“Should I be mom friends with a woman who raises money for Planned Parenthood?”

Recently we received this message on our Instagram account (reposted with permission) from a follower I will call Emily:

Here was my response:

Wonderful question! Of course you always have to do what is most comfortable for you, but I would definitely recommend being friends with her. I lived in California most of my adult life and, besides my boyfriend, I didn’t know almost anyone in person who was against abortion besides me. My college friends, my master’s program friends, the people I worked with, etc. As far as I know they were all either ambivalent or pro-choice.

It is a good thing to be friends with pro-choice people. First of all there’s a whole lot to friendship besides the abortion issue, of course, and you can get a lot out of the friendship even if you guys stridently disagree on this.

Second of all, it helps you not hyperbolically villainize the other side. You are friends with someone from the other side and you can think of them and know them as a whole person who you like, and realize that people on the other side are real people too. These friendships make it easier not to stereotype.

Third, if you eventually decide to let her know you disagree on this issue, then the reverse will also be true: it will be harder for her to stereotype pro-life people as some sort of cartoon villain because she’s friends with one and knows that you aren’t like that. Stereotypes and partisanship are destroyed by friendship.

I didn’t mention it at the time, but a fourth benefit of being friends with pro-choice people is creating opportunities for useful discussion. Conversations within existing friendships, especially in person, are more likely to yield greater understanding and empathy. Your are much more likely to soften hearts and change minds within existing friendships than with strangers (though both have happened). Even if your friend never entirely changes their mind to the pro-life side, they may better understand your view while still ultimately disagreeing. There’s value in that too.

[Read more – 3 reasons you should let people know you’re pro-life]

Anyway, as a follow up, Emily asked my thoughts on how and when to share her pro-life perspective in a new friendship like this one. I said:

You do have to kind of play it by ear.

It’s different for me now because I’m running an anti-abortion nonprofit, so there’s no pretense at keeping my position quiet. But when I used to be only a volunteer with SPL, I would not bring up abortion with new friends for quite awhile. I would give it at least weeks and more likely months of developing rapport and building connection.

Basically all relationships involve a million little interactions that either add or substract “credit” from the relationship. When you share humor, show up for each other, enjoy the same TV show, whatever, it’s all building credit. When you disagree, have idiosyncrasies that annoy each other, show up late, whatever, that’s all subtracting credit. So it’s really important to build a lot of credit before you subtract some with a pending disagreement.

I would get to know them and develop friendship for quite awhile, and then eventually, if I wanted to talk about abortion, I would ease into it. For example, I wouldn’t start with a diatribe on why abortion kills children and I’m appalled by it. I’d wait for the topic to come up somewhere and then say something like “Yeah, I don’t know. I think we probably see this differently.”

And leave it open ended. If she wants to pursue a conversation she can, and if she wants to change the subject she can. Just give some space.

Many friends never do debate the issue. They just coexist in disagreement and don’t fight about it or talk about it. But if you do start debating it, (1) emphasize all the common ground you can find, (2) leave a lot of time and space between abortion discussions if possible, and (3) in that time and space keep strengthening all the other elements of the friendship, so it doesn’t just become the abortion-argument friendship (haha)

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