Editorial: A reconciling way to talk about abortion

Minnesotans have been slinging fightin' words about abortion at each other for more than 35 years -- so long, and with such polarizing effect, that the issue has created what has seemed to be two permanently irreconcilable camps. Democratic self-governance has suffered as a result.

Might that change if abortion were discussed not in terms of absolutes and inflexible rights, but of moral ambiguity? What if those discussions moved out of the confrontational environment of the courtroom, into the conversational arena of politics?

Those mind-opening questions were raised last week at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, as Sarah Stoesz of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota described the 2006 referendum campaign that overturned a law banning abortion in conservative South Dakota.

That campaign one year ago is viewed as a harbinger of what might occur in other states if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its 1973 ruling legalizing abortion and turns the matter back to state legislatures and, directly or indirectly, state voters.

The South Dakota experience is also being analyzed for the tantalizing possibility it appears to offer. It might be that a peaceful resolution to America's long-running culture war is possible, at the polls.

A change in language by those seeking to overturn the ban was crucial to their solid 12-point victory in South Dakota, Stoesz attested. They set aside phrases like "defenders of reproductive rights," and stopped emphasizing the "choice" theme that has been their movement's signature. That's the language of litigation, not persuasion.

Instead, the ban's opponents united under the banner "South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families."

The campaign acknowledged that abortion is morally problematic for many people. But it also stressed how intrusive an all-out abortion ban would be on families for whom a pregnancy presents a complex and highly personal dilemma.

It invited people who had been in such difficult circumstances to tell their stories publicly-- and thereby triggered an untold number of private conversations about a topic people previously considered too hot for polite company. That proved to be both empowering and unifying, in a way that bowing to the ruling of a court never has been.

"What we have now accepted is that ambivalence is exactly what we have to address," Stoesz said. When they did, a truth that has been obscured by four decades of fightin' words emerged, and could be embraced: It is possible to be both "prolife" and "prochoice" at the same time.

That awareness, having dawned on many of Minnesota's neighbors to the west, ought to spread eastward.