We can find common ground on abortion.

At one point in my life I was prochoice, but I came over to a prolife position years ago. I've been there ever since. Perhaps because of my background, I think there's a logic to the prochoice position that deserves respect, even as we engage it critically. It is possible to disagree with people without calling them baby-killers, without believing that they are monsters or fiends. It is possible to disagree in an agreeable way. The abortion argument is essentially an argument among women. It's been a bitter and ugly debate, and I find that embarrassing.

What the two sides have in common is this: each of us would like to see a world where women no longer want abortions.

I don't believe that even among the most fervent prochoice people there is anybody who rejoices over abortion. I think we both wish that there were better solutions that could make abortion unnecessary, or prevent pregnancies in the first place. We'd like to see the demand for the procedure reduced, by resolving women's problems and alleviating the pressure for abortion. We can go along this road together as far as we can, and there will come a time when prochoicers are satisfied and prolifers want to keep going, but that doesn't mean we can't go together for now.

A few years ago, quite by accident, I discovered an important piece of common ground. Something I wrote in a conservative think-tank journal was picked up and quoted widely. I had written: "There is a tremendous sadness and loneliness in the cry 'A woman's right to choose.' No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg."

What surprised me was where it appeared: started getting clips in the mail from friends, showing the quote featured in prochoice publications. realized I had stumbled across one of those points of agreement: we all know that no one leaves the abortion clinic skipping. This made me think that there was common ground, that instead of marching against each other, maybe we could envision a world without abortion, a world we could reach by marching together.

Behind enemy lines

The problem thus far--and I believe the prolife movement has been especially complicit in this--is that we have focused only on abortion and not on women's needs. We in the prolife movement have perpetuated a dichotomy where it's the baby against the woman, and we're on the baby's side. You can look over 25 years of prolife rhetoric and basically boil it down to three words: "It's a baby." We have our little-feet lapel pins, our "Abortion stops a beating heart" bumper stickers, and we've pounded on that message.

In the process we have contributed to what I think is a false concept--an unnatural and even bizarre concept--that women and their unborn children are mortal enemies. We have contributed to the idea that they've got to duke it out, it's going to be a fight to the finish. Either the woman is going to lose control of her life, or the child is going to lose its life.

It occurred to me that there's something wrong with this picture. Nature puts mother and child together; it doesn't make them enemies; it doesn't set one against the other in a battle to the death.

If our rhetoric is tearing them apart, we're the ones who are out of step. When we presume this degree of conflict between women and their own children, we're locating the conflict in the wrong place.

The problem is not located inside women's bodies, it's within society. Social expectations make unwanted pregnancy more likely to occur and harder for women to bear. Unwed mothers are supposed to have abortions, to save the rest of us from all the costs of bringing an "unwanted" child into the world.

There are three drawbacks to emphasizing "It's a baby" as the sole message. One is that it contributes to the present deadlock in this debate. We say, "It's a baby," and our friends on the prochoice side say, "No, it's her right," and the arguments don't even engage each other. It's an endless, interminable argument that can go on for another 25 years if we don't find a way to break through.

Second, the "It's a baby" message alienates the woman distressed by a difficult pregnancy. There's a prolife message I sometimes hear that makes me cringe: "Women only want abortions for convenience. They do this for frivolous reasons. She wants to fit into her prom dress. She wants to go on a cruise." This alienates the very person to whom we need to show compassion. If we're going to begin finding ways to live without abortion, we need to understand her problems better.

Of course, there has been a wing of the prolife movement that has been addressing itself to pregnant women's needs for a long time, and that is the crisis-pregnancy-center movement. Centers like these have been giving women maternity clothes, shelter, medical care, job training, and other help for 30 years. I once saw a breakdown of the money and time spent on various sorts of prolife activities, and over half the movement's energy was going into direct aid to pregnant women. Yet you don't hear this in the rhetoric.

The third problem with this rhetoric is that it enables the people in the great mushy middle, the ones who are neither strongly prolife nor strongly prochoice, to go on shrugging off the problem. While both sides know that women don't actually want abortions in any positive sense, the middle is convinced they do.

Prolifers say, "She wants an abortion because she's selfish"; prochoicers say, "She wants an abortion because it will set her free." No wonder the middle believes us: it's one of the few things we appear to agree on.

Both sides know that abortion is usually a very unhappy choice. If women are lining up by the thousands every day to do something they do not want to do, it's not really liberation that women have won. And yet the middle thinks that abortion is what women want, so there's no need for change and nothing to fix.

I can understand why my prolife allies put the emphasis on "It's a baby." It's a powerful and essential message. Visualizing the violence against the unborn was the conversion point for me and many others. But it cannot be our sole message.

Polls on U.S. attitudes toward abortion show that between 70 and 80 percent already agree that it's a baby--especially since the advent of sonograms. So when we say, "It's a baby," we're answering a question nobody's asking anymore. The real question is, "How could we live without abortion?"

Pregnancy problems

The abortion rate in this country is about 1.5 million a year, a rate that has held fairly stable for about 15 years. Divide that figure by 365 and that equals about 4,000 abortions every day. It's a sobering figure.

The shortsighted prolife response has been, "Put a padlock on the abortion store." But that's not going to solve the problem. You cannot reduce the demand by shutting off the supply. If 4,000 women were lining up every day to get breast implants, we'd ask, "What's causing this demand? What's going on here?"

Solving the problems that contribute to the demand for abortion will not be easy. The two obvious components are: preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place, and assisting women who slip through the cracks and become pregnant anyway.

The obvious tool for pregnancy prevention is contraception, but the prolife movement has been reluctant to support the contraceptive option. Being an Orthodox Christian, I come from a religious tradition that permits some forms of contraception, so it's not been a theological problem for me.

So when I started considering this, I thought, "This is great! I'll get a helicopter, fill it with condoms, get a snow shovel, and just fly over the country tossing 'em out. We'll close all of the abortion clinics tomorrow!"

But then I began to analyze a little deeper. While I believe the prolife movement needs to make a strong stand in favor of preventing these unplanned pregnancies, I became skeptical of the contraceptive solution.

For example, there's the recent study showing that about two thirds of births to teenage moms in California involved a dad who was an adult. Another study found that teen mothers had been forced into sex at a young age and that the men who molested them had an average age of 27.

Closer to home, a friend of mine was brought to an abortion clinic by her older brother, who molested her when she was 12; they gave her a bag of condoms and told her to be more careful. You're not going to solve problems like these by tossing a handful of condoms at them.

But leaving aside the question of sexual abuse, I think we need to look hard at the consequences of the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s. When I entered college in the early 1970s, the revolution was in full bloom. It seemed, at the time, a pretty carefree enterprise. Condoms, pills, and diaphragms were readily available, and abortion had just been legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But I gradually began to think that it was a con game being played on women. We were "expected to behave according to men's notions of sexuality," to use author Adrienne Rich's phrase. Instead of gaining respect and security in our bodies, we were expected to be more physically available, more vulnerable than before, with little offered in return.

What women found out is that we have hearts in there along with all our other physical equipment, and you can't put a condom on your heart.

So in answering the question "How do we live without abortion?", I'd say we need to look at restoring respect and righting the balance of power in male-female sexual relationships.

The mom stands alone

What can we do to help women who get pregnant and would rather not be? For my book Real Choices, I went around the country talking to women who have had an abortion and to women who provide care for pregnant women. I had presumed that most abortions are prompted by problems that are financial or practical in nature.

But to my surprise, I found something very different. What I heard most frequently in my interviews was that the reason for the abortion was not financial or practical. The core reason I heard was, "I had the abortion because someone I love told me to." It was either the father of the child, or else the woman's own mother, who was pressuring her to have the abortion.

Again and again, I learned that women had abortions because they felt abandoned--they felt isolated and afraid. As one woman said, "I felt like everyone would support me if I had the abortion; but if I had the baby, I'd be alone."

When I asked, "Is there anything anyone could have done? What would you have needed in order to have had the child?"

I heard the same answer over and over: "I needed a friend. I felt so alone. I felt like I didn't have a choice. If only one person had stood by me, even a stranger, I would have had that baby."

We also must stop thinking about abortion in terms of pregnancy. Too often we harp on pregnancy and forget all about what comes next. Getting through the pregnancy isn't nearly the dilemma that raising a child for 18 years is. In most families, marriage lightens the load, but for some people that isn't the best solution. A neglected option is adoption, which can free the woman to resume her life while giving the child a loving home.

The numbers on this, however, are shocking. Only 2 percent of unwed pregnant women choose to place their babies for adoption. Among clients at crisis-pregnancy centers, it's 1 to 2 percent.

Adoption is a difficult sell to make for a number of complex reasons, but the bottom line is that 80 to 90 percent of the clients who go through pregnancy care centers and have their babies end by setting up single-parent homes. This is very serious. Pregnancy care centers know this but aren't sure what to do about it.

I, for one, have been strongly encouraging that there be more emphasis on presenting adoption to clients, and equipping center volunteers so they feel comfortable with the topic and enabled to discuss it. Adoption is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it's got to fit more than 1 or 2 percent. More women should try it on for size.

A case for common cause

In the abortion debate, people are suspicious of looking for any kind of common ground with their adversaries. Why should prolife partisans--or prochoicers, for that matter, who feel as strongly about their position as I do about mine--meet together in dialogue? Why should we have anything to do with each other, when the stakes are so high and the convictions so deep?

But common ground does not mean compromise. Compromise is not possible; the alternatives are too stark. Common ground does not have to do with meticulous negotiation whereby, for example, one side gives up partial-birth abortions while the other side gives up RU-486.

In this case, common ground means something more like a demilitarized zone, a safe space where conversation and exploration can take place. It can also refer to those unexpected areas of overlap where both sides find they agree. Imagine two overlapping circles of conviction, one prolife and one prochoice. Each circle is complete and has integrity. But there is a space of overlap where beliefs actually coincide--for example, that no one should be forced to have an abortion against her will.

I have been involved in the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice for five years, and can only bear witness from my own life. In light of the deadlocked, rancorous, poisonous quality of much of this debate, the appearance of Common Ground has been a healing, hopeful experience for me. And I dare hope that one day we may actually see solutions.

Common Ground is, at root, people talking. It's been a spontaneous impulse arising in a dozen cities or so across the country over the last six or seven years: Denver, Buffalo, Cleveland, Washington. Eventually the various groups linked up through an umbrella organization we call the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice, with Washington headquarters. (For information, phone: [phone].)

While Common Ground isn't for everyone, I believe it is a movement that promises to season the abortion debate with patience, consideration, and respect--something the present mudwrestling sorely needs.

One of the reasons why I participate in Common Ground is curiosity. Don't you ever wonder, What are those people on the other side thinking? What makes them tick?" In our local group, we take turns asking questions like, "Will contraception and sex education reduce the numbers of abortions?" and "What are the acceptable limits of protest outside of abortion clinics?" In fact, two Common Grounders, an Operation Rescue leader and the administrator of an abortion clinic, are planning to write a joint paper on that very question.

Another sort of curiosity is born of frustration. I am frustrated by the deadlock on this issue, by the intractability of it, and simply want to take a crack at coming at it from a new angle--like the toddler sitting at a computer keyboard and thinking, "I wonder what will happen if I push this button?"

Sometimes, just trying something new because you're frustrated with the old can lead to disaster. But I cannot see any danger in Common Ground dialogues. Prolifers, at least, have nothing to lose, because we have nothing: the status quo lies with the other side, with court decisions to hold it in place.

Through my participation in Common Ground, I also hope to eliminate misunderstanding and replace it with genuine disagreement.

I'm not naive enough to believe that our divisions are superficial, and that if we could only chat them away it would be all hugs and kisses. But misunderstanding--genuine confusion about what your opponent believes and what motivates her--is a waste of time.

I know I get weary of being told I'm prolife because I'm sexist, or antisex, or want women to be restricted to breeding and not allowed to have careers or carry cell phones. This fantasy is untrue. If prochoicers truly understood what motivates me, I don't think they would like it much better, but at least they would not be going on bogeyman stories.

Likewise, prochoicers must get weary of being told they're "pro-abortion" because it makes them so much money, that they don't care about children and families, and are elite godless commie pinko perverts to boot. I'd like to diffuse our absurd misunderstandings, so we can get down to grappling with the honest disagreements underneath.

Facts worth finding

I also like to talk about a related point I call data block versus ideo block. Sometimes our conflict is honestly based in different beliefs or ideologies: we are looking at the same reality (for example, the abortion of an infant with Down's syndrome) and simply disagree about what constitutes right or wrong.

In other cases, however, we disagree about what the facts are in the first place--our communication is experiencing a data block, not an ideology block.

One side, for example, tends to believe that better sex education and access to contraception will reduce the numbers of abortions. The other side tends to believe that, under a principle of unintended consequences, these items actually increase the likelihood of unwed pregnancy.

Which is true? Each side can marshal a barrage of facts to support its theory, but it's like swimming in soup--too many details, not enough certainty.

If one theory or the other could be proved true, the dissenting side might be persuaded. Both sides are looking for ways to reduce the numbers of abortions; we have a shared goal. We're just in disagreement about whether contraception will get us there, because we're holding different sets of facts.

One project the Common Ground Network has discussed is establishing a data bank of facts that both sides agree on. We could start with basics: how many abortions per year or when the fetal heartbeat begins. Trickier questions we could refer to organizations on both sides of the issue--and whenever we discover agreement, we could add it to the list. Gradually a data bank could grow, which would serve as a resource to journalists, students, and other researchers and contribute to clearing the air. A glossary might also be useful.

Common Ground allows us to scout out areas far from the hot center, where agreement may already exist. We've found, for example, a common interest in making adoption a more accessible option and raising the profile of that alternative. We've agreed on the urgency of reducing unwed teen pregnancy, and that it's wrong to use violence outside of clinics.

By continually putting our heads together in Common Ground, I keep hoping we'll find fresh ways of understanding the problem. I hope that informal and friendly links forged across the great divide can grow, over time, from rope bridges to giant trestles linking continents. But even now the power of networking is astonishing. All of us together have resources that neither of us has alone.

A few years ago, for example, the Reproductive Health Services clinic in St. Louis, Missouri was faced with an extremely young client who was too far along to have an abortion. This girl needed to be on complete bed rest to safely finish her pregnancy and needed someone to stay with her all day while her mother worked.

The clinic did not have the resources to collect a roster of volunteers for this duty. The clinic administrator, a member of the local Common Ground group, then phoned a prolifer in the group, a woman who had been arrested leading protests outside the clinic. The prolifer was able to enlist a cohort of volunteers from the prolife community, and the girl was able to safely complete her pregnancy.

If the prochoice and prolife communities had been locked in the sort of armed warfare seen in most cities, the side that had the resources--in this case, the prolife side--might never have known that the other side had a need. The more we get to know each other, the more suspicious fear can evaporate, and the more likely we are to find opportunities to actually make a difference.

Now it's personal

Being in Common Ground has eased my heart. I have found that having a prochoicer listen intently to my beliefs, then repeat them back to me accurately, is healing.

I believe I now have a much better understanding of how things stand from the prochoice point of view, too. My views haven't changed; I still believe that their position is wrong. But my listening, for example, has taught me how much a phrase like "abortion kills babies" hurts many who hold a prochoice position. To prolifers, it's just a forceful statement of fact; but I've discovered that prochoicers almost inevitably hear, "I think you personally like killing babies." So I try to express my feelings on this without implying that those who disagree are callous or depraved. They're not. They're just wrong.

Likewise, the phrase "antichoice" hits me like a slap in the face. I'm not easily angered, but being called "antichoice" makes me see red. Yes, I don't believe that taking a life is an appropriate private choice. But when I'm called "antichoice," I feel like I'm being told I'm a fascist, and that if I had my way people wouldn't be allowed to choose anything--hair color, make of car, what they'll have for supper. I think my prochoice friends, who use it interchangeably with "antiabortion" and "prolife," probably don't realize how it stings. Seeing things from the other's point of view is one of the advantages of dialogue.

I also participate in Common Ground because I am committed to a consistent ethic of valuing all human life and rejecting violence as a means of solving social problems. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, of blessed memory, gave the nation a gift when he defined the moral principle that underlies this ethic as a "seamless garment": the consistent opposition to war, abortion, and capital punishment. Not all prolifers view these three forms of death-dealing as morally equivalent, but it's the view that appeals most to me. In any case, all prolifers would say that abortion is the most urgent of these three, the only one taking 4,000 lives a day in this country.

As I root out of my life a spirit of violence at deeper and deeper levels, I come face to face with Jesus' command to love my enemies. It's because I've uncovered a startling fact: it wasn't until I became a prolife activist that, for the first time in my life, I had actual enemies. Realizing that I had them, I knew then what I had to do--after all, the scriptural instruction on this is not vague.

I also think of another scripture passage, the one that says you cannot love your brother whom you have not seen. So I think that's the least I can do: to go see them, on a regular basis. True, the Common Ground movement is not the sort that sweeps the country, generating TV ads, political candidates, Hollywood parties, and T-shirt slogans. But it's the sort of movement that, I hope, can begin to subtly disrupt entrenched patterns of mistrust and loathing.

If prolifers and prochoicers ripped off the scary masks we've imposed on each other, we would discover that underneath there are sincere people who, astonishingly, have the same goal: reducing the heartbreakingly high number of abortions. Both know that 4,000 abortions a day is too many. We can harness that agreement for positive change, leaving those areas where we disagree for action within our own sides.

By Frederica Mathewes-Green of Baltimore, author of Real Choices: Listening to Women Looking for Alternatives to Abortion (Conciliar Press, 1997). Adapted from two speeches A by the author, one given at the first national conference of the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice in Madison, Wisconsin in June 1986, the other from the Georgetown University Bernardin Lecture in January 1997.