After President Obama’s visit to Notre Dame in May, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sunday editorial section ran a debate of the two sides of the abortion issue under the title “Does abortion allow for common ground?” I read both positions to a certain 15-year-old I know, who is no lover of God. I asked that she take mental note of the respective apologists’ arguments, as I meant this to be an exercise in analysis and rhetoric, and not particularly a proselytizing session. First up was Dayle Sternberg, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania.

Ms. Sternberg used her 1,000 words to make the following points:

• There is a critical need to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.
• Our schools provide inadequate sex education.
• Abstinence-only education was expensive and ineffective.
• Birth control has high failure-rates.
• Women spend a lot more money than men on health-related services.
• Women often put the health of their children before their own, and neglect themselves.
• A majority of Americans support good sex education.
• Sex-education must be fact-based.

When I finished Sternberg and glanced up at my 15-year-old, she had a puzzled look on her face. She expressed surprise that the abortion rights proponent had not even mentioned the question of the status of the baby (or fetus, or products of conception, or whatever they’re calling it these days). She found all the statistics on unwanted pregnancies and failure-rates of birth control to be oddly beside the point.

I then proceeded to read the anti-abortion side, contributed by Edell Finnegan, director of the Pro-Life Union in Pennsylvania. It mainly highlighted two facts: that human life begins at conception and that abstinence is 100 percent effective. My 15-year-old deemed the pro-lifer to have the better argument.

But she told me she is still pro-choice. Her reason? She said she doesn’t like a bunch of white guys in Washington telling her what to do with her body.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

From the Brody File today — 19 pro-life Democrats have sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi saying they will not support a public option if the government covers abortion or abortion-related services.

They wrote Pelosi:

We believe in a culture that supports and respects the right to life and is dedicated to the protection and preservation of families.  Therefore, we cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan.  We believe that a government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan, should not be used to fund abortion.

Brody says the strong message from pro-life Democrats will “torpedo any chance of abortion services being included in the final bill.” He also calls Obama out:

If the President really wanted to extend an olive branch to pro-life conservatives regarding his common ground approach to abortion, he could come out and tell Congress not to include abortion coverage in the government plan. Think he’ll do that? Umm….too bold…too risky…he won’t alienate his pro-choice base. The upside isn’t big enough.

When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973, President Nixon made no public statement concerning it. However, in tapes released yesterday by the Nixon Presidential Library we get a glimpse of his view on abortion at the time, including an extremely racist comment. The New York Times reports:

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

On another newly released tape the Times reports there’s a recorded phone conversation with Billy Graham from 1973, where they discuss Jewish-American leaders opposing the promotion of evangelical Christianity. Nixon said:

“What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up. . . . It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”

Mike Huckabee appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last Thursday to debate the abortion issue. Interestingly, Huckabee did not argue from a Christian point of view but from a constitutional one, which was extremely effective in this setting:

“It does come down though, Jon, to the fundamental question: Do I have a right to say that I own another life to the point that I may dispose of it and consider it to be expendable. That’s the toughest question we have to face.”

An abortion rights website, RHRealityCheck.com, has launched an online forum dedicated to looking for common ground in the abortion debate. The mission statement says it will  “provide interested readers with selected postings on the ongoing and often elusive search for common ground” and include “divergent interests and perspectives.” Moderator Cristina Page explains in her introductory post that they are looking for the “highest common denominator”:

Common ground isn’t a panacea, and isn’t supposed to be. Signing on to this experiment, and it is an experiment, doesn’t mean we will stop working to protect legal abortion or overturn it, depending on where we stand.  And yet, even if we will not resolve our fundamental disagreement, we should agree on ways to prevent unintended pregnancy and help reduce the need for women and girls to have to make the, often difficult, decisions that accompany it.

The contributors include Serrin Foster with Feminists for Life of America, author David Gushee, Rachel Laser with Third Way, Chris Korzen of Catholics United and others.

Today’s post, from Corinna Lohser, is a pretty safe look at how to make adoption more accessible. Yesterday, Debra Haffner said we need to focus first on preventing unintended pregnancies. Chris Korzen contrasted MLK Jr’s rhetoric with the tone some pro-lifers take.

The problem I see so far is that finding common ground makes it hard to break new ground or move the debate forward. Civility is vital, but it is also pointless if it suffocates an authentic discussion of the deep tensions still there. Lohser’s post tread on no toes. Haffner’s post was actually called, “The Ground We Already Covered,” and took the tone of “surely we can all agree” without addressing the arguments of those who don’t agree. Korzen succeeded better, I think even from a pro-life perspective, in challenging his audience and bringing a new thought to the table.

But what do you think?

This may be an off-week for our biweekly print magazine, but that doesn’t mean WORLD’s reporters and editors have taken it easy all week. Here’s a look at what all they’ve been busily covering:

Fear of ‘extremists’ | CRIME | By Jacob Parrish | In the aftermath of the Holocaust Museum shooting, the political left hints at conspiracies afoot

Traffic jam | TRAFFICKING | By Mark Bergin | A national report aims to gridlock the domestic sex trafficking of children in Las Vegas and across the country

What now? | IMMIGRATION | By Emily Belz | Immigration reform hit a wall under Bush—now Christian leaders are calling on Obama to push it forward

Stay tuned | RELIGION | By Edward Lee Pitts | As religious partnerships gain acceptance, the direction of Obama’s faith-based office, however, remains cloudy

Zahra’s day | IRAN | By Mindy Belz | Today’s presidential election in Iran may turn on the role of the lead candidate’s wife

Power play | POLITICS | By Alisa Harris | Republicans gain control of the New York Senate, which could derail the state’s efforts to legalize gay marriage

Summer showdowns | CONGRESS | By Edward Lee Pitts | Democrats, comfortable in their majority status, push forward while Republicans try to slow down the health care and Sotomayor trains

Out of business | ABORTION | By Jamie Dean | The Tiller family announces the closing of the murdered late-term abortionist’s center in Wichita

Promising fiscal restraint | ECONOMY | By Emily Belz | After accruing a massive deficit, President Obama announces a commitment to pay-as-you-go rules

Year of the Bible | RELIGION | By Jacob Parrish | A Georgia representative wants to remind Americans how the country was founded on biblical principles

And be sure to check out our new Web Extras page, where you can find at a glance all of our latest online-only coverage.

I’m sure I have not waited the respectable amount of time to say this (what is the respectable amount of time, anyway, for a deceased person to become a historical figure and fair game for critique?) but I am wondering when we will see George Tiller: The Movie.

I mean, we just had Milk. I saw only the trailer, but it was enough to identify the genre of flick-as-hagiography for the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

Next up is an HBO film about the Jack we didn’t know, suicide specialist Dr. Kevorkian. Director Barry Levinson is in talks with Al Pacino for the starring role. Executive Producer Steven Jones said of the unceremonious dispatcher of 130 people from the land of the living, “He’s a living icon. . . . He wants his story told. . . . He gave up eight years of his life to make a point. . . . The film’s screenwriter Adam Mazer added, “Most of what we know of him has been told through the media and headlines, but he’s a very complicated and complex man. . . . [He has] a terrific sense of humor.”

It doesn’t take a prophet to know someone in Tinseltown is already kicking around a Tiller movie. And I know just what they’re working the bugs out of: How do we do this thing without showing little babies’ heads being cracked open and their brains sucked out, and getting the right all riled up? Maybe we’ll do what they did in the old Clark Gable-Claudette Colbert movie It Happened One Night and string up a blanket between the viewer and the censurable action. We can call it “The Wall of Jericho” like Frank Capra did.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Yesterday we reported on LeRoy Carhart saying that the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller “is the equivalent of Martin Luther King being assassinated.”

In a statement released yesterday, Dr. Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, said:

“For LeRoy Carhart to mention the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked through peaceful and non-violent means, in the same breath with that of George Tiller, whose work ended peace and brought violence to babies in the womb, is offensive beyond belief. The analogy is just wrong.

“Dr. Carhart also speaks of hate crimes. I would simply ask him, is it not hateful to regard an entire class of people as non-human because they’re unwanted?”

ADDENDUM: On Anderson Cooper’s 360 last night, Carhart said:

“The entire comment that I made, however, was not to compare Dr. Tiller to Dr. King. I said that the sinking of the Lusitania, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the murder of Martin Luther King were turning points in a movement. And this was our turning point. The murder of Dr. Tiller was the turning point for our movement.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argues that “by enshrining a near-absolute right to abortion in the Constitution, the pro-choice side has ensured that the hard cases are more controversial than they otherwise would be,” on account of the fact that “under current law, if you want to restrict abortion, post-viability procedures are the only kind you’re allowed to even regulate.”

Douthat writes:

Yes, many pregnancies are terminated in dire medical circumstances. But these represent a tiny fraction of the million-plus abortions that take place in this country every year. (Almost half of that number are repeat abortions; around a quarter are third or fourth procedures.) The same is true of the more than 100,000 abortions that are performed after the first trimester: Very few involve medical complications of any kind. Even the now-outlawed “partial-birth” procedure, which abortion-rights supporters initially argued was only employed in the direst of dire situations, turned out to be used primarily for purely elective abortions.

LeRoy Carhart, who we posted about yesterday, is back in the news again, calling fellow late-term abortionist George Tiller’s murder a “hate crime,” and going even further in an interview with The Washington Times:

“This is the equivalent of Martin Luther King being assassinated. This is the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania and any other major historic event where we’ve tolerated the intolerable for too long.”

Groups from all sides of the abortion debate have decried the act and the vigilantism of Tiller’s killer—though perhaps not to this degree.

Also in the news today is the announcement by Tiller’s family that his abortion center will be permanently closed effective immediately. See Jamie Dean’s WORLDmag.com article for details.