if I were a rhetorical question, I would look like this

[the_siobhan]

Is it possible for somebody who is pro-life and somebody who is pro-choice to be friends?

Is it simply a matter of difference of opinion? Or is it more than that? Is there an underlying difference in values that makes it impossible to be friends?

What do you think?


What I'm listening to right this second: Stromkern

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

friendly acquaintances, sure.

wait, it depends on your definition of pro-life. if pro-life equals no one should get an abortion ever and i will work to make sure that no one does, then, well, i work for the catholic church and many of my coworkers are of that stripe, and some days it's hard not to run them over in the parking lot.

but pro-life, i wouldn't get an abortion and i wish you wouldn't either but if you do i won't publish your license plate on the internet and i'll still invite you to potlucks, sure.

i think that the "no one should be allowed to have an abortion" crowd are about legislating autonomy. that is, legislating yours and mine right the hell down the toilet. and people who think i'm not a grownup and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions about whether or not i'm going to host alien parasites? well, did i mention the temptation to run them over in the parking lot?

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

*nods* agreed - I am of the second variety of pro-lifer, and believe me, being on the alternative scene, the poly-bi scene and in britain it means people react with revulsion and bile to that statement.

I don't want to criminalise abortion, it will only lead to backstreet clinics and health risks etc. BUT I believe that a child is alive from the moment of conception, and that therefore it is NOT just the woman's body, but also the child's life that needs to be considered.

Incidentally, at 19 I fell pregnant by a violent drug addict when I lived alone in another country. The result of that pregnancy turned 16 yesterday. So I'm not talking from a lofty point of "never happened to me", it has, and I made the choice.

I'm also a feminist. And won't eat Domino's pizza because the founder takes his wealth and gives it to extremist pro-life groups

It's great to see someone else who understands that not all pro-lifers are anti-choice!

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

That's damn near exactly what I was going to say. :)

Gessi

[threemilechild.livejournal.com]

In my mind, it comes down largely to their rationale; if they truly, honestly believe that it's murder, then I have less problem with it (1). But if they start tossing around the word "responsibility" and I get the impression they feel having babies is just your punishment for having sex, I suddenly start feeling pretty murderous myself. This is far more common than I would like, even among those without religious reasons.

(1) I have quite a few artsy and literary friends whose grasp of math and science is tenuous.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

i had a really bizarre argument with somebody who said that he didn't think these irresponsable women should be having sex before marriage anyway.

I pointed out to him that married women sometimes didn't want kids and that I am in a long-term relationship[1] and I would have an abortion if I got pregnant.

Then he started telling me that there was more to marriage than sex and that I shouldn't be "using" my partner. No, he wasn't advocating celebacy, but I shouldn't be using my partner solely for sex.

Weirdest conversation ever. I started wondering if he had the foggiest idea how conception even happens.


[1] I left it at one. No point confusing the issue.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Odd. I tried to respond to this:
Infinite loop in style or layer

Anyway, the answer is yes.
It's the elephant in the room. Just pretend the divide isn't there and avoid the subject. It's easy, isn't it?

Unless you're the kind of person who spends days and nights talking about abortion non-stop.

Or that it's a fundamental tenent of their over-all incompatable belief system.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

It comes up more often than you might think.

In part because of Jenn - People hear her story and they start telling me how wonderful they think it is that I "didn'T take the easy way out". A nd I start thinking "HELLO, you have NO fucking idea what you are talking about."

[erik]

I can't intellectually think of any reason why not, if the relationship were such that the topic never came up in conversation.

In real life I can't imagine having enough in common with somoene whose basic values were that different from my own that we would ever be friends.

This reminds me that my "Semantics/I am not 'pro-choice,' I'm pro-liberty" rant needs writing.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on how strongly both of you feel on the topic. My politics are just so much of part of who I am. I can't be friends with someone I don't respect, and I don't respect the anti-choice movement. I also have kind of a hard time with "I'm pro-choice but..."

Like someone else said, I think you can certainly be acquaintances, but a deep friendship has to be based on respect, compassion, and understanding.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I'm actually pretty cool with the "pro-choice but" camp. They are supporting my right to choose even when it squicks them out. I can respect that.

For the same reason I'm comfortable with the "pro-life but against legislating it" mindset.

[aidan-skinner.livejournal.com]

It entirely depends on how much they respect your point of view. If it's a personal belief, then yeah, I'm friends with people who old opposing points of view on a number of issues that I consider important.

If, OTOH, they are of the "my POV is the only right choice, anybody who thinks otherwise is morally deficient and should be shot" school of thought then that becomes more tricky.

Particularly when they try to shoot you. Friends don't train firearms on friends.

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

Is it possible for somebody who is pro-life and somebody who is pro-choice to be friends?

If it's not, then if you changed your mind, you'd have to dump all your friends.

Which I'm sure some people might do, and others wouldn't.

I was pretty pro-life when I was, oh, twelve or so. But everything was really abstract at that age. For some people (the good liberals?) it always is, and a good friend is someone you can argue well with. I remember my horror, as an undergrad, when I discovered that some campus political hacks of diametrically opposite stripes were actually very friendly with each other when it wasn't time to explain to an audience why the other was an idiot.

And, uh, by the way ...

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

... it strikes me that you need one of these. Jumpin' Joe, there, I mean.

[medakse.livejournal.com]

I have several friends and family members that are pro-life, and we have talked, at great length, about our different issues. I think a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer can indeed be good (if not great) friends, if they remember one thing:
you can't change anyone's mind who doesn't want it changed.
That being said, I've had wonderful debates with my very pro-life, very conservative father (who, ps, is not nearly as conservative as he pretends to be), and I respect his opinion because it's his opinion. He's entitled to it, he's mulled it over and thought heavily on it, and, here's the kicker, he therefore doesn't blindly subscribe to a way of thinking.
Those are the people I have problems with: the ones who are pro-life (or pro-choice, or anti-feminist, or feminist, or what have you) because basically, someone told them to be.
I respect people who have actually thought out the issue, from both sides, and come to a conclusion.
I was pro-life until I read The Worst of Times, and began to consider what life was like when abortion was illegal.
I wish we lived in a world in which every person was wanted, and could be cared for, and provided for, but we don't live in that world. I mulled over my thoughts, and came to be pro-choice.
I can't disrespect someone who mulled it over and decided on the other side.
Zealots scare the holy bejeesus out of me, regardless of what they subscribe to, whether they're "on my side" or not.

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

I can't disrespect someone who mulled it over and decided on the other side.
Okay. However, if you are pro-choice, and the other side is anti-choice, the other side wants rights over your body. That, to me, is as big a moral no-no as abortion is to them. That seems insurmountable to me.

[individuation.livejournal.com]

I have friends who are pro-life.

I think what it comes down to is understanding why the other feels the way they do - but respectfully thinking that they're full of shit.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I think what it comes down to is understanding why the other feels the way they do - but respectfully thinking that they're full of shit.

Thanks for saying in one sentence, what I was trying to say in many paragraphs!

[nachtisch.livejournal.com]

but pro-life, i wouldn't get an abortion and i wish you wouldn't either but if you do i won't publish your license plate on the internet and i'll still invite you to potlucks, sure.

I definitely have at least one friend in this category (and I think two.) They're afraid to 'come out' to our general group though for fear of losing all their friends.

I personally can't get behind violence of any kind to achieve political ends, but if someone makes an intelligent argument (which I believe can be made even though I don't agree) without degrading my POV, then I can extend mutual respect and probably my friendship.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I definitely have at least one friend in this category (and I think two.) They're afraid to 'come out' to our general group though for fear of losing all their friends.

I've had friends who were afraid to tell me about their abortion because they thought I would look down on them for it.

can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[thebigbad.livejournal.com]

I think I have something to add to this conversation, my own perspective, I mean, which I think - I hope - you'll enjoy.

First - sorry for the background bit I'm going to give you, but it is necessary. See, I grew up in a sheltered environment, both because my parents felt that they should protect their children from life and because we had moved when I was almost 10 to a rural southeast Kentucky small town where everyone was white, baptist, right-wing conservatives. As a consequence, when I was young I was conservative, but strangely not in those fierce convictions I saw on either side of the fence. I was rebellious (maybe coming from living in the city earlier, where I had been heading down a thuggish path), ultimately rejecting my beliefs because I didn't know enough to form justifiable opinions. I was - and often times still can be - incredibly naive, and I wanted to experience everything life had to offer, the best and the worst. So life pretty much didn't begin for me until I was 21, when I moved out into the city on my own, far away from family and home as possible.

So here's what I knew about abortion:

- Men don't have a say in it. It's not a man's body, not a man's decision, not his place to say shit.
- Life begins at conception, so abortion terminates life.
- Pro-life means you have to choose life and be against abortion.
- Pro-choice means you have to choose abortion and be against pro-lifers.
- There's a lot of "I understand where you're coming from, but respectfully, I think you're full of shit." This is the one that troubled me from both sides, because how can you be respectful when you say someone's full of shit?

Just to be clear: my views? Conflicted. Taught that they didn't count anyway. The whole non-uterus-having thing. The conception = life part has always haunted me, though. Why? Men go out to the battle field and take lives all the time. My mother ended her mother's life because she was never going to wake up, she was brain dead, and she was dying slowly and painfully. Are those instances so different? People take lives. Then they either learn to live and love again, or they're haunted. My own opinion about aborton has been based on my being deeply romantic.

Re: can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[thebigbad.livejournal.com]

ow here's what I have since found out about abortion:

- A coworker of mine had an abortion. First person I ever knew who had one. She spent some time after that in terrible grief. She would call the father - another coworker - constantly, in the break room, in front of everyone, sobbing into the phone, calling him names, screaming. As for myself, well I have to be honest and say I wanted to see how it would effect my views. We would still talk just like always - not about abortion, of course - and it was still pleasant, we were still nice to each other even though I was conflicted about my views on abortion - well, she probably still was, too. I would talk to her and I would think about how if abortion is the termination of life, was I talking to a killer? She was the same person as she was before. There wasn't anything different. No scarlet letter, no muderous rampages. She grieved, she moved on best she could, found a new man, married him, had his baby.

- When I was 23 my girlfriend, my first real love, and oh I fell for her hard, she was taken into an alley, beaten nearly to death and raped by four guys. Twice. If she had become pregnant because of that, I would have stood by her choice, whichever it would have been. Because I loved her.

- If my wife becomes pregnant with our offspriing I would express my hope that she would keep it. She would anyway. She wants to have a baby. But if she wouldn't, I can say that would be hurt. How she would feel and how it would effect our marriage, our relationship, is too hypothetical and I can not speculate. That's just my view. If anyone feels it's irrelevant, that I'm unenlightened, weak, hypocritical, full of shit (respectfully or otherwise), or ultimately displeased, they wouldn't be the first or last, so no harm done.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Yes, but with conditions. As with any other important topic in my life, I have no issue with people holding different viewpoints from me provided that they are respectful of mine. Someone who lectures me on the wrongness of my beliefs will not be a friend of mine for long.

[medakse.livejournal.com]

Someone who lectures me on the wrongness of my beliefs will not be a friend of mine for long.

I completely agree. However, I am often faced with a personal complication to this very thing.
Sometimes, I feel like I have to persuade someone that her beliefs are wrong. Take the Iraq war, for example. I believe it is wrong for many reasons, and I feel it necessary to explain to people who disagree with me why I think they're wrong.
I worry, then, that I am suffering under the same misconceptions that many pro-life (or pro-capital punishment, etc.) people do: trying to "fix" someone else's beliefs.
i.e. I worry that I end up lecturing others on the wrongness of their beliefs, despite the fact that I get upset when they do it to me.
That make sense?
I guess I worry sometimes that I'm a hypocrite.

[robert-from-ap.livejournal.com]

"Is there an underlying difference in values that makes it impossible to be friends?"


Only if one of you feels the need to constantly bring up that topic.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Things "come up" though. It's in the news. A friend talks about it in your hearing. A celebrity comes out on one side or the other.

I used to fundraise for The United Way, an umbrella charity here in Canada. I would talk to people who would flat out say that they won't donate because The United Way funds Planned Parenthood, and they are pro-life.

It doesn't come up every day, but it does come up.

[ravensee.livejournal.com]

I am good friends with both pro-choice and anti-abortion folk. I love them both equally.

I have a point of view about this issue and it is my own for my own reasons. I am pro-choice because it is my body and I am anti-abortion in some cases when it comes to my body. I have no right to impose my own personal views on what other people do with their bodies. Therefore, I am friends with everyone as long as they respect that I have a right to think differently and that I am also open to differing points of view. There is neither right nor wrong...it's all perspective and perspective is individual and should not be the basis on who I like or don't like.

It's like not being friends with someone because of the colour of their skin or their cultural background, it's irrational. I don't think a difference of beliefs, whether they be cultural or religious, should make a difference. It's all about what an individual friendship is based upon and basically I think it comes down to respect of how another person lives their life or respect of how that person treats you.

just my rambling two cents:)

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

I don't think a difference of beliefs, whether they be cultural or religious, should make a difference.

Hrm. Yes and no. It depends what the difference of beliefs entails. I can't be friends with someone who firmly believes that black people are inferior to white people. I can't be friends with someone who thinks that being queer is disgusting and unnatural.

I can be and am friends with someone who is Christian even though I'm not. I can be friends with people who have kids even though I don't have any and never will.

The details make all the difference.

[kest]

one of my best friends voted for Bush some years back because Gore 'is a babykiller'.

Strangely, we agree to disagree. Sometimes we even discuss and debate it. But the rest of her friends are in agreement that if any of us ever ends up getting an abortion for any reason, we just don't tell her.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

one of my best friends voted for Bush some years back because Gore 'is a babykiller'.

I would be unable to restrain myself from finding that ironic.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I'd find it very, very difficult to be friends with anyone who was anti-choice, but I'm fairly sure I could be acquaintances, colleagues, activity partners, etc. with such a person.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

that depends how strongly both feel, why they feel that way, and how often they need to talk about it.

i'm pro choice. but i don't think a fetus is "a part of the mother". that's not logical. it's a fetus. it's a blob of cells, something like a tadpole, something that's almost a baby, or a baby, depending on how long it's been in there. it gets my back up when people say "part of the mother", because it's illogical. and i don't think that all abortion is morally neutral, either.

an early abortion is, as far as i'm concerned, about morally equivalent to killing a mouse in your kitchen. yeah, it'd be nice if you could avoid killing the mouse, but it's not the end of the world, and leaving the mouse be would result in hundreds of mice overrunning your house, so it's not like you have no reason. i've never had mice, because i don't leave food out, or have a house with lots of gaps for mice to get into the kitchen, so i've never needed to kill mice, but i don't mind that other people use mousetraps.

a very late abortion is morally equivalent to killing a baby. but there are circumstances in which that's still the least-bad choice. i'm glad i don't have to decide what they are.

[meetzemonsta.livejournal.com]

Is it simply a matter of difference of opinion? Or is it more than that? Is there an underlying difference in values that makes it impossible to be friends?

I'm a little late to the party, but I feel the need to chime in.

I'm pro-choice, extremely so. I work for an abortion provider and every day, I assist women in getting their pregnancies terminated. I am also one of the few people who don't differentiate between early abortion and later trimester ones. It's all the same to me. My best friend of the past seventeen years is incredibly pro-life.

Our worst arguements have been about the fact that her taste in music is absolutely atrocious. And I talk about my job around her, like people do, every time I see her. In great detail.

We've had our abortion debates, but they've been friendly across the board. To us, it really is just a difference of opinion.

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

I don't phrase it as "pro-life". Many "pro-life" people are also pro capital punishment, anti social programs that would help all those "babies" they saved from abortion have a good quality of life, etc... "Pro-life" is often a misnomer.

Since I've had two abortions, I tend not to let people who are anti-choice into my inner life. Many want to legislate their morality. I don't think I could handle it if one of my friends helped pass legislation that would prevent me from getting a third abortion, if I needed one.

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

It is not impossible to be friends, given sufficient maturity on both parts.

However, sometimes the person's view on abortion *is* indicative of an actual underlying worldview that may make the person... unappealing as a friend.

Personally, I have a harder time with people who are "radically pro-choice" than I do with pro-lifers. I mean those who insist that there is *no* moral dilemma because to them the life and the feelings of the fetus -- at any stage -- have no value at all. This is a callous disregard for life and feelings. It squicks me no end.

Even clinic bombers are less squicky to me than that.