I want to share one more dialogue story from our outreach last month at Aquinas College. Two fantastic students from the Students for Life club at University of Michigan, Rachel Crawford and Chloe Alberta, spoke to several pro-choice girls. This is what happened. Chloe begins the story this way: Towards … Read More
Bring Structure to Your Dialogues by Making Little Agreements
In the spring of 2013 I was standing in front of the Justice For All Exhibit at Colorado State University, trying to start conversations about abortion. I was struggling that day because most of the time I tried to invite someone into a conversation, they reacted suspiciously. I decided to … Read More
Responding to the Astute Observation That I Am a Man
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Any time I go to a college campus to do a pro-life outreach, I can count on three things: 1) I will forget to wear sunblock, 2) I will not drink enough water, and 3) I am going to be reminded that I cannot get … Read More
Is Abortion Justified by an Inalienable Right to Sex?
I wrote an article two weeks ago describing the first part of my conversation with a student I’m calling “Brent.” If you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to check that out first. It has the first half of this story as well as four practical dialogue tips I … Read More
Four Practical Dialogue Tips from My Conversation with Brent
Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. I noticed John Paul, one of our volunteers, looked nervous in his conversation with a student in front of our poll table. I walked up and started listening so he could get help if he needed it. John Paul quickly asked me for my take, … Read More
Recognizing the Root Problem
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of pro-life advocates being open to letting their conversation change topics. I gave the examples of religion and same-sex marriage and described how it might be more important for a given person to talk about one … Read More
My Conversation with “Mark” on Personhood and Apathy
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes. This is the story of one of the dialogues I had during our outreach at the University of Michigan. I talked to a student I’ll call “Mark” at the University of Michigan who was pro-choice. He thought personhood began in the 2nd trimester, but he wasn’t … Read More
Be Open to Letting the Conversation Change Topics
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Learning to defend your deeply held beliefs is really important, but it’s easy to get into the wrong mindset. Sometimes we get so focused on supporting the arguments for our view and defeating the arguments for the other view that we get…well, weird. We can get … Read More
A Simple Change That Instantly Communicates a Nuanced Approach to the Abortion Debate
It was only two months after launching Equal Rights Institute last year before we facilitated our first outreach. We had our training seminar developed by then, but we hadn’t yet had the opportunity to design our own outreach tools. So we utilized our favorite poll table option that we learned … Read More
Don’t Be Too Nice
This post is adapted from a newsletter I wrote while on staff with Justice For All. Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. “Gracious confrontation” is not a contradiction in terms; it is an essential part of mastering the art of good dialogue. I learned this in April of 2014 at a … Read More