thinks abortion is needed in cases of rape was molested by her uncle—and what she’s really doing is crying out from a place of pain, wondering not so much if the pre-born are human, but as my friends over at Justice for All say, whether the pro-lifer is human.
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And the best advice I can give to passionate pro-lifers who will have these sorts of encounters if they’re engaging the culture as they should, is to live the Prayer of St. Francis: “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand.”
Seek to understand.
Listening does wonders. And when we seek to understand, we will truly and deeply listen.
Asking questions does wonders. And when we seek to understand, we will ask good questions.
Praying does wonders. And when we seek to understand, we will pray for Divine inspiration to conduct ourselves in such a way that the person most needs to see and hear.
Nothing of what I’ve said means we shouldn’t refine our arguments to be as clear and solid as possible, or that we shouldn’t show abortion victim photography. We most certainly should do those things. But what I’m saying is that what matters is how we do them. What matters is that we master the art of dialogue, and know when to appeal to “the head” and when to appeal to “the heart.”
Case in point—my colleague Maaike recently shared this testimony about the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) when it was displayed at the University of Lethbridge last fall:
In one conversation, a pro-life student went to the heart of the matter when an angry protester defended her right to abortion. The protester had already heard our apologetics from another volunteer, talking for about 45 minutes. Then the protester turned to the pro-life student when the pro-lifer asked her why she felt she needed to defend abortion. It turned out that the protester had been abused by her dad and her mom didn’t do anything; she said she would never put a baby in a similar situation. The GAP volunteer expressed sympathy and affirmed the woman's value. They then talked about abortion, and the volunteer asked how killing her own child would improve the situation/cycle of abuse. After about 30 minutes the woman said no one had ever told her that she deserved to be loved by her own parents. She then rolled up her sign and left.
No one had ever told her that she deserved to be loved by her own parents.
When we seek to understand, we find ourselves amidst profoundly beautiful opportunities to build up the brokenhearted, and to love them—to desire the other’s good—in a way that the abortion advocate least expects yet most needs to hear.
May all people who claim the name pro-life follow the example of this young pro-life student, and have the strongest of minds and the most tender of hearts.
Reprinted with permission from UnmaskingChoice.ca.