Major Abortion Rights Site Launches Online 'Common Ground' Forum

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Coinciding with the Obama administration's move to ready a plan for "reducing the need for abortion," a major abortion rights website has launched an online forum aimed at finding what it calls "common ground" in the abortion debate. The forum, called On Common Ground, is hosted by RHRealityCheck.com and went live yesterday.

The unusual project—moderator Cristina Page, a prominent abortion rights advocate, calls it an experiment—already includes posts by Third Way's Rachel Laser, Beliefnet cofounder Steven Waldman, Faith in Public Life's Katie Paris, and others.

One of the striking features of the project's launch is that it uses the recent murder of abortion provider George Tiller to argue that the abortion debate must be wrested away from extremists. It will be fascinating to watch how antiabortion rights groups respond. Some will almost surely brand On Common Ground a cynical attempt by abortion rights supporters to co-opt the antiabortion movement. It will be interesting to see how some of the more moderate antiabortion groups react.

Check out these paragraphs from Page's introductory post in the forum:

The murder, just two weeks ago, of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller has deeply wounded and enraged the pro-choice community while also, some would argue, providing it with further reason to mistrust pro-life activists. Perhaps a different kind of wound has been inflicted on the pro-life side, and in particular on those moderates who dislike abortion, but don't tolerate violence, which includes most of the pro-life movement and public. Now they are sometimes treated as if they, too, are extremists.

And so, in the aftermath of this senseless attack we risk losing something else dear, the momentum of the growing common ground movement; the search for a different, more constructive way forward in the abortion debate. Shortly before Dr. Tiller's murder, President Obama had just begun to usher this movement through the White House doors. His appointees had started calling together leaders from both sides to sit at the same table. His argument has been that the two sides can disagree sharply on a fundamental issue and yet still find areas of agreement on which they can work together.

The brutal murder of Dr. Tiller threatens to poison the nascent dialogue Obama initiated. More pervasively, it threatens to make cynicism about another's motives acceptable even rational. After such a heinous act it is easy to grow remote, to give up on efforts of understanding, to believe the worst of one another. The violence perpetrated against Dr. Tiller is an attack on common ground, too, whether intended or not.

But, especially in the aftermath of the murder, a common ground movement must persist, and grow stronger. If not, we surrender reasoned and civil debate at gunpoint. If we retreat to our respective corners, we cede control of the dialogue to extremists, and with it any hope for a better and a different, more constructive way of reconciling, and living with differences. . . .

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