Navigating Hard Topics

Episode Transcript:

  • 27 min

Episode 12: Navigating Hard Topics

Life Renovation Podcast

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Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Life Renovation Podcast.
We are your co-host, Glendie Loranger and Elizabeth Morrison.
And together, we're breaking down the walls that divide us through meaningful conversations around faith, family and sexuality.
For today's episode, we wanted to kind of recast the vision of why we started this podcast in the first place.
And so we're here at the Life Renovation Podcast to open up those really hard conversations.
Those conversations usually focus around faith, family or sexuality.
And they're the spaces where we tend to get stuck, to feel lost, to have really deep wounds that we don't know how to work through.
All of the episodes so far have just kind of been helping us to see the state of sexuality or the state of faith and see the groundwork of where we're at.
Today's episode, we're going to launch into what it looks like to have hard conversations around these topics.
And today we're going to focus on abortion, which is our expertise here at Life Services.

5 Tips for

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How to Have Compassionate Conversations About Abortion Through Faith and Truth 

One of the ways that we help people have these conversations, as we've mentioned in the past, we have an Unexamined Life Workshop.
And that's where we bring people, it's open to the community, bring people in and kind of teach them how to go through the steps of having these hard conversations.
Ours is focused on abortion, like we're going to focus today, but you can really use these in any conversation you're going to have.
And so today we wanted to kind of give you a snapshot of what that looks like.
So Glendie and I are going to take you through some of the content and we'll put a link in our show notes if you'd like to take the full class with us after this.
Thanks Elizabeth.
You know, the whole topic of abortion can be such a conversation stopper.
We at Life Services, we are obviously a life affirming organization.
If you've checked out any of our commercials or our website, but what we experience on a regular basis is about 78% of the clients who come to us are seeking abortion.
And so we specialize in having these conversations, really hard conversations with people who are considering terminating their pregnancies.
So we know that those are not always conversations for all of you out there that you're having on a day-to-day basis.

Why Honest Conversations About Abortion Matter for Faith, Family, and Christian Community 

But we also know that because they're conversation stoppers and nobody talks about it, because it's either political or it's hurtful or somebody's afraid of offending somebody, that we have young people who are making these decisions almost in a vacuum where nobody's spoken to them about it.
Nobody's tested their hypotheses or their theories or what they actually think.
And so we get to step into that arena and we want to teach you some of what we've learned.
So we're going to go through five tools and then we're going to have an example of some of the ways that you can have these conversations.
Glendie, this workshop is kind of your brainchild and you get to teach it most often.
Can you tell us some of the common reactions to these conversations about abortion that people have?
Yeah, there's something raw there.
This is not an easy topic for people to dive into.
And you know, if you look at anybody's specific opinion or belief, there's actually data out there that says the number one indicator for how someone will develop an opinion or a belief about a specific topic is their experience with the topic.
And it doesn't mean that they have had to have an abortion themselves, but maybe their sister did or maybe their nephew or their grandson or their kiddo or they paid for it.
They have a specific experience that's linked to it.
And oftentimes those experiences produce a really emotional response.
With important decisions though, and this is one of the reasons that we created the workshop, we have to balance our experiences and our emotions with logic.
They come from two different centers of our brain.
You know, our logic really uses our frontal lobe.
So, when we're making decisions, especially life-changing decisions, life-altering decisions like whether or not to have an abortion, we have to be fully informed.
Yes, use our emotions and our experience, but also use the logic and the information and really seek wisdom.
You know, Elizabeth, I was reading in James Chapter 13 the other day.
It says James 13, 17, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle.
It's open to reason, it's full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.
So if this is testing you, this is pushing you that we're coming at this from a Christian worldview, we need you to know that we're coming at it from a logical and a scientific view as well, knowing that every single one of us has strong emotions and strong opinions about this.
And we get to try to find the balance between that.
And that's really what we try to do in the Unexamined Life Workshop as well.
Yeah, I would say that the Christian worldview in this topic actually informs our behavior in the conversation and less to do with what our actual arguments are.
We get there.
But there's so much at the beginning that's just how do you treat someone with respect when you're having this conversation?
And that's what I heard in that scripture that you shared was just this is how to be respectful.
We really focus a lot on civility and how do you have a civil conversation with somebody and still walk away friends?
Yeah.
One of my favorite parts is at the very beginning, you kind of launch us into this question that you asked that's really important.
It helps lay the groundwork.
Can you share that with us?
I would love for our listeners to hear that.
Absolutely.
We start off the Unexamined Life Workshop by defining acceptance and then also defining approval.
Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, he actually taught on this years ago.
He says we often confuse the definitions of the two.
If you think about it, acceptance has to do with us as human beings.
The person that we are.
The definition in dictionary.com is simply to receive as is.
So if I accept you, I accept you for the person that you are.
Elizabeth Morrison.
Yeah.
An amazing person.
Thank you.
But approval is different.
Approval has to do with my actions, my thoughts, my beliefs, my opinions.
And so we have to ask ourselves this really big question.
Do I have to approve of someone's actions, behaviors, opinions in order to accept them for the person they are?
The answer is obvious, right?
The answer is no, of course.
We can agree to disagree.
Elizabeth, we're 30 years different.
There's a lot of things that you're really passionate about that I'm like, and vice versa, right?
And it's not because I think less of you as a person.
It's just we have different experiences.
Yeah, we grew up in different generations.
We grew up in different generations.
And so we get to give each other that acceptance for who we are and still agree to disagree at times.
Yeah, I love that distinction because I think it really stops people in their tracks to be like, you're right.
I don't have to agree with every single thing that you do to still love you and see you as valuable and worth a friendship or worth a relationship.
Our current culture, though, gets those two confused so easily.
If you're not for what I'm for, then you're dead to me.
Right, which is extreme.
So Glendie, what I hear you saying in that is since we're going to agree to be friends before the conversation starts, it means that we also need to listen to one another because we could have something to learn from one another.
Oh, absolutely.
Thanks for joining us today.

How Questions, Logic, and Christian Community Create Space for Meaningful Conversations About Life

It can be hard in our culture to know what you believe about life and abortion, where to go if you were to face this choice, or even how to talk about it.
But at Life Services Spokane, you don't have to walk these paths alone.
Our Unexamined Life Workshop is designed to help you navigate conversations around life, choice, and abortion that are all respectful and accurate, equipping you to know what you believe and why.
To find our next free Unexamined Life Workshop, visit lifeservices.org.
That's lifeservices.org.
Glendie, we had mentioned that we had some tools in how to have those conversations.
Tell us what those are.
Explain those for us around the topic of abortion.
Yeah, so this would be the place where you want to grab your pencil.
And honestly, I don't think this is just for abortion.
I think you can use these five tools for any hard conversation around any hard topic.
We're just using abortion as our example today.
And so the first tool, kind of the tip that I would give, is to lead with questions, not statements.
So think about this, Elizabeth.
If I come in and I walk in the room and I say to you, abortion is wrong, what's your first reaction?
Good morning.
Wow, there's really no space for me to say anything to you.
Nothing, right?
I just led with a statement, and statements generally shut people down.
They are just a statement of my opinion.
And like you said, it leaves no room for you to respond.
Exactly.
But if I walked in and I said, hey, Elizabeth, so something's on my mind and it's a little odd of a question, but I would love to just know, what are your thoughts on the abortion stuff that's up in the media right now?
Yeah, I love that you give me permission to speak in right away.
Yeah, so I'm drawing you into the conversation.
And that's really what a question does.
It draws somebody in and it says, I'm open to listen.
There's a key L word, right?
To listen to what you actually have to say.
I'm not just here to like spew my opinion all over you and then walk away.
So lead with questions, not statements.
Here's a few of the questions that we recommend.
What qualifies someone as human?
What qualifies life?
Just think about the conversations you can have.
Everybody has opinions there.
But when I open up that conversation and I'm actually going to go there, I want to listen.
I want to know what you think.
And then when you tell me, I might say, what do you mean by that?
Or how did you come to that conclusion?
Or where did you learn that?
Or maybe you pick a specific point when I say what qualifies something as life.
And you say the heartbeat or first breath or something like that.
And I can say, wow, that's interesting.
So what brought you to that conclusion or what is it about the heart?
So questions, not statements.
And I love the way you said that, Glendie, because I can see that any of those questions, if you said it with a really demeaning tone, it would still come across demeaning.
So having that gentle tone that you have, the pace of your voice, you not being super emotional, helps those questions to land safely, even if they are pointed.
Yeah, which actually brings me to tool number two.
You have to go into any one of these conversations winning the person, not the argument.
If I am going into this to win an argument, don't even start it, because then I just want to be right.
And that doesn't respect the relationship that you and I have.
If I really care about you, then I want to maintain this relationship and I want to win you as a person, not the argument.
And so I'm willing to bet that that means it might be multiple conversations.
Yep.
Yeah, we may have to do a part two or three or four on this.
It might get a little weird or a little dicey at times, or a little emotional.
And so we can go, OK, I see that this is really landing hard with you.
So it's OK if we pause this.
Can we come back to it another time?
Because this is important stuff, right?
So I'm out to win the person, not the argument.
Number three is to keep the main thing the main thing.
The main thing about the conversation when it comes to life, choice and abortion is that we're talking about a pre-born child and a mama and the decisions that they have to make.
Pretty big decisions about that pre-born child.
And so the main thing is what do we believe about that pre-born child, that pre-born infant, that pre-born fetus, whatever you want to call it.
So we keep the main thing the main thing.
So often these conversations get off into the weeds.
And if we get off in the weeds, then we often don't use the wisdom and the logic that we're given to make the decision about the main thing.
We're talking about a pre-born child and ending the life of a pre-born child.
And so we have to come back to what do we actually believe about that pre-born child and how is the mama involved with that.

And so lead with those questions.
Win the person, not the argument.
Keep the main thing the main thing.
And number four, be kind.
Be kind.
We have forgotten in our society how to be kind.
Somebody says something we disagree with and it automatically gets our blood pressure up and then automatically we're schnarky about it.
That's not necessary.
Yeah.
We can be kind and respectful and civil of each other.
Well, and when you go back to the other point of winning the person and not the argument, when you're not about winning something, it feels easier to be kind because you don't feel like you're being threatened, like your end goal is being threatened.
Really good point.
Yeah.
And then the last tool that I want to give you is to ask their story.
I wouldn't do this right up front, but somewhere in the conversation, whether this is a conversation about a political piece, about immigration, about, I don't know, guns, abortion, LGBTQ, anything that can feel kind of political and a little dicey.
Or controversial.
Controversial.
Yeah.
There is a story behind why people believe what they believe about any of those topics.
And so when we're talking about abortion, like I said earlier, there is a story behind why people believe the way they believe about this.
And so it would be absolutely acceptable for you after a conversation or a few inroads here to go, Elizabeth, you're pretty passionate about this.
Can I just ask you where that passion comes from?
Would you be?
Do you trust me enough to share a little bit of that?
I want to be a safe space for you.
So many different ways that you can ask people's story.
I think it values.
It shows that you value them as a person.
It's also going to inform you where their opinions are coming from, right?
Like if this was them that you're talking to that's post-abortive or their sister or their child, or they paid for it, whatever their relationship is, if they are post-abortive themselves, that's going to be really good for you to know as you're talking to them.
Or you might be talking to someone that's not post-abortive themselves, but they just have a passion or a heart for this topic.
And you're going to want to know where that comes from as well.
Absolutely.
And Elizabeth, you just used a word post-abortive.
If you've never heard that word before, that simply refers to somebody who's experienced abortion themselves.
And so, yeah, super important to discern that.
Okay, so is it okay if we test this out, Glendie?
I think we need to.
Okay, so I'm going to ask you one of the long-standing arguments for abortion that I know of from my generation, which is it's just a clump of cells or a parasite or a tissue, not a real baby yet.
How would you take these tools and go through that?
So I'd always start with, okay, we're friends, right?
Yes.
Dicey conversation coming up, Elizabeth.
I want to make sure that we're friends on the other end.
So can we agree that whether or not you approve of what I say, that we're still agreeing to respect each other and walk away friends?
Yeah, I think if you can care for me, then I'm willing to care for you.
Okay, that's awesome.
So I'd start right there.
And then I'd probably dive into a question, something like this.
Elizabeth, this one really begs the question, when does life begin?
So I'm going to ask you a really obvious question.
I'm not trying to be condescending.
Can a human man and a human woman make a cat?
No.
Obviously.
I mean, ridiculous.
So a woman can only be pregnant with another human.
So we have to ask the question, what makes that human?
Whatever the woman is pregnant with, what makes that thing, baby, fetus, human?
And not a parasite and not anything else.
And not a clump of cells.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What makes it human?
Yeah.
I think I would go back to its DNA if I had to guess.
You're right on.
Do you mind if I share a little bit of information with you?
Yeah, go for it.
Yeah.
So the DNA.
So there's 23 strands from mom and 23 strands from dad.
And so then the night that they get really frisky with each other, right?
And the sperm meets the egg, those chromosomes combine.
And that actually is what gives you your eye color, gives you your short legs, meet my long legs, and our hair color, all of that.
That all comes from our DNA.
And that actually happens the moment that the sperm penetrates the egg.
We actually have a really cool video on fertilization that we'll link in the show notes.
So once we've established that what the woman is pregnant with is human, then we have to actually decide whether or not it's alive.
Like when does that human become alive?
And so, Elizabeth, you have a smartphone?
I do, yeah.
Can you just type in dictionary.com, pull that up for me, and look up the word life, L-I-F-E.
Life, okay.
So the dictionary.com says, life is the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms being manifested by growing through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaption to environment through changes originating internally.
And you can look that up.
I know that's a lot of big words.
You can look that up on your phone.
On dictionary.com.
It's actually why I use dictionary.com and just ask people to look this up, because it is just an easy way for you to find the three qualities or qualifications for something to actually be alive.
So we just know innately, because we're humans, that a human can only make a human.
So then the question is, when does that human become alive?
Well, you just named those three characteristics that are present at every stage of human development, from the zygote, which is the dividing cells, the minute the sperm and the egg hit together, to the embryo, to the fetus, to an infant, to a teenager, to a millennial.
We all can guide and direct our own growth and development.
We can reproduce and we can adapt to stimuli.
And so we want to make this as simple as possible, but I've linked the Carnegie Stages of Human Embryonic Development.
Those are kind of the gold standard of embryologic research, and you'll find those in all embryology textbooks.
And really embryology is the study of all preborn humans.
And so you can take my word for that, or you can look it up, but it's very simple.
When you look at the three characteristics that qualify something as alive, they're with us from the very beginning.
Can I share another little stat with you?
About 96% of biologists say that at the moment of fertilization, a new genetically unique, newly existing, living human individual is formed.
And that that new human being actually begins right when the sperm and the egg combine.
So what you're saying is no matter the age or the stage that this baby zygote embryo is at, it's always a human, not just a clump of cells.
That would be what I've seen in science.
And so I think I would ask if you've heard anything different there.
I haven't.
I know that people have arguments and opinions, but I don't know if they've actually looked at the science from it.
I would say a lot of my generation probably just takes what they read.
And it becomes hard to study things because we don't know where to look.
So I appreciate that you have the links in so that we know where to look for this information.
Because I know for me, I just don't know where to look for information.
It feels like the media or anything I research has a bias to it.
They are trying to win the argument and not the person of me who's looking up information.
And so it's really hard for me to know what to trust.
So I like that you gave us this really simple place to look of a dictionary.
People don't argue with dictionaries.
Well, I gave you two things.
I also then gave you the Carnegie Stages of Human Development.
And so that's a little bit more technical.
I want to encourage you to go look that up.
Because like Elizabeth said, this can be really hard to know what to believe.
And sometimes we can lean into our own common sense.
Like we started with this really, it would have been an insulting question if I had said, Elizabeth, do you know if a human man and a human woman can make anything other than a human?
No, you know that innately.
Humans make humans only.
And humans are humans from the very beginning all the way forward.
We know that.
It's common sense to us.
So sometimes it's honestly just talking it out.
We can definitely use science.
Embryology is actually the science of what's going on inside a woman's uterus when she's pregnant.
Something you said sparked in me.
I wonder if it's helpful to start having these conversations with people that we know, love us and care for us and can help us kind of navigate.
A little safer.
Yeah, it's safer for someone to say, OK, that that doesn't sound right or your logic doesn't make sense.
Yeah.
So I wouldn't start with the stranger on the plane with this conversation.
Probably not.
OK.
So I got one more question for you that I think comes to people's minds when they start to have this conversation.
Are you good if I ask you one more?
Ask away.
So even if I can adopt the concept that a human baby is a human baby, I feel like a lot of the conversations are around these heartbeat bills, which is basically saying that after a fetal heartbeat is detected, you can't legally abort the baby.
In some states, that's six weeks before she knows she's pregnant.
That's a lot of emotion there.
How would you navigate that conversation with the tips that you laid out earlier?
Yeah, again, I'd start with questions, right?
I'm trying to win the person, not the argument.
So I do that by asking a question, and I would say, Elizabeth, what do you know about the fetal heartbeat?
I know what people have told me, which is that it starts around five to six weeks, and that you really typically can't fully see it on an ultrasound, I think, around eight.
But I've, myself, have never been pregnant, so I've never actually seen it myself.
I would probably ask you what you think about these heartbeat bills.
Like, do you think it's okay that somebody can abort a child before five weeks, but not after that?
So let's just go there.
It kind of feels to me like a loophole if people are like, oh, well, if you find out at five weeks, then you're good.
But if you find out at six weeks, then you're not.
Like, that to me just seems wrong that a state would be like, the earlier you find out, the safer it's going to be for you.
Yeah.
Well, and I can see as a woman, I'd be so upset.
If I thought I had a right to abortion and it's up to that point, but then I don't find out until I'm seven or eight weeks, then I'm like, wait, time out.
I didn't even know I was pregnant.
But what we have to ask ourselves is, why is the heartbeat not detectable before five weeks?
So you're saying outside of the fact that I might feel like I have a right to something at some point and not a right at another point, getting out of the weeds, like your tip says, you're focusing back on what is a heartbeat.
Keeping the main thing the main thing.
Bringing it back to what are we talking about?
Because we have to decide what is the thing that she's pregnant with.
We've already discovered that it's human and science says that that human life begins at fertilization.
But what is it about the heartbeat?
Why hasn't that heart began to beat before five weeks?
Yeah, I think just because it hasn't fully developed.
What does it need to develop then?
Time and, you know, space for all the parts to come together.
Right.
I totally agree.
And that just makes sense in my brain.
Right.
It just needs time to develop.
Well, if you think about it, time as it relates to our bodies is just our age.
So what we're saying is that this baby is just a lot younger than you and I are.
And it just needs time, just needs to grow older in order for its heart to actually develop.
And so then we have to ask ourselves, why should that child's value or even if we want to go to rights, why should their right to live be grounded in something that's related to their age, just because they're smaller and haven't fully developed yet.
Yeah, and so you've taken age and made it about the entire life even before they're out of the womb.
If you think about it, age has to do with their exiting the womb, right?
They just have to become old enough to be born.
Yeah.
They just have to be developed enough to be born.
They just have to be big enough to be able to live outside the womb, and that's all related to our age.
And so there are so many arguments out there, and we're going to go to the argument of what about a woman and her rights?
Just for our sake today, it's not between a woman and a baby.
This entire conversation has to be a both-and conversation.
How do we value her and support her?
And how do we value and support this unique, genetically new, individual, human person growing inside of her, her baby?
Because really the only difference between those two, there are a lot of differences, size, level of development, but they really all have to do with, she's older, he's younger.
Yeah, and making sure that the guy has a space to speak in, if it's safe.
Making sure that we have this man that also has this child and has opinions about it.
We want to give space for the dads to be able to speak into this too.
Yeah, and we're going to do a whole episode.
We're going to try to repeat these kind of conversations that we do in Unexamined Life.
We're going to take some of the other arguments that you hear about abortion or for abortion and try to bring these conversations to bear.
And so those of you who are guys out there, this absolutely does apply to you.
We want to give you back your voice and hopefully your choice in these matters as well and hopefully bring guys and gals together in their decisions.
We see that too often.
Gals are left up to themselves to make really, really hard decisions.
We're about out of time for today's episode, but like Glendie said, we're going to keep coming back to things like this where we take our Unexamined Life content and take it through some arguments.
Please look at the show notes so that you can sign up for our next workshop.
Right now, it's only in person, but we hope to bring it online to those of you that might be further away from Spokane.
And we'd appreciate if you would share this episode with those in your circle.
Rate it, comment on it, let us know your feedback.
And if you've had a chance to have these conversations, please let us know how it went.
We're here for you, we want to support you, and we hope to see you at our next Unexamined Life workshop.
You can find that at lifesservices.org.
Thanks for joining us on the podcast this morning.
Thanks so much.
We'll see you next time.
See you, bye.