We Asked, You Answered: Friendships Across the Aisle
We asked our followers on social media: “Should pro-life and pro-choice people be friends? Why or why not?” Here are a few of the top responses.
Ruth C.: “Pro-lifers should be friends with anyone. We cannot convince others that they’ve been lied to if we don’t have relationship with them.”
Greg M.: “Absolutely! My friends group is all over the place… pro-life, pro-choice, Protestant, Catholic, Atheist… folks that drink and folks that don’t. I could go on but you get it.”
Stíofáinín F.: “No, I cannot be friends with someone who is pro-abortion. We all have core moral values and I am not willing to sacrifice my core values for the sake of friendship. It really would not be a genuine friendship. That being said you can treat people with kindness and dignity without being close friends.”
Johannes G.: “If you want to change someone’s mind on such a fundamental issue I think you have to address the mind and the heart. In my opinion, the latter is only possible if one is perceived as a trustworthy and understanding person and not as someone who is simply interested in winning an argument.”
@NoTerminationWR: “I have thought about this. I have some pro-choice friends, but none of them are activists. If someone were actually having an effect causing unborn babies to be killed who would not have been killed otherwise, I would not be caught posing and smiling with such a person.”
John D.: “If we are really friends, we should still be able to treat each other respectfully even when discussing divisive topics. This is actually one of the best ways for me to understand where the other side is truly coming from… and develop my communication accordingly. There is however the possibility that a ‘friend’s’ perspective is so inherently (albeit out of ignorance) so evil that I have to distance myself from them. This was especially the case if they otherwise would have had contact with our minor child. It also extends to many other topics than abortion (e.g. an ardent racist, serial adulterer, etc.).”
Pablo M.: “I had many pro-choice friends, but the abortion debate here in Argentina turned into a battle to death since 2018, and I ended up having to break these friendships.”
Avel D.: “Pro-life and pro-choice people should be friends because having a personal relationships humanizes the other side and allows us to listen more deeply and find the thread of truth to their view. Once we see that thread, we can collaborate to make more sense of each other’s perceptions by asking open-ended questions and clarifications.”
Sarah S.: “Depends. I have family who calls themselves pro-choice but I think we actually share more common ground than not because they believe there should be a lot of limitations and have more of the older-fashioned ‘safe, legal, and rare’ mentality. That said, many new age pro-choicers I have come across seem pretty hardline ‘abortion on demand, for any reason, and without apology,’ and that’s not generally someone you may get to change minds or even find common ground with. Then there comes into play your ethics. If you truly believe that abortion kills humans and is an inherent human rights violation, then is that something you can just ‘agree to disagree’ on in a friendship? Do you think you would have tried to befriend anyone else in history who aided in human rights violations? Do you think you would have tried to be friends with someone who would have aided in the mass genocide of others in history? There are plenty of examples of those who thought they had a noble cause and truly believed they were doing something for the good of mankind by slaughtering or aiding in the slaughter of other innocent humans. Something to mull over. Bottom line, I think it’s possible with someone who is more moderate and open, not so much with extremists, nor should you want to, in my opinion.”
John C.: “Yeah I don’t think I’m going to cut out both my parents, my brother, and all my closest friends, even over a deep philosophical disagreement.”
@21CenturyIsAL: “I have sympathy for prochoice people who recognize that ab*rtion is tragic, despite not feeling comfortable with opposing termination of early pregnancy. The raging pro-aborts who compare unplanned pregnancy with SA and call the unborn parasite? Impossible to get along with.”
@DoodleSmorp: “I was friends with someone who was pro-choice for years and it was fine until they got an abortion during our friendship and then things became too awkward.”
Karen K.: “No reason why they shouldn’t be. The more we are friends with those who think differently than us on all kinds of issues, the less we are tempted to demonize the other side, or even see them as ‘the other.'”
