Let's Find Common Ground - Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Leaders Together in the Same Room: Reverend Anne Fowler and Francis Hogan

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Abortion is one of the most passionate, divisive, and emotional issues in the 2024 election campaign. The debate is often dominated by extremes on both sides. But what if passionate pro-life and pro-choice movement leaders could get together in the same room and learn how to disagree better? That is exactly what happened in Massachusetts, beginning in the mid 1990's. Leaders on both sides held secret discussions over the course of several years .  These wrenching conversations began in the mid 1990’s at a very difficult time— after two women were murdered by an anti-abortion extremist in Brookline, Massachusetts. We hear from The Reverend Anne Fowler, an Episcopal Priest who served on the board of directors for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and lawyer Fran Hogan, who's been President of Women Affirming Life. They’re among the six women profiled in the 2023 documentary, "The Abortion Talks".  This interview was first published last year.

One of the most passionate and emotional issues in the 2024 election campaign is abortion. The debate is often dominated by extremes on both sides. There is no shortage of fear and loving. But what if passionate pro-life and pro-choice movement leaders could get together in the same room and learn how to disagree better, showing personal respect for people on the other side of the debate. That is exactly what happened in Massachusetts. Leaders on both sides came together for years of secret talks. These wrenching conversations began in the mid-1990s at a very difficult time after two women were murdered by an anti-abortion extremist. At first, these abortion talks between six women leaders, three from each side, were tense and difficult.

We learned what happened next. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Nontight. And I'm Richard Davies. Opinion polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans say they support the right of women to have an abortion, but within certain limits, such as the length of a pregnancy. In recent decades, public opinions about abortion haven't actually changed that much. But in the last two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade, the politics of abortion in many states have become more heated. In this episode, we hear again from

the Rev. Ann Fowler, an Episcopal priest who served on the board of directors for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. And lawyer Fran Hogan, she's been president of Women Affirming Life. They're among the six women profiled in the documentary, The Abortion Talks. You know, it took years for them to go public and explain what they discussed and why they met. The first mention came in a they discussed and why they met. The first mention came in a newspaper opinion article they wrote together. The headline was Talking with the Enemy. We spoke with Anne and Fran last year. Richard, you asked

the first question. As these conversations began, were both of you scared? I was not scared. I felt obligated and called as part of my ministry to participate. Honestly, as I think back about what my reaction was and what my mood was going into the first meeting, I was more irritation than anything else. Why do we have to keep doing this? I was not scared physically. I was scared that people might think that I was caving

on my position on the issue. And I was afraid that that would hurt my movement, my side of the movement, so to speak. And that's part of the reason that at least I think among pro-life is we wanted this to be completely confidential. We didn't know what damage it might do to people on the front lines.

So I wasn't physically scared, but I was nervous about the impact this might have. Well, yeah, I mean, these talks, certainly initially, maybe throughout, they were top secret, right? And you met in the basement of a house somewhere in the Boston area. And Fran, I think, at one point, your secretary had some suspicions about what might be going on.

She was wondering. She didn't know where I was going, because we weren't telling people where we were going. And I think she thought I was having an affair or something. It was crazy, because we really, really could only tell spouses, people that we were living with. And that was it. And that was very important. I don't think without that, I don't know, cocoon,

we would have been able to achieve what we did achieve. It had to be confidential. Fran and Anne, did you have preconceptions about the other side? And if you did, could you tell us what they were as opposed to how you feel now? I didn't expect them to be smart, you know, and they they turned out to be really smart, which was just added to my irritation about the whole thing. Which was, I just added to my irritation about the whole thing. Because we were well matched. We were six people who were well matched.

And I think the choice to engage leaders was not exactly political, but it was a public policy kind of decision, I think, on the part of public conversations. It was good for them to choose leaders because we all had experience with leadership in tough situations. I think I probably did have some preconceived notions. Nikki Nichols Gamble, whom I like very much, was really an icon of the pro-choice movement, I think really known throughout the country for her leadership. Gamble was the president of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts at the time. And before I met her, I didn't like her because of the position she had.

I did not know Anne before we met. I was not familiar with Anne at all. We had appeared on many different interview shows or different events where they would have people from one side and the other side, but we really never clicked together. We sort of knew each other but didn't really talk to each other. It was that kind of a relationship. As opposed to today where we very much enjoy the few times we have to get together and to share a meal and to share updates on family and so forth. It's a relationship now, it never was before. Can I just dig in quickly into something you, to what you said, Anne. When you said, laughingly, I didn't expect him to be smart. Why not? Well, because I think my main impounders with, I'm supposed to say pro-life people, was in where people were, seemed to me irrational and kind of cult-like and not people that I would expect to be able to engage the way that our friends on the

pro-life side turned out to be able to do. Was that disconcerting? That sense that you'd got them wrong or was it refreshing that, oh gosh, we're across the table from people who are smart as opposed to what I thought they were? Well, it certainly made things a lot more interesting. In a good way, I think. I wouldn't say refreshing. I think it took us a real while to get used to each other. I would say it could have took a good eight or ten meetings before we kind of hit our stride. How long were these meetings usually?

Oh, endless. There were supposed to be two hours and they rarely ended on time. I'm kind of a watch witch, so I would always say it's eight o'clock, we're going to go home now. Yeah, they were long and they were emotional and you'd be rung out at the end of them, I think, especially in the beginning when we learned what we needed to call each other and what words we could use and not use in order to further the conversation. If we didn't have those facilitators, it would never have happened, I don't think.

Absolutely. I said often that this was, I realized this was the closest I was ever come to understanding what it was like to be in the early church where then people were gathered together in a basement room trying to decide as Jews and Christians or followers of the New Jesus Movement if they could be together, if Jews who wanted to convert could be admitted into the Jesus movement. And they were held together by liturgy, the service, and by food, by breaking bread together.

And that's what we were doing. We were in a basement room. We were secret. We were trying to figure out if we could stay together, and we were eating meals together. And what held the people together in the first century was their liturgy. What held us together was those facilitators. Fran is right.

We could never have done it without them. I want to know some of what you actually talked about. I mean, your talks lasted unexpectedly a long time. They went on way beyond four or five meetings. They went on for several years, especially at the beginning. How were you even talking and what were you talking about? Well, at the very beginning, we had to come up with a vocabulary that we could use so that we could actually talk.

And that took a long time. We would put up, yeah, it really did. We put on big sheets on the wall, we can't use, what are the hot button terms that we ought not use? And an awful lot of our vocabulary was stolen from us. So we had to learn how to speak about these issues in words that were not our normal way of speaking. We're all advocates for our positions and it was hard to put those words away and talk in a different way. Clearly the topic was not just abortion, but it was how to lower the rhetoric so that violence no longer happens within the movement.

And we had a big discussion, I remember, about the pro-choice people would speak of the violence that happened when the murders occurred and the shootings occurred. And we totally agreed with that. That was horrible violence. But from the pro-life perspective, at the beginning, we talked about what we considered the violence done in the act of abortion.

So that would be one of the things in the very beginning that we talked about, but we went on to everything you can possibly imagine from one end of life to the other. Who would you throw overboard in a lifeboat? I don't know if you remember that conversation. It was everything you can imagine. Partial birth, abortion. We tried very hard to figure out some activity maybe we could do together unrelated to abortion. We couldn't do that. The only thing we ever came up with was the article that we wrote for the Globe. That was the best thing we could have come up with. I mean we talk about like planting a tree or you know doing some public service or something like that but but the best

thing that we came up with was the best thing which was to make and we spent a long time deciding whether we could, as we kept putting it, taking it out of the room. We spent a long time, and I think it's fair to say that the pro-life people were much more trepidatious about taking it out of the room, you mean that as a result of your conversations, you took it out of the room and went public with this big article in the Boston Globe, which was by far and away the largest newspaper in the region. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. That's right. And as a result of that, we got invited to, I can't even imagine how many places to speak, from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard to the Rhinebeck up in New York. And we were everywhere. The day that, yeah, it was a little crazy. The day that we went with this, we figured no one would show up.

They were gonna have a press conference. No one was more shocked than we were. The room was full of media. We had no idea of the impact this would have. And from a pro-life perspective, purely from my perspective, it was the best thing because we were heard in places we never had access to before. We would never be invited to many of these places. Now, was it scary going to places, Ian will know this, where everybody in the room feels differently than you do? Yes, it was. But

I felt it was a real opportunity to present a message that they just never heard before. So it was a great thing, I think. But it's ancient history now. It's a long time ago. But it does relate to what's going on today, which we're going to get to a little bit later in the conversation. But just to quickly go back to your developing relationships with each other over the years, because by the time that Boston Globe piece came out, it was early 2001, would you consider yourself friends by that point, the six of you? I would. Would you, Ian? Well, it depends what you mean by friends. I think we were friendly acquaintances, fairly close acquaintances. There are some elements of real friendship that I have to say for myself were lacking.

But I think most important, we learned to trust one another. And to this day, I would trust my life to any one of the women. I felt like we had each other's backs. We were respectful of each other's position in a lot of ways. We were respectful of each other and we certainly became very fond of each other. We had a lot of laughs and we went through a lot of different people's life experiences, death of spouses, death of siblings, birth of grandchildren. And those experiences forge deep relationships. That that sounds great, but was there a moment,

were there moments when somebody threatened to get up and walk out, or there was a moment when you thought, oh gosh, this whole thing's just breaking apart, or we're gonna have a yelling match here? I don't think anybody ever threatened to walk out that I can recall. One of the things they taught us to do, and it was a very important lesson for me,

was to listen to what the person is saying, not preparing your response to what the person is saying, not preparing your response to what the person is saying, and then saying back to them, because half the time, what you thought they said, they didn't really say. And that was one of the gifts of these facilitators who taught us how to really listen and respond to what was actually said. I think that was a very good tool in their toolbox.

Well, certainly that was true. I had had trouble, I think, really hearing the other point of view. And I think, I want to be sure to say this, I think it was one of the great opportunities of my life because we don't have many opportunities to sit with people with whom we disagree and talk almost exclusively about the very thing that we disagree about. And that is a gift that I wish I knew how to scale up. In the podcast that we've done on Let's Find

Common Ground, we've had a number of guests who've said that. Did either of you go into these discussions at any time, wishing to change the minds of the other side? Well, we definitely were told that we would not to go in to try to change the minds of the other side. And for myself, it was extremely difficult for me to do that because I wanted to change their minds knowing that wasn't going to happen. But I did want to change their minds.

But I think the ground rules made it clear we were not supposed to be trying to do that. Once you came to respect them and even like them, did you wish even more fervently that you could change their minds because you thought, oh, these are good people? I did. I never gave up that hope. Never, ever, never, ever. But one thing that Ian said, we talked about respecting the persons, each other. I did respect all the people involved, but we had a big discussion one time about the fact that I did not respect their position. I respected them as, you know,

having dignity as human persons, but I did not respect their position. And it was a, a feeling hot discussion about that because they felt differently, at least my recollection is that they felt differently, but I'd never changed my mind on that. I remember that. So, yeah. Can you respect a person if you don't respect her position, I think was what we struggled

with. That's right. Yeah. That's right. But that's where I came down. Yeah. We've been hearing from Anne Fowler, who is pro-choice, and Fran Hogan, who's pro-life. Our conversation was recorded in 2023. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. And I'm Richard. This podcast interview with Fran and Anne turned out to be a defining moment for Common Ground Committee, the non-profit group that publishes our podcasts.

The decision to make the original podcast prompted an internal dialogue among members of our production team about what it means to find common ground. This topic is deeply divisive. Outside facilitators are needed to set certain rules and boundaries for discussions, as was the case with the pro-choice and pro-life leaders. Utah's Governor Spencer Cox has used the term disagree better to describe the goal of some very difficult conversations. Our interviews with Governor Cox and many other of our guests who've thought deeply about what it means

to find common ground are all available free on our website, commongroundcommittee.org slash podcasts. Now more from our interview. And how did it feel as a member of the clergy working with the pro-life women, given that I'm assuming they claimed moral authority, you remember the clergy, I mean, where does that leave you? I felt it left me in a particular hot spot. They always seemed a little skeptical about, you know, this woman is a minister, she's an Episcopal priest and she believes

what she believes. And I asked them once quite far along if they thought I was a moral person. And they could not answer that question. And that was painful after everything that we'd been through together. Well, just a couple of comments on that that one is that I think it's important, at least from my perspective. The three of us were Catholic on the pro life side, but I was not coming from a faith perspective. So in terms of moral authority, I never thought of it that way.

It was just how I thought in a secular reasoned way. But second of all, if my brother asked me if I thought he were a moral person, I wouldn't answer that either. I can't judge another person's morality. In my mind, each person has to judge his or her own morality. And that would be why I wouldn't comment on that. I don't know the fullness of any other person's life. Those years that you were talking together, if you didn't find common ground, what did you find? We did not find common ground on the abortion issue whatsoever. You want us to make sure you know that.

Make sure, right, exactly. We did find the beauty and the dignity of all human life, even human life with which we profoundly disagree, and the importance to respect that human life as much as I respect the life of the unborn child or the person at the other end of life. In my mind, all those people have to be respected the same way. And because a person has a position I don't agree with, doesn't mean I don't respect and honor that person as a human being. Your conversations began in the 90s. Would it be even more difficult to start a chat

around a subject as charged as this today than was the case when you began? Did you call it a chat? A 20 year chat. I'm sorry. I think it would be the same. I mean, I would hope that people are as motivated today as they were 20 years ago to try to at least talk to one another. I mean, people of good faith ought to be as eager to do that

as they worked with we worked 20 years ago. And people ought to be very interested in facilitating such chats. I agree with the end on this. I think that it could be done. There are so many more issues that are dividing people today even than 20 years ago. I mean, I have a brother who has a daughter who raises money for Planned Parenthood and one that's in the Tea Party. Same family. So, you know, when you're having dinner with

people or talking with friends or family, often you disagree not just on this issue, but on a million other issues. And, you know, the TV and the media hasn't helped one single bit in my view. They, I think they like to rev it up to make it more exciting and more volatile or something. You know, that's, That was my experience with the media. Throughout the interview, both of you have talked about the vital role played by the facilitators of your discussions, your conversations, not your chats. I stand corrected. What kind of role did they play? And do you think that when it comes to two sides on a very difficult issue coming together that they need a facilitator, they need someone to maybe help them with the ground rules of the conversations?

I certainly would say so. I would not embark on this kind of project without the reassurance that somebody, if they were a container for us. on this kind of project without the reassurance that somebody, if they were a container for us. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And that's the problem with having these conversations because if you don't have anybody to facilitate them, you don't know how they're gonna occur. But I do agree, it could never have happened

because they controlled us. No, they did. I mean, they told us if we got out of line, it would bring us back in and so forth. And they allowed it to go on very slowly. It was a long time till we got to talk about real substance. I want to follow up on Richard's question. You've both said the conversations that you held years ago could be held now, but we do live in an incredibly polarized time. Could another group from different sides of an issue

meet today the same way you did? I think they could. And you got to remember, we're in the middle of two murders and five shootings. It was extremely volatile at the time. And I do think that today it could be done. You know, if I were in charge of the U.S. Congress, I would bring in a facilitator and try and have these guys talk to each other. Seriously, let them listen to what the other person is saying. They're missing that at that level. And even on the different TV channels, whether it's right wing or left wing,

there's no real genuine discussion about the content of different issues. Anne? I think the more the media can resist, if it believes that leads kind of journalism and If it's a lead that leads kind of journalism and have more spots and more discussions like you're providing, examples of how we can have a conversation successfully without expecting to change other people's minds but hoping to learn to understand where they are coming from, that would be a great service to the country. And I know people listen to the media that supports what they already think, but there are some breakthrough situations. And I just think the more encouragement that can be given to the more encouragement that can be given to people of good faith trying to understand one another. I would hope that would have some effect.

These on the whole were civil, dignified conversations that you had with the help of your facilitators. What would you say you gained from them personally? For myself, I gained the opportunity to understand why I believe what I believe at a very deep level. When one speaks with people with whom one agrees, you tend not to even examine your belief system. And I think what happened for me at least is I dug very, very deeply to understand what I believed and to understand the difference between what I might believe as a Catholic as opposed to what I might believe as a lawyer in a secular society, what was possible. So in that sense, I found it extremely an enriching experience.

Well, I, part of what I gained, I gained very early on, which is this understanding about how I was getting thrown back to first century Christianity, the development of Christianity. And I realized I live in a kind of bubble where I don't have to spend a lot of time with people that I don't agree with. I don't have to listen to them. My family and I are pretty much on the same page. My friends and I are. So learning that I could love, I use the word advisedly. I'm advising myself that I love Fran and Madeline and Barbara.

I don't always like them. I certainly don't believe them, but I love them. You hear it, Fran? I love you. I heard you, Ann, loud and clear. And as they say, I love you too. Fran Hogan and Anne Fowler. That's our show.

Let's Find Common Ground is a production of Common Ground Committee. Learn more about what we do at commongroundcommittee.org. Also, find out about the Common Ground scorecard where all members of Congress, governors, and presidential candidates are rated on how they do and do not find common ground. I'm Ashley Milne-Tight.

I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.