Tips on emotional regulation during in-person abortion discussions

[This article is a transcript of “Emotional Regulation” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]

(Video also available on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.)

Recently had one of Secular Pro-Life’s long-time supporters reach out to me to ask how I deal with emotional regulation when discussing abortion.

Specifically, he had friends over; they didn’t know that he was pro-life—they’re all pro-choice—they bring up the abortion topic, start mouthing off. He does what we always ask people to do, which is he went ahead and said, “I don’t agree. I’m pro-life,” and they talked about it.

It wasn’t a big fight or anything, but, afterward, when he was thinking about it, he sent me a message, and he said, basically, “How do you deal with the internal emotional regulation?” How do you deal with—how did he phrase it—he said, with the frustration of knowing that you’re not persuading them, there’s nothing you can do in that moment to change their minds, how do you emotionally deal with that? I left him a message back that he said was very helpful, so in case it’s helpful to other people, I thought I would make it a video.

Consider your goals for this conversation

Goal 1: Let them know one of their friends disagrees

First and foremost, you should not be thinking that your goal in a conversation about abortion is to change someone’s mind right then. That hardly ever happens. When we ask people who used to be pro-choice and are now pro-life what changed their mind, their answers usually involve a series of different factors over an extended time period, so don’t put so much pressure on yourself in any single conversation, as if you must do the best you can possibly do and think of all the best arguments and have the best demeanor. That’s too much pressure. Take it down a notch.

Instead, especially for those of you who have mostly pro-choice friends and especially for those of you who are what we call “non-traditional pro-lifers,” which means people from demographics and social circles where they would not expect you to be pro-life, for those of you in those situations, your goal should be to let them know that they are friends with someone who doesn’t agree with them on abortion. That’s it.

That’s the first goal, and it’s easily achieved. All you have to do if someone else brings up the topic of abortion is say, “Hey, I don’t really want to argue about this, but for the record, I don’t agree with you.” If you really don’t want to fight or argue or debate or discuss, you can still say that, and then if they try to press the issue, you can just say, “I don’t want to argue about it. You brought it up. I’m just letting you know I don’t agree.”

That’s really important work right there. The fact that they know you and they’re friends with you and then they know that you don’t agree on abortion, when they hear really ridiculous stereotypes about “forced birthers” or “anti-choicers,” they have you as a counterpoint in their mind to consider if those stereotypes make sense. And if they don’t, what else about pro-choice rhetoric doesn’t make sense? So your first goal is just to let pro-choice friends know that you don’t agree. Very simple.

Goal 2: Let them know you can talk about this calmly

Your second goal is to have a demeanor and a dynamic in the conversation that, if you’re comfortable with it, lets them know that you can have this conversation and it’s not going to be a big fight and you can talk about it again in the future if they want to. Because, again, minds are changed over time, you want to think of this as a very long-haul thing. You don’t need to have the perfect arguments. You just need to be able to say, “Yeah, I don’t agree. Here’s some perspectives.” If they give you an argument that you can’t think of a rebuttal for, liberate yourself to say, “Yeah, I’m not sure. That’s a good point. I’d have to think about it.” You could say that, say that anytime, and if you do have a counterpoint, say that too.

So first goal: let people know that you don’t agree. Second goal: set them up to feel comfortable talking to you about it. You want to be calm. You don’t want to be super defensive. You don’t want to be super aggressive. You just want to be calm and just sit in the fact that we don’t agree, and that’s okay.

Consider who is trying to persuade who

Another thing that’s important to keep in mind is that a lot of times both pro-choice and pro-life people settle into this framing where it’s as if it’s the pro-life person’s job to persuade the pro-choice person.

Pro-choice people do this by sort of thinking that their perspective is just the default that all good forward-thinking decent people hold and if you don’t hold their perspective, you need to justify and explain yourself. Pro-life people do this by feeling a lot of pressure to convince people of this, what we consider, this horrible human rights violation, to see our vision.

And I get that. I understand we want to persuade people, we want people to agree with us, but in the context of long-term, calm series conversations, you don’t need to focus so much on how you have to persuade them and what if you don’t? Keep in mind, too, that they’re trying to persuade you.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but being an anti-abortion activist is not a popular position, and a lot of people really wish that we would stop doing it. That’s their desire to persuade us to do something: they want us to stop. And so a lot of times, when I’m in conversations about abortion, instead of thinking of in terms of “How can I convince them of my perspective?” I think of it in terms of “How are they going to convince me to be pro-choice?”

And so when they say things that I would find particularly ridiculous, for example, if they say, “Well, the embryo is a parasite,” or “every sperm is sacred,” or something nonsense like that, instead of me trying to figure out how I can possibly convey to them how wrong they are, I’m thinking more in terms of “Yeah that’s not persuasive and you haven’t persuaded me.” In other words, sometimes if you’re having these conversations and you’re not totally sure what to say, take the pressure off yourself to convince other people and just switch to “I don’t buy that.”

Say someone says, “Oh, the embryo is a parasite.” You can say, “the embryo is not a parasite; XYZ reasons,” and then they come back to say, “yes, it is because ABC reasons,” you can keep arguing about it if you want or you can just say, “Okay, man.” Because half the point here isn’t necessarily to give them all the best arguments and make them agree with you, although that would be nice. Half the point is just to let them know that some people think that their argument is dumb.

We’re not looking here for total conversion in a single conversation. We’re looking for the introduction of a little bit of doubt, hesitation, nuance, complexity for people who, in many cases, have never really talked about abortion with someone who disagreed with them before.

Allow time between conversations

One final note, because a lot of times conversion takes place over a long period of time, it’s actually useful not to go too hard in any given conversation. I think a lot of the work psychologically, mentally that changes people’s minds, it actually happens between conversations. It happens when you’ve made a couple different points that maybe in the moment, when things were a little bit adversarial they were distracted by the dynamics of debating, but they stick in the back of their mind and they percolate, and you want to let that happen. You want to give them plenty of time to settle into a thought because a lot of times that’s where the work is really done.

Summing it up

Anyway, in conclusion, you don’t want to put a ton of pressure on any single conversation. You don’t want to think that it’s your job to say the most perfect thing right now, you’ll never have a chance again, and you must convince them right now. That’s not realistic and it’s super stressful.

Instead, your goal should be to let your pro-choice friends know that they know and are friends with people who disagree, to let them know that they can talk to you about it, you’re not going to jump down their throat, and you’re also not going to beg their forgiveness, you’re just you’re willing to talk about it if they want to, to let them know that this could be something you talk about again in the future, and just to let them know that you don’t find their arguments persuasive.

So, yeah. Be calm, be patient, be relentless.

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