The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice Manual

This manual incorporates over six years of work by the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice (the Network) to foster dialogue and cooperative action between people opposed over abortion. The Network came into being as part of the larger vision of its parent organization, Search for Common Ground (SCG), which is dedicated to promoting constructive approaches to major societal conflicts and highly polarized issues of public significance.

The decision to enter this seemingly intractable conflict was based on a belief that having the opponents come together in a non-adversarial manner is essential to the future well-being of our society since the alternative is a continued squandering of opportunities to uphold both respect for life and reverence for liberty, the weighty values that are implicated in the abortion debate. At the same time, the methods devised for working in the abortion conflict offer an approach for altering the pattern of other divisive social conflicts where values and beliefs are at the core. This second edition of the Manual is intended to, as much as possible, reduce to writing the content and methods of this work. It comes at a point when full-time resources can no longer be committed to the effort, making a useful written tool even more essential.

Our Goal
The goal of the search for common ground is to transform the dynamic of the abortion conflict, not to settle or resolve the conflict. The idea is to reduce polarization and hostility and promote a level of trust between the adversaries so that they can

• Gain a deeper understanding of the conflict over abortion and the motivations, interests and values reflected in people's positions;



• Coexist within the bounds of civility, with debate focused on the merits of their contrasting beliefs, not on stereotyped and dehumanized "enemies";



• Act together when it furthers overlapping interests and values. This is the area we call the "common ground." Here people have found shared beliefs in such things as: providing practical assistance to people facing crisis/unwanted pregnancies; preventing teen pregnancy; renouncing violence as a means to further one's position; building dialogue and conflict resolution skills in the community; increasing knowledge about, and access to, adoption; reducing the conflict between family and work; increasing male sexual responsibility.

Changing the relationship between adversaries in this way contributes to a higher level of discourse on abortion and related issues, one that can reveal the elements of truth in each perspective (there are some) and the areas where working together might make a difference. In turn, this builds community, a recognition of mutual interdependence and an understanding of how people with profound differences can live and work together to make a better world.

Click here for the The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice Manual in pdf format.

Click here for the The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice Manual in Word format.