The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice Manual

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,