Civil Conversations:

Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Dialogue

Frances Kissling, Scholar, Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania

David Gushee, Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University

Moderdated by Krista Tippett, "On Being", American Public Media

Frances Kissling and David Gushee belong to a constellation of reproductive choice and rights activists who are exploring real relationship with their political opposites.  These encounters are scarcely imaginable against the backdrop of the absolute poles that frame better-publicized confrontation. David Gushee, who opposes abortion, has written this:  “Our legal stalemate about abortion is like a football game, with the two rival teams pushing each other back and forth across the 50-yard line and neither team able to win -- especially if winning is defined by either the total banning of abortion on the one side or its unhindered legalization and funding as a routine health care practice on the other. The pro-life and pro-choice establishments appear committed to the continuation of this game of smash-mouth abortion football until the end of time. It is quite a spectacle, but the legal struggle is actually a distraction from the unresolved cultural and moral issues that have created it.” This civil conversation will start there – with what is really at stake – and break out of the confines and categories of the usual debates.

Frances Kissling is a scholar and activist in religion, reproduction and women's rights. She was president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007.

Rev. Dr. David P. Gushee is the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Georgia.

This event is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is recommended.

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