This is the third post in a series entitled “Talk About It.” This series will focus on how to spread the pro-life message through your personal relationships. Sign-up HERE to get articles like this delivered to your inbox.
The last post in this series asked the question: “When you go into a conversation about abortion what are your goals?”
Thanks to everyone who posted your goals!
Your Goals
There ended up being 36 goals posted by people like you on the last article. Overall, these were very good. Thanks for your input!
I’d love to go through each of them, but I can’t really do all of your responses justice. However, most of the responses fell into three categories.
1 – Quick Understanding – Give them all the truth, science, logic, philosophy now and hope they change their minds.
2 – Gradual Understanding – Through either listening or smaller goals bring people to acceptance of the truth, science, logic… over many conversations.
3 – Seeds of Understanding – This is similar to the other two, but it is more of a reliance on planting a seed of truth and hoping that it grows at a later date.
These are all good goals. They are all very similar to each other in that they seek to increase understanding of the issue in a different way.
These are not my goals.
You see, my main goal does not focus directly on increasing understanding.
Understanding the Truth
Understanding the truth about abortion is an important element in becoming pro-life. This truth is really very simple, rational and straight forward. However, if you have ever had a conversation about abortion then you probably identify with this quote:
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” – Sir Winston Churchill
Depending on how your conversations went, this quote may make you laugh or cry! Either way, I’m sure you recognize the fact that many people seem to be immune to rational understanding of abortion.
If that is truly the case, which it certainly has been in my experience, then why do we focus almost entirely on rational understanding as our end for an abortion conversation?
But isn’t this what we normally do? Logic, logic, logic!
Science seems to back up my experience. Looking at psychology and even neuroscience, it appears that we (humans in general) tend to be much less rational than we think we are.
It turns out that most people make many decisions first through emotion and then they justify it with their reason (rationalize). They usually do this without even realizing it.
This is very important to know when talking with someone about abortion.
My Goal
So, given the above discussion, what are my goals?
If people tend to make decisions emotionally and then rationalize them, then it is important to find what emotions are keeping them from being open to the truth. Otherwise, the truth falls on deaf ears no matter how good your arguments are.
Therefore, my main goal is to determine the emotional roadblocks that the other person has through calmly asking questions.
It may shock you, but this has very little to do with the truth about abortion or educating people on the facts. (that comes later) It’s important to be able to determine what emotions guide someone in being pro-choice before you start throwing facts, stats or clever arguments at them.
Don’t get me wrong, the truth is very important. You need to know your stuff. It’s just that emotional roadblocks must first be removed before someone is open to the truth.
I find that these roadblocks tend to come in a few general categories. I will talk about these categories and how to address them in the next post.
Your thoughts?
For now, what are some emotional roadblocks that you have encountered in your conversations about abortion? Please leave a comment below!
This post is from a series entitled “Talk About It.” This series is about how to spread the pro-life message through your personal relationships.
Sign-up HERE to get articles in this series delivered to your inbox.
Hey John Paul, great article. Have you seen this video?: http://battleforthecoreoftheworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/media-malpractice-and-march-for-life.html
or this one for that matter: http://battleforthecoreoftheworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/daily-show-made-good-point-watch-this.html
Very true. This approach is difficult for me because I am such a logical person. I want to be able to present my case, refute all of the other person’s objections, and then see them change their mind. But so often it does not work that way.
I once spoke to a Planned Parenthood canvasser on the sidewalk, and as the conversation progressed, I made practically every pro-life argument in existence. We got nowhere and she was very angry by the end of it. Then, a year later, I ran into her again, and this time I took a different approach. I asked her what made the issue so personal for her. I found that there were indeed emotional roadblocks to her accepting the truth. I tried to show as much empathy as I could for these issues, and that conversation went much differently.
If you’re interested in more details, I wrote about that conversation here: http://naturallyprolife.blogspot.com/2010/10/talking-with-pro-abortion-street.html
Eleanore!
I didn’t realize you had a blog! Good work and thank you for sharing! That was a great post!
Thanks! I don’t get to write on it as much as I’d like, but whenever I have thoughts (and time), that’s where they go!
Here’s an “old school” arguement, lacking any logic, that has become an emotional roadblock to an elderly friend of mine. She has long endorsed planned parenthood’s objectives because she is so troubled by child abuse in the inner city.
She reasons that ending an unplanned pregnancy is more merciful than another “child abuse statistic.” She says she has a heart for women and children and supports many organizations which minister to these two. However, in our conversations, she will not allow her mind to think through the physical abuse that abortion is to both mother & child. Of course she cannot accept that life begins at conception.
It makes me wonder what underlying circumstances in her past may have brought her to this point. As so often is the case, our experiences tend to shape our theology!
I pray that God’s Holy Spirit will break through her hardened heart!
I once had a conversation with a co-worker where we were each expressing our views and why. At that time, I operated from the belief that if the other person just heard the facts, they would come to understand my point of view and be convinced to believe as I did!
But to my surprise, she turned to me and said, ” Just as you are convinced that you have the truth to your belief, I am as strongly convinced that I have the truth for my way of thinking.”
Perhaps, as you have stated, each of our emotional reasons for our view point were influencing our conversation and we were at an impasse as to each other’s understanding of the abortion issue.