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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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:)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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