Public Enemies, Private Friends (2024)

[bunniefuu]

TINA McDUFFIE: Brookline, Massachusetts, .

A g*nman opens fire at two reproductive health clinics.

-It was such a shock. -People were so angry.

McDUFFIE: For the first time, leaders on both sides

of the debate begin secret meetings.

SUSAN PODZIBA: If you bring passionate people

close enough together,

even though they would ordinarily repel,

they can connect and create something very powerful.

McDUFFIE: "Public Enemies, Private Friends" onLocal, USA.

♪

[static crackling]

TV ANNOUNCER: This is News at noon on the News Station.

Local activists on both sides of the ab*rtion issue

reveal a secret they've been keeping.

's Garvin Thomas has more now. Garvin?

Jonathan, it really was a remarkable admission.

Three pro-life community leaders

and three pro-choice community leaders

admitted that they have been meeting secretly

for five and a half years.

NEWSWOMAN: Meeting secretly since the December killings

when John Salvi went into two ab*rtion clinics,

k*lling two women who worked there in Brookline.

MADELINE McCOMISH: It was really an unbridgeable chasm

that I knew was there--

I-I knew was-was there before we started

but turned out to be much deeper and wider

than anything I had ever imagined.

And there was only one thing that could bridge it.

What I tell people depends on who they are,

why they're asking,

or why am I telling them.

If I really think the person wants to know something real,

I tell them that the dialogue, uh...

changed my life.

I became president of Planned Parenthood in .

Almost from the get-go...

...there were reasons to be truly frightened

that one might be k*lled...

...or injured or-or that someone

who works for me might be

k*lled or injured.

[sirens wailing]

-Opened up the door and started sh**ting anything he seen.

I think I was the only one that didn't get shot.

McCOMISH: We never expected it to happen

in Massachusetts, honestly.

At least I didn't, let's put it that way.

And I was the president

of Mass. Citizens for Life.

I was president for a year, at that point.

I had no inkling that there was violence in the air at all.

Believe me, it was such a shock.

It was just... terrible.

Terrible.

FRANCES HOGAN: I was serving as vice president

of Mass. Citizens for Life,

as president of Women Affirming Life,

as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life,

and as a consultant to the United States

Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Oh, and as a member of the Massachusetts

Catholic Conference board of directors,

ANNE FOWLER: I had to become

the sort of go-to priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts

on ab*rtion issues.

It's not a topic

that a lot of priests want to deal with.

People would come, I'd counsel them, and then they'd go away.

And I rarely, if ever,

learned what they had decided to do.

But I'd give my best shot at saying,

"Whatever you do is going to be all right."

You know? "You are not going to go to hell."

-My name is Melissa Kogut,

and I was executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice,

Massachusetts.

-My name's Barbara Thorp,

and at the time I was the director

of the Pro-Life Office for the Archdiocese of Boston.

HOGAN: I didn't foresee the shootings.

But I did have a death threat against myself

put through my front door mail slot.

But I didn't take it seriously.

FOWLER: In the 's,

things were escalating.

Brookline, Coolidge Corner.

On Saturday mornings, there would be protesters.

JOHN ELLEMENT: As a daily breaking news

general assignment guy, it's Saturday,

the boss would say,

"You're going to Brookline. There's a protest

over there at :."

PETER COLEMAN: Boston was in some ways

an epicenter of tension for this.

It's a highly Catholic city, I think % Catholic.

The rhetoric the leaders would leverage

and weaponize against the other side

had become more and more heated.

FOWLER: Talking about sin and m*rder,

k*lling of children.

Their words, their words, "k*lling of children."

We would have pro-choice

protests or rallies, whatever.

[laughing]: I can remember bringing...

My daughter would say,

"We're going to another pro-choice thing?"

[laughs]

Pro-choice groups would be there

and the pro-life groups would be there.

And it was... It was a...

It was a mess.

They would invade clinics.

They would yell and chant.

You know, just coming right in your face

and saying, "Don't k*ll your baby."

You know, "Think about it again."

"You'll regret this forever and ever."

We consider ab*rtion a violent act.

It destroys a human life.

People feel strongly when they think

innocent human beings are being k*lled,

and then people feel strongly

when they feel they're being condemned for doing something.

You know, if you're telling someone

that what they're doing is...

against the natural law,

right, and it's morally wrong,

they're going to take umbrage at that, right?

I mean, but that's what you have to do

to try to convince them that this

is really not a good thing to do.

The protests were getting more violent.

And the rhetoric was pretty high on both sides.

We did a walk for life

through the streets of Boston, and horrible things

were screamed at us as we walked through the streets.

KOGUT: That very harsh rhetoric that was playing out

literally on the streets,

it became very worrisome.

It was intense.

It felt kind of like a powder keg.

So something... something had to give.

There had been a ten-year period of some pretty serious

attacks on ab*rtion clinics.

Culminated in the worst one

the country's ever had.

[sirens wailing]

FOWLER: We shouldn't have been totally surprised

that something could happen,

that another...

passionate crazy person

would show up in Boston

and...

...k*ll people.

GAMBLE: If people hadn't been k*lled,

well, this conversation we're talking about

wouldn't have happened.

FOWLER: I don't think the pro-life women

would have agreed to meet with us at all

if it were not for that tragedy,

for which I think they felt some guilt.

You know, no matter

what disagreements we had,

we were very connected.

We were bound to one another...

...forever by...

...the events of

December , .

-Once again, violence has struck ab*rtion clinics,

this time in a Boston suburb.

In two separate attacks,

just minutes and a mile and a half apart,

gunmen shot and k*lled two people and wounded five others.

This brings to five...

[indistinct radio chatter]

-Oh, God, help them, please.

-Know 'em? Know 'em?

-No, I tried to talk to...

Oh, God. Oh, God.

[EMTs speaking indistinctly]

I jumped over the wall. He was sh**ting everybody.

JOHN KIVLAN: It was a horrific case of violence

that happened in broad daylight

on the streets of a town like Brookline.

A young woman, years old, barely out of college,

and another young woman, years old,

who, unfortunately, as receptionists, were that day

the face of these two clinics.

He appeared at the first clinic, walked in the door.

I don't think he said a word.

And he walked right up to Shannon Lowney

and pointed that r*fle at her.

She put her hands up to her face,

and, uh, he shot her right through the throat.

And then he started turning around

the whole waiting room,

and he backed out of the clinic,

got in his vehicle,

and unfortunately, went right up Beacon Street,

not far to Preterm.

And he walked into Preterm, and he did ask

in Preterm if it was Preterm.

And then he started firing

at the receptionist there.

Shot her ten times

and said words to the effect of,

"That's what you get. Pray the rosary."

I've been to a lot of those scenes,

and I can't recall

being as stunned as I was

to see Shannon Lowney.

Just the carnage that had occurred there.

[camera shutter clicking]

Spent casings were everywhere,

and the people that were seriously shot.

The overall chaos,

all of these different law enforcement agencies

swarming around, and you've got to grab ahold

of all of that and organize it, make priorities.

And the most important one was to focus on: who is it?

And to, as quickly as possible, arrest them.

[newsman speaking indistinctly]

GAMBLE: Christmas... uh, was before the sh**ting.

NEWSMAN: The tree, incidentally, is a gift

to the people of Boston from the people of Nova Scotia.

Mayor White reciprocated

by sending the Canadians a Paul Revere...

GAMBLE: I remember a Christmas party

that we had for Planned Parenthood.

Our, uh, medical director was there.

And I can remember thinking during that party

that we're going to be changing your life, Dr. Menasha.

Because I knew, at that point,

what the results of the study had been.

And I knew we were going to be making some substantial changes.

Million protocols about going in and out

and parking and quality of doors and glass.

I had taken the day off

and was planning to drive out

to Western Mass to spend New Year's with, in fact,

some Planned Parenthood friends of ours,

and had a manicure that morning.

And I was in the manicurist's shop

when I got a call from my husband.

I knew that any moment I took to call

and find out more stuff would just delay my...

I knew that I could get there fast.

It was not a very busy day, not much traffic.

Shannon was still

on the floor with a sheet over her.

Something sort of different happens

when you can see your own staff member...

dead on the floor in front of you.

And then I called her parents,

which was one of the hardest things

I've ever, ever done in my life.

I hardly knew what to say.

In fact, I was probably crying.

And-and the tears, you know, certainly for the people

who had been wounded and k*lled right there.

But some of the tears were for myself,

for how... how responsible I felt

for that having happened.

Because if I had just gotten all this stuff done,

you know, two weeks ahead of time and avoided it,

if I had figured out, "This door needs to be locked," you know,

"This person needs to have plexiglass in front of her."

If I had figured those things out back then,

we wouldn't be talk... this wouldn't have happened.

Okay. Uh, my name is Shannon Lowney,

and I work for a group called Advocates for Children.

KOGUT: I was a brand-new executive director.

Our organization represents...

thousands of pro-choice people in Massachusetts

who are looking to us for leadership and guidance,

and just were... at a loss.

THORP: December , .

I had taken that week off. It was Christmas week.

I just had the radio on, and I heard it.

NEWSMAN [over radio]: Eyewitnesses said a white man

with dark, curly hair, dressed in black, walked in,

pulled a r*fle from his duffel bag, and opened fire.

THORP: I was just horrified.

And so I immediately called Cardinal Law at his residence

to let him know.

He made himself available to all the media that day.

I sat in, and then the rest of that day was...

just a terrible day.

[dialogue inaudible]

I was working

at Arthur D. Little in Cambridge

as a chemist

the day of the shootings,

and I got a call.

And I went into the office, into

the Mass. Citizens office immediately.

People were so angry. I mean, they thought he was pro-life.

He did a terrible thing,

and... and we condemned it, but

a lot of people just associated it with the pro-life community.

-[chanting]: m*rder*r! m*rder*r!

-All of these people are to blame,

and the blood of these women is on your hands.

KIVLAN: Why else would he go to these clinics and sh**t people?

Well, it probably has something to do with ab*rtion.

It was... it was upsetting. It was upsetting.

HOGAN: The media did play it out

as if he were a pro-life activist.

And-and we condemned it in the strongest possible terms.

But what else could we do, you know, except condemn it?

Well, we were talking press that day.

I think Fran and I

ran into each other at a television station

the very night that it happened.

HOGAN: I think it was Channel in Boston,

if I remember correctly.

GAMBLE: We were in the same greenroom,

and that's the first time I'd ever met her.

HOGAN: She was there with her husband.

Then we did go on the TV show together

and give our different positions.

I mean, we agreed, obviously, on the... on the sh**ting.

Normally, if someone I know has lost someone,

I'd go right up to them, I would give them a hug,

I would tell them how sorry I was. I didn't do that.

I was frozen in time and space that night,

and I didn't do any of that.

And I regretted that greatly,

'cause on a human level, I should have gone over to her,

and I did not do that.

McCOMISH: They just didn't know. They just didn't know

what was going on, uh, what was going to happen.

And he wasn't caught

right away.

He went to other states.

We didn't know who this was

and what he might do.

ELLEMENT: They were appalled. They were scared.

Nobody knows

who this person is, except that he has a lot

of ammunition with him and knows how to use it.

KOGUT: There was palpable fear.

Whoever this person was who had done this could strike again.

I live in Brookline. I live in that neighborhood,

um, and I remember hearing about this g*nman.

I mean, here we are in this very suburban community,

very safe, and there's, theoretically,

this lone g*nman, you know, loose in the community.

-They are now looking for him in this area.

They brought in dogs and are searching around the area.

Police are saying very little, but apparently they suspect

that he may be still in this region. Susan?

BASSIL: I mean, Beacon Street is--

it's two blocks from my house.

So the whole area was shut down,

filled with ambulances and police cars and helicopters.

KATHRYN KOLBERT: We got on the phone,

about ten of us, from around the country,

and called every single one of our clients

to warn them that there is a,

you know, a mass m*rder*r on his way or possibly on his way.

And that's a very scary thing, to have to call your clients

and tell them there's, you know, there's a guy with an AK-

or high-powered r*fle

who might be on the way to your clinic.

And, you know, put the TV on,

trying to find a "who did this, who did this, who did this."

We wondered if it was someone we knew,

or who could it possibly be?

It was early in the morning of the next day

that I ran down Broadway in Everett

to the rectory to speak to the priest,

because I said, "I think I know who this is."

He called the cardinal's office. The state police were there.

And we told him who we thought it was.

We gave him the name.

It was John Salvi.

[static crackles]

ELLEMENT: News is whatever's new, but also,

big news is what's most unexpected.

KOLBERT: The part of the murders

that was so striking...

It was the first time

that a receptionist had been k*lled.

ELLEMENT: They weren't even doctors.

They were just receptionists

who got m*rder*d brutally at their desks.

KOLBERT: For the first time, they realized

that they could be a target, and that changed

everybody's behavior.

Even as lawyers, it changed our behavior.

We did security checks.

We made sure that our offices were protected.

All mail went to the mail room, was checked before it got to us.

-No women

and no health care professional is safe,

whether... whether she or he is in Florida

or Michigan or Boston.

This is a job, a place where I could be k*lled.

That thought had to cross everyone's mind.

FOWLER: It could happen anywhere, anytime.

They were just office workers doing their jobs.

People had to consider whether:

"I want to take this risk or not."

BASSIL: If you are struggling to maintain

women's right to choose,

you see it as a wholesale physical as*ault on ab*rtion.

Making the clinics a physically unsafe place to go

was really gonna cut into

the freedom of a woman to terminate a pregnancy

if she needed to.

NEWSMAN: Silent and shackled,

John Salvi made his final appearance

in a Virginia State courtroom this morning.

Norfolk officials dropped their charges.

The Massachusetts fugitive warrant was also dropped,

paving the way for Salvi's transfer to federal authorities.

Norfolk officials say all agencies cooperated

to get Salvi back to Massachusetts

to face the most serious charges.

Initially, he was charged federally.

The issue of whether or not

they were gonna seek the death penalty

was an open question.

So we did two things.

One was, we tried

to kind of raise community support

for not seeking the death penalty.

We went to the National Organization of Women.

We went to the Catholic Church, appealed to the U.S. Attorney.

We tried to get people to come forward and say,

"This is not a good idea."

What they didn't want, I think, was this show trial,

where you would have somebody saying,

you know, "I want to testify.

I was protecting the babies."

You know, I think they didn't want that.

And they certainly didn't want a martyr

to the right-to-life movement.

In the end, there was a strong belief

that this should just go to the state.

GAMBLE: This was a slam dunk on the issue of

who had the g*n and who shot the b*llet.

KIVLAN: I mean, the evidence was overwhelming

that he was the sh**ter,

and he was tied to it

every which way.

Live identifications as well as photo identifications.

He was tied to all the physical evidence.

ANNOUNCER: Now from Channel ,

the latest news around the clock.

Good afternoon.

The lawyer for accused ab*rtion clinic g*nman John Salvi

is back in court.

And it is expected that we'll soon know

whether or not he'll seek an insanity plea for his client.

I've been pro-choice all of my life.

My wife has been pro-choice, very actively so.

Her friends couldn't understand why I was representing this man.

What am I doing? I am doing my job.

I am following my ethics,

and I'm gonna try the best I can

to have the truth come out in the trial

that John Salvi was not guilty

because of his lack of criminal responsibility.

And that's what I did.

Uh, excuse me. I need to get through.

-[indistinct chatter] -[camera shutters clicking]

At the trial,

the essential question will not be

what happened, but why?

This trial was unlike any other in my -year career.

It was a m*rder case

that really became a political case.

The politics of ab*rtion made this trial be about ab*rtion.

The pro-choice movement viewed

John Salvi as an extremist

in the pro-life group.

That would make the women k*lled at the clinics

martyrs.

-Planned Parenthood ran an ad,

full-page ad.

I don't know, around here, if you saw it

inThe New York Times:

"Words k*ll."

Okay? And it was all-- I have it with me.

-Did you see this? "Words k*ll." -No, I didn't.

And they-they are raising money

and understandably upset about the events.

RUTH PAKALUK: I think it's quite inflammatory

to have a full-page ad

saying that "words k*ll" and then laying partial blame

for these murders at the door of Cardinal Law...

You accept absolutely no responsibility

in the pro-life movement?

We are not responsible for these murders.

BASSIL: I think the issues of his competency

got sort of mixed up and rolled into...

the sort of political aspect of his case.

Well, then they have to be responsible

for having created a climate

that created John Salvi and others,

because their rhetoric that ab*rtion is m*rder

has directly encouraged people like John Salvi

to carry out m*rder.

Provocative demonstrations and venomous rhetoric

of the so-called pro-life movement

is inciting their people to m*rder.

The antiabortion rhetoric of hate

has so seared so many communities

and so many people's lives

that they can actually think that it is righteous

to take the life of a woman.

And the antiabortion movement better own its part in creating

-and legitimizing that violence. -[applause]

BASSIL: It's a nice, clean story.

An antiabortion person shoots up a clinic, he's guilty.

He's not mentally ill.

He is a zealot. He's guilty. That's the end of it.

I mean, there was an internal conflict for me.

I completely believe

in the right to choose.

But I found at the trial, which I found interesting

and sort of a little disconcerting,

was that the right-to-choose people,

the Planned Parenthood people, were really

sort of using this in some ways as a fundraiser,

that they were distilling it into this just

pure political issue.

He becomes this sort of symbol for them.

"This is what we're up against.

"We need to be protected.

"We need more protection.

"We need more money.

We need more."

We made sure that we gave people a clear opportunity to donate.

GAMBLE: Planned Parenthood had more support

than ever before.

There was higher giving, higher volunteering.

People called to volunteer to answer the phones.

People called and volunteered to give staff massages.

I mean, just huge numbers of offers of all kinds of help.

KOGUT: We absolutely raised money

any time something like that happened

to remind our supporters about what was at stake.

We knew we needed to mobilize.

[chanting]: ...to lose the right to choose.

We refuse to lose the right to choose.

-Thank you. -[cheering]

GAMBLE: We were invited into people's homes,

who invited their friends.

We talked about what we were gonna have to do

and why we had to raise so much money,

and they gave us a lot of money.

We needed to convince

people that they needed to step up and be active,

host a house party, make a donation,

make phone calls,

volunteer at,

you know, lit drops and help any way they could.

And we had hundreds and hundreds of volunteers.

BASSIL: I understand they were shattered by this, of course.

It was an attack on ab*rtion clinics,

but it completely left out that he was really sick,

because that took away from-from the theme, right?

If he's just a crackpot,

then it had nothing to do with antiabortion.

CARNEY: It was clear that both the pro-choice individual

and the pro-life individual wanted to have a conviction

but for different reasons.

You know, the right-to-life people

really kind of wanted to distance themselves from them.

You know, I mean, really, how does it look that

they have a psychotic person

who's coming to their prayer vigils?

Why didn't they do something about it?

McCOMISH: Well, he wasn't one of ours as such.

We-we knew about him.

We knew he was in the area,

and we had seen the truck and been upset by it.

We found out later that

he had rented a room in...

really, about three streets up.

BASSIL: I think they tried to distance themselves from Salvi.

That was my impression.

They said, "We can understand

"why someone would feel this strongly about ab*rtion,

"but we do not advocate for k*lling,

just convince people to change their mind."

It seems to me that the pro-life people are saying,

you know, "We follow the law, right?

"We're law-abiding citizens.

"You know, the people doing these ab*rtion

"are the murderers.

"They're the lawbreakers. We're law-abiding.

"So we support any prosecution of these people

'cause that's not our message."

CARNEY: Politicalization started at the outset

of the trial with jury selection.

Every juror was asked, "Do you have a position

in the ab*rtion debate?"

BASSIL: If you've been out to the court,

you know how there's sort of those shallow stairs,

and-- but at the bottom of them were just like these cameras

and these tons of people.

CARNEY: Every day after court,

the media would line up on the courthouse steps.

BASSIL: You know, they're looking for a sound bite, right?

So they're not looking for any kind of serious view

of the case or introspection.

You know, they just want a sound bite.

And I found them generally sort of useless.

The first to address the media would be the pro-choice person,

who would condemn the actions of John Salvi

as being designed to hurt

people's constitutional right to get an ab*rtion.

Very articulate, very well-spoken.

Then pro-life person-- equally articulate,

compelling, sincere, very effective--

answered every question with a pro-life twist.

Whether you're pro-choice or pro-life

didn't make any difference as to whether you thought

John Salvi was guilty.

"We've got to find him guilty."

That was the common message

that was said on those courthouse steps.

And then I was the third speaker.

I'm having real concerns about his mental health

and his mental condition

and his ability, uh,

to serve as a defendant in a criminal case.

I wasn't going to pander to the media outside.

I wasn't going to politicize my case.

I wasn't going to tell them that this was

anything but a young man

in the throes of extreme mental illness.

The media didn't like that

as much as they liked the pro-choice versus pro-life.

They had bought into:

this is like a championship bout.

This is

Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier.

In this corner, we have the pro-choice people.

Round of applause. And in this corner,

we have the pro-life people.

And they get a round of applause.

That's what we were up against.

[bell ringing]

SPORTSCASTER: There it is.

GAMBLE: I know I deeply

resented the fact

that smart, articulate people

were getting invited to talk about their position on ab*rtion

right after Shannon was k*lled.

I thought only people on my side should be talking

at that point.

One of the problems of being a titular

leader in-in this movement

for people on either side...

...is that you feel there's a certain kind of party line

that you feel you need to sustain

publicly, and you need to make it

as appealing and convincing

and persuasive as you possibly can.

You're there. You're being paid

to represent a point of view,

and you're not going to continue to have this job

or be paid if you don't do it well.

I demand that the antiabortion movement

cease their inflammatory rhetoric

that has fostered this climate

-that we must end. -[crowd cheering]

We must end the climate of fear and violence.

KOGUT: When you're involved in a political movement,

each side has to find ways

to... make crystal clear

what the ramifications are in the starkest terms.

There's no shades of gray 'cause that

just is going to confuse people.

McCOMISH: It might cut down

on activism is what it might do.

There are ways to say things,

and then there are ways to say things.

You want to mobilize your base in order to get attention,

in order to achieve your goals, right?

And how do you mobilize your base?

You mobilize your base through simplification of things.

You know?

"They're wrong, they're evil.

"They're trying to harm us in some ways.

"Or harm unborn children or harm women's rights.

"We need to fight that. We need to get up and stand up

and mobilize and fight that."

So the messaging becomes very simple.

And to do that, you present the other side

as quite evil or stupid.

Uh, one of the two things-- evil, stupid, or both.

It is a temptation, but it's also reality.

I mean, you want to get as many people motivated as you can.

And it's necessary

if you're going to win.

That's obvious.

AMY CHUA: You just start

to see everything

through your political group's lens.

FOWLER: They really thought we were

baby K*llers.

You know, they really thought we were

evil people.

KOGUT: I thought at the time that they were

ignorant, small minded, religious.

GAMBLE: I was pretty willing publicly

to say, "I just don't think

they're very smart."

So there were vague kind of calls

for common ground from the cardinal--

Cardinal Law and Governor Weld.

Weld, an out-front ab*rtion rights politician,

and Law, a power in the Catholic Church,

will meet to find some common ground.

Is there any on ab*rtion?

-Thank you very much, Your Eminence.

This meeting between, uh, the cardinal and myself

grew out of a conversation, which he and I had

over the telephone, uh, on the evening

of the recent shootings in, uh, Brookline.

And I think it underscores pretty vividly

that, uh, representatives of almost polar opposite

points of view can get together

and, uh, search for common ground.

PAKALUK: Cardinal Law is not, in fact, the leader

of the pro-life movement in Massachusetts.

Mass. Citizens for Life is not a religious organization.

It is not affiliated with the Archdiocese,

and it has many members who are not Catholic,

not Christian.

Um, there are other pro-life organizations:

Operation Rescue, PLAN, Birthright,

all of the crisis pregnancy centers.

I mean, that's the pro-life movement per se.

-But this is good that they're going to sit down.

-I-I believe it is good. -But you make your point well.

-But they are not really

the pro-life movement and the pro-choice movement.

They are two prominent men

who have reasons for wanting to talk about this.

But it's not as if this is a meeting

of the two sides of this issue.

GAMBLE: Typically, I think

men think of things that should be done.

But they don't do 'em.

If it's hard to do,

that usually falls to women.

Nicki, at the time, was the president

of Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts.

One of her employees was k*lled.

So she is obviously already in the center of this.

And...

reporters asked her if she would be willing

to participate

in common ground talks.

I had been thinking for a long time

that we should consider a dialogue.

You know, a dialogue would be better than

Fran meeting with the press one place

and me meeting with the press another place.

And talking, you know, God knows where,

above and around.

But having the dialogue meant that

we had a chance of holding the hatred

and the volume of rage down

so that there could even be a conversation.

Because before that, I think we were mostly

calling one another names.

THORP: I was really hungry

for something

to break out of this divided,

polarized path we seemed to be all locked into.

Susan and Laura approached me, and we were discussing

the current situation,

the tensions that were present

at that time, and the possibility

of lessening the tensions between the two sides.

We may have talked for close to an hour,

but at the end of the hour,

I-I had decided to go forward.

KOGUT: I was sort of critical of it, thinking,

"What-What's gonna come of that?

What can you possibly learn that's gonna be useful?"

Wasn't antagonistic.

I was more

concerned about what could be accomplished

and if it would wind up doing more harm than good.

You know, I'm not negotiating.

I'm not coming to consensus.

I'm not coming to common ground

or anything like that.

So I was, I was negative.

I was skeptical, but I was willing

to try because...

I was at a loss.

Like, what can we do to address

the issues of polarization and violence that we're seeing

in our own community and across the country?

So I was willing

to have the agreed upon

four conversations to just see.

And I decided to go ahead and do it when they assured us

it would be secret and it would be only four meetings

in the beginning, as I recall correctly.

Yeah.

So we did it.

Scary as anything. Yeah.

The fact of the dialogues was remarkable--

that we all agreed to do it--

because each of us was so engaged

in the polarization of the day.

FOWLER: I know that Laura and Susan

interviewed a lot of people

before they selected the six of us.

PODZIBA: The six women who we identified were

clearly the best.

They're the leaders of the field.

The people who were making the speeches,

writing the op-eds, talking to state legislators.

THORP: Just the fact of the dialogue happening

was remarkable.

Obviously, because of the violence with John Salvi,

the sense of safety around us

clearly had been broken.

PODZIBA: I was asked if I would be

the spokesperson for the talks.

And I said,

"I have a five-year-old daughter,

and I'm not willing to take that risk."

That's the reason why we met in a windowless basement

and why we met under strict rules

of confidence and confidentiality.

There was fear that somebody would be attacked

for participating in these talks.

Because there were threats of violence

of anyone who would participate.

They had to be absolutely confidential.

-Definitely very below the radar.

The only person in my family who knew

about it was my husband,

and I didn't tell anybody else.

Uh, my parents would have been terrified.

And we couldn't tell anybody where we were going.

So people didn't know where we were or what we were doing,

'cause it was all a secret.

You know, and our people in our organizations didn't know.

It was completely secret.

If the people on our side learned about this,

they would not be happy with us.

It would have put another target

on our backs.

I mean, we were already targeted.

I'm not sure I would have done it

if I were in Melissa's position

as a brand-new executive director.

Talk about brave.

The three of us happened to be Catholics,

and we were very, very concerned about this meeting.

So we decided to meet at the Friendly's

ahead of time to pray.

That helped a lot, I think, to give us a little courage

to go to this meeting, which was in a basement

of a house in Watertown.

Certainly, we were afraid of animosity

on the part of the people we were going to be addressing.

Something terrible had happened.

I mean, people had been k*lled.

HOGAN: To be in a room with people that

you thought were involved in taking human life

was very scary.

I felt that anybody who held such an abhorrent position

must not be a very good person.

Right?

I mean, that's what I felt going in there.

I mean, I wouldn't express it that way.

I wouldn't even express it that way to myself.

But when I look at it clearly,

that was how I felt.

That anyone who really thought that ab*rtion was okay

really can't be a very good person.

Fran and Barbara and Madeline probably

didn't think there was anything likable about me.

I mean, I'm pretty sure

that's what they thought.

HOGAN: I didn't like her at all.

I really didn't.

She scared me. She scared me.

Nicki was the poster girl, so to speak,

for the pro-choice movement.

She was all over the TV,

all over the newspapers speaking about it.

She was the personification of the pro-choice movement.

She was it.

-Now I'd like to introduce the president

of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts,

Nicki Nichols Gamble.

McCOMISH: And then we went

as if we were going to the guillotine or something.

I was scared just walking in

and seeing them there.

I was not comfortable, let's put it that way.

HOGAN: We had never done this before

or anything like this, and it was scary.

NEWSWOMAN: There was more ab*rtion-related violence today

in Brookline, Massachusetts,

where last December a g*nman opened fire with fatal results.

More than demonstrators from both sides

of the ab*rtion debate gathered outside

a Planned Parenthood clinic.

An antiabortion demonstrator...

[thunder rumbling]

Well, I remember walking into the room and being seated.

That was a big deal, how we were seated. [chuckles]

And... being introduced to them.

Beginning, I felt it was very confrontational.

FOWLER: I was intimidated by the fact that

they were leaders in the pro-life movement.

They had obviously been coached

in how to speak about this issue.

GAMBLE: I knew Anne well enough to know

that she was going to be

a powerful ally,

and I was glad that she wore a collar.

It somehow equalized things

a little bit.

Otherwise it would have just been practicing, committed,

fabulous Catholics against a couple drag-abouts.

For me, it was reassuring.

I'm not even sure I've ever told her that, but it was.

I know that I felt, "Oh, this is gonna be a lot of work."

I think it was a two-hour session.

When we came out, I was relieved

that they really didn't have horns or anything.

They were just people, just like us.

That was just the beginning of many.

[chuckles]

FOWLER: We went for four meetings.

It was pretty clear to us that we had only

scratched the surface of what we were meant to be doing.

The ambience that created the tragedy

was a collective responsibility.

I felt I owed it to...

the situation to try to find a resolution

or at least tamp down the rhetoric

and the polarization.

FOWLER: We had just begun the real work of talking about

how we felt about ab*rtion, why we felt the way we felt.

HOGAN: After the four meetings, I was willing to extend it

to see what else could happen.

GAMBLE: I was sure there was much more to be said.

KOGUT: You know, we met for years.

We committed to these four meetings,

and we just kept on meeting.

THORP: You keep showing up.

That's an act of faith.

I mean, here we are.

We're gathered for a specific purpose,

to have a conversation that we had to figure out,

literally, how to talk to each other.

You know, we needed to figure out what to call each other.

We needed to figure out what to call the terms

that we were going to be using about the issues

of great concern to us.

What we would call...

the ab*rtion.

[scoffs] What was happening in an ab*rtion.

What to call what we would call an unborn child.

PODZIBA: Let's try and figure out what words

we need to avoid in order to have

an open conversation.

So we asked them for all the hot-button words.

"Fetus" is a hot-button word for one side.

KOGUT: You know, if you ask a pregnant woman

what she calls what's inside of her,

she'll say, "My baby. I'm having a baby."

People start talking about a fetus

as a baby

the moment they find out they're pregnant,

sometimes before they know they're pregnant,

and they're thinking about the entity

as a baby.

Hell, I know grandparents

who think they have children,

and all they have is,

they know their kids are trying to get pregnant,

you know, and they're thinking,

"I'm a grandparent" already.

But when we're talking about ab*rtion,

we don't talk about it

as a baby.

Oh, God. Do I really want to go through this?

I don't know if I really want to talk about this,

but, um, we're really...

...just careful, and the woman who's pregnant

is the woman who's pregnant, she's not a mother.

So that's just an example

of our rhetoric.

And you want to pick the right way for the right audience.

PODZIBA: "Fetus," it's a sanitized use of a word.

It makes it

a medical term that is not...

as powerful as "unborn child."

But "unborn child" is rooted in assumptions also,

because it assumes that a fetus is already a child.

So putting those together,

you can see the code that's used and why those words are used.

"Unborn child," "feminazi," "m*rder*r."

We listed out, you know, maybe or words on flip charts,

and we posted it all around the room.

And then we said, "Now we want you to discuss

the issue of ab*rtion without any of those words."

I remember at one point thinking,

"We're not gonna be able to talk about anything"

'cause every word we use is unacceptable

one way or the other.

So one of the things that we did was

come up with a vocabulary they would agree to

in order to be able to have a conversation.

And on that one we used the term "human fetus,"

which nobody loved but was the best we could approach

for a word to describe

that which is removed from a woman

during an ab*rtion.

GAMBLE: That was a hard conversation.

KOGUT: It took us a while to get there.

We came to some agreements,

and then we practiced listening to

what other people thought

and then trying to tell them what we heard.

And there were

a lot of discrepancies.

When someone is talking,

especially someone who is

not agreeing with you,

you're thinking all the time

about how you're going to respond,

how you're going to convince them

that they are wrong and you are right.

-Is this a contraceptive? Is this a device?

Most people would say this is a birth control method.

-Now here's something we'll agree on. -Wait a minute.

Is this birth control?

Now wait a minute. Also...

I say it's not birth control, it's ab*rtion.

Well, now you're getting into semantics,

but most people say that this is a birth control method.

Life exists.

-Now wait a minute. -Life exists at that point.

How about some forms of the pill?

[overlapping arguing]

But let me congratulate you on a part...

-Should we start regulating your sperm production?

-Martin, I found something positive.

We've got nothing here but a lot of noise at the moment.

GAMBLE: Mostly what people listen to

is what they are planning to say

the next time they can get the floor.

And, frequently, what they say next will have nothing to do

with what came before.

Being able...

to repeat back to someone what they really said is hard work.

Debate is really privileged in our country.

We usually enter into political conversations

as debates.

Debates are games, right?

So I... want

to listen to you, find flaws in your argument,

weaponize it in order to make my point,

to win the argument. That's the game.

Right? And that's how most of us are trained,

from watching Law & Order and watching politicians.

And, you know, that's-- our court system is based on that.

Dialogue is the opposite.

Dialogue is a process of learning and discovery

about me and my own, you know,

confusion about an issue,

about how complex the issues are,

and about the other side and what's important to them.

We used to laugh and giggle

a little bit about the fact that we would go into public spheres

where we were representing with as much ferocity

as we can muster our side,

and then, the next night, we would be together

talking about what that was like.

There was some hearing at the Massachusetts House,

and she said, "Fran, I'm gonna be there

on behalf of the pro-choice side..."

And she said, "I know you'll be there on the pro-life."

I said, "Yeah." She said,

"You don't have to say hello to me."

The fact that we were even saying hello

felt a little...

dangerous.

No one here should even think we know each other.

HOGAN: And we did see each other

that day.

I forget what legislation it was.

I just remember seeing Nicki there and giving her a hug,

which I tried to make up for what hadn't happened that night

at Channel .

GAMBLE: We...

had a lot of conversations about

what individuals were doing

in terms of their professional lives.

And sometimes that would lead to discussion about...

internal organizational issues,

where they would say, "Oh, my God,

"if my people heard me talking with you

"about the problems in my organization,

"they would

just flip out."

THORP: On a few occasions, we would

go out to a restaurant.

You know, there's always that moment

when the waiter or waitress comes over and says,

"So, does anybody want dessert?" And everybody

wants dessert, but nobody wants to admit...

[laughs]: they want dessert.

And somehow a dessert gets ordered,

and the waiter brings this dessert

and a bunch of spoons.

And I can remember, as each of us

were taking a taste of that dessert,

that this is remarkable.

You know, that we could partake

of the sweetness of this dessert

like people do

and not think anything of it.

You know, it was a moment that I really remember

as being kind of like,

"This is...

this is good."

FOWLER: Around the first anniversary

of the clinic killings,

we had a memorial service,

and I was presiding.

So I was standing up on this dais,

and I could see everybody down below.

And I saw...

two of our pro-lifers walked in

and sat down and sat through the memorial service.

THORP: I attended, along with my husband David and Fran.

FOWLER: It represented everything

that we had been trying to do.

One year ago this morning...

PODZIBA: Nicki and Anne spoke at the memorial.

Melissa was there as well.

And Nicki saw them in the audience

and was very moved.

Instead of seeing

the whole pro-life movement as wanting to harm her,

she saw two women

that really cared about her.

Afterwards, she said,

"I could have used this as a fundraiser.

"I could have said, 'We're under attack.

We need your support.'"

But she was moved to...

...say what she did.

The prayers of those of you who agree with us

and the prayers of those of you who profoundly disagree with us

made the difference in moving from the darkest hours

of our corporate and personal history

toward a new and brighter day.

PODZIBA: That was a clip that was on every news station

that night.

FOWLER: It felt like a triumph.

We had achieved enough respect for one another...

...to be able to do the most human of things,

which is to join others who are grieving

and feel free to express our support

and our sorrow with them...

...in the heart of the darkness

to see that light.

Eventually,

we became friends.

Strange though it may seem, even to me.

But we did become friends.

PODZIBA: These women held and hold

very deep moral differences.

But they understand those differences.

And despite those differences,

they are, relationally, very connected.

The connection was so strong.

Even as we talked about differences,

almost like the connection among them was energized

by...

the clarity

of the difference.

It took me eight years to figure that out.

I would leave a meeting and I would say,

"What is that energy? What is that?

"What in nature exists that will help me understand

this bond across unbridgeable gaps?"

And I wound up

talking to an MIT physics professor

who said,

"You're talking about nuclear energy."

An atom has a nucleus.

The nucleus has protons and neutrons in it.

The protons should repel because they have positive charges.

But if they're close enough,

the nuclear force holds them together.

That's how I came to understand what was happening in the room,

is that if you bring passionate people

close enough together,

even though they would ordinarily repel,

they can connect and create

something very powerful.

It changed my life.

In every aspect of how I...

deal with people.

Just changed my life.

Some of the ways in which it's changed my life

make it harder for people to like me, I think.

You know, some of my friends can't stand the fact

that I have Republican friends.

Just can't abide it.

You know, don't even want to be in the same room with them.

Um... I'm...

I'm always interested in being in rooms

with people who think differently than me.

FOWLER: I think we all felt the privilege

of being able...

...to spend hours talking

with people with whom we disagreed

about the very thing we disagreed about.

That's a privilege.

You don't get to do that very often.

We hang around with people who believe

the way we do and think the way that we do

and act the way we do,

and we don't

venture outside of our comfort zone all that often.

And we don't associate with people with whom we disagree

because it would be unpleasant.

If we have to...

encounter them in work environments,

we don't touch those subjects that we don't agree about.

We just leave them out of...

the conversation and leave them out

of our transactions with one another.

And here we were.

We were all choosing to...

sit for many hours with people that we disagreed with

and talk about what we disagreed about

in a civilized,

thoughtful--

and I don't use the word loosely-- but...

in a loving way.

And that bond that occurred

in the face of unbridgeable difference

caused each of these women to take individual actions

that changed the debate on the issue of ab*rtion

in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

That's what happened.

McCOMISH: It moderated the way we...

expressed ourselves in articles

that were published on either side.

Nicki published an article.

One of the young women that worked

for Mass. Citizens for Life

wrote a response.

And I read it. And I said to her, "You know,

that's not what Nicki said."

You know? And she was a very intelligent young woman.

And she said, "I know what she said.

You don't have to tell me what she said."

And I said, "Well, I don't believe

"you're answering what she said.

Therefore, it can't go out."

That's a very common thing.

They wouldn't address the points

that the other person had made exactly

but what they thought the points were.

When they would do radio shows

or TV shows,

very often the anchor would try to get them to argue.

KOGUT: A lot of news reporters want

to perpetuate that polarization, the battle.

I said, "No, no, I'm not going to do that."

I didn't want to go there

because it was going to be provocative, unnecessarily.

PODZIBA: There was a sense among the participants

that something very powerful

had occurred.

They understood that

what they had accomplished in the room

could have a bigger impact

and could change the rhetoric...

across the country.

And so the question was: how do they do that?

FOWLER: How do we convey it to other people?

How do we take it out of the room?

PODZIBA: So we used the term

"taking it out of the room"

because all of our time had been

in this windowless basement room.

FOWLER: We kind of have done the work

that we can do in the room.

Can we go public with some of this in some way?

Those were probably the most tense

conversations, was coming to an agreement about a plan

for how we take what we do out of the room.

HOGAN: Well, first we tried to figure out

if there was something we could do as a group all together,

something like feeding the poor or doing something like that.

We couldn't even agree to do that.

That's how we were.

So it was finally thought that perhaps

we should tell our story publicly.

I think they were scared of violence.

They were scared of diverting... attention

away from their mission.

HOGAN: I was very concerned about that,

about how it would be received.

You know, when people found out we'd spent all these years

talking to these people

while ab*rtion had continued

at ab*rtion clinics in-in the Boston area.

And I went and talked to a couple of people

that I did trust and talked to them about

whether they thought it was a good idea or not.

One person felt we absolutely should not go public.

People might think it was a scandal

to think that we had been sitting with people

who were involved in ab*rtion for six years.

And, you know, and what was gained?

You just wasted your time.

There was a lot of disappointment

when our first effort

to take it out of the room had to be... stopped.

McCOMISH: I mean, I think ab*rtion is very, very wrong,

but I also think that you... you don't see it that way

and that you think what you're doing is good for women.

And it's very difficult because here you have,

on one side, something that is, like,

intrinsically evil, as far as I'm concerned.

And yet, on the other, you have people of goodwill,

and making the distinction

between the two things is really... hairy.

And I don't think we're going to be able to explain it.

HOGAN: I would really like to go public.

McCOMISH: And do you remember when you were president of MCFL?

HOGAN: Yes, I do.

McCOMISH: You were the most conservative.

-You wouldn't do anything. -[Hogan laughing]

McCOMISH: And I am telling you...

HOGAN: I'm not president anymore.

McCOMISH: That's right, and I am not going

to do anything to jeopardize the...

what I see as jeopardizing the organization.

HOGAN: We've come a long way since then.

McCOMISH: Really, that has to be my main concern,

is the organization at this point.

All I can think of is, when I stood up

in front of that board three years ago and took office,

and I said, "I thank you for entrusting me

"something very precious to you.

It's very precious to me, too."

The horror of handing it back in-in shreds.

I mean, they trusted me. They gave their life's blood.

We'vegiven our life's blood for this.

I-I really don't want to expose... us

to this kind of lending within. I really don't.

GAMBLE: Well, I-I think that that means

we can't take it out of the room.

I think we said, "Well,

"maybe we could agree on something written

and, in that way, share."

We labored over the decision on whether to write an article.

We finally decided to do it.

Even though people will say,

"Oh, so? You talked for five years.

What-what did that get you?"

"Well, you didn't find common ground.

You didn't find a compromise."

Then I can see why they would think

we didn't accomplish anything.

We did accomplish something.

We accomplished something different,

and we wanted to share.

[Fowler laughs]

Boy, that was a process and a half.

The world was probably...

created faster than that one document was because

we fought about everything in it.

It was unbelievable.

GAMBLE: Took two years for sure, if not more,

and a lot of consultation.

McCOMISH: When you first think about it, it seems impossible.

To have an article where

every word would be agreed on by both sides.

GAMBLE: I didn't think we would ever be able

to publish anything together.

I just didn't think it was going to be possible.

HOGAN: It was a difficult thing to write.

We had such different views.

FOWLER: Everybody had to sign off on it.

GAMBLE: That was pure hell. We looked at drafts. We...

Different people took different times to write parts of it.

HOGAN: And then we ripped it to shreds,

line by line by line.

So there were all these little skirmishes, you know?

And that's when we finally decided

we should put forth our worldview

so people understand the difference

in our core, basic beliefs.

But it eventually got hammered into shape.

And I think we were all proud of it

after it was finally done.

FOWLER: If it was nothing else,

it was a tribute to women and the six of us.

There was a lot of time spent discussing where

it might be published before I think we...

we knew that it was going to be

The Globe.

-They sent it in to me.

I thought the fact that they had been meeting was remarkable,

and I turned it over to Chris Chinlund,

who was the editor of the Focus section,

'cause that seemed like the appropriate place to put it.

And the Boston Globe-- their style book

wouldn't allow to use the word "pro-life."

McCOMISH: We were called antiabortion activists

and antiabortion extremists.

We did not use "pro-life."

At what point is there a viable fetus? And

the word "life" implies something about that.

And we were trying to stay away from that determination.

And we told The Globethat we would not go public with it

if we could not be called pro-life.

THORP: So there was a lot of back and forth withThe Globe.

McCOMISH: And they didn't want to agree to some of our terms.

And as Susan said, "Well, we would go to The Herald."

And they finally accepted our terms.

HOGAN: And they put a footnote in the article

that appeared and said they were letting us do this.

Aren't they wonderful that they let us do this, you know?

THORP: I think it was the longest piece

thatThe Globe had ever published

of that type of an op-ed.

-I felt that it really

fit the role that the newspaper should fill in the community.

Should be a leader, uh, a convener,

and a community-builder.

Now, a lot of the news

that we reported didn't build communities.

It added to division. But here came

a project that in a world of negative news,

you had an element of positivity to it.

And, uh, we put it in the paper.

GAMBLE: Waking up one Sunday morning

and seeingThe Globe article

and saying, "Well, you know, the cover is blown,"

that was a major moment.

HOGAN: Nervous. Very, very nervous.

Um, I just didn't know what the reaction was going to be.

PODZIBA: I did go to my police station

to give them a heads-up that this was happening and ask them

to just patrol around my neighborhood a little bit more.

So, we knew that the article was being published

in theSunday Globe, and we had called a press conference

for that Monday morning,

and we had no idea if anyone

would show up.

We didn't know what to expect.

We had literally just been sitting

in this room, having this conversation

for years.

We thought we'd publish this article

and that would kind of be that.

We had no idea what kind of impact it was going to have.

[applause and cheering]

JON STEWART: Welcome to the show! Oh, my goodness.

Welcome toThe Daily Show. I'm Jon Stewart.

Folks, it is Monday. It's a day after

Super Bowl , a day afterSurvivor .

I-I feel this, and I think you feel it as well.

We, as a country, have peaked.

[laughter]

STEWART: Yesterday was it.

You know, every country can point to it.

Napoleon had his Waterloo, Caesar his Rubicon.

We, America, had our...

"Remember that Sunday,

"that one time in January, when we had those two shows?

Man, that was something."

KOGUT: So, the article came out on a Sunday,

and the press event, I think, was Monday.

We had been in a side room waiting for : a.m.,

and whoever came set themselves up,

and we walked in...

HOGAN: And the room was packed with people.

-I was positively shocked. -KOGUT: Everybody was there.

PODZIBA: Every major TV station was there.

All the written press was there.

HOGAN: It was mobbed with people. Mobbed with people.

THORP: We were not ready for how emotional it would be.

Just the visual, for us to all be sitting there together.

We had had two women k*lled.

Everybody was

pretty hopeless

about where this issue was gonna go.

And all of a sudden, we gave them a reason to have hope.

THORP: It seemed like people

felt relieved.

PODZIBA: There were journalists

thanking them.

There was a cameraman who was crying.

FOWLER: They were so excited.

And they said, "We never get to report about good news."

PODZIBA: I think that's what it was.

I think it was hopeful

for people on the issue of ab*rtion and for everyone

who is involved in difficult conversations

with people they love and care about.

KOGUT: People wanted to hear about what that was like.

HOGAN: It was amazing

to me that they had any interest in it at all.

You know, then we went back into the room

and we were like, "Wow,

we didn't know if anyone was gonna show up."

And, of course, it was all over the news that night.

ANNOUNCER: This is News at : on the News Station.

Two opposing sides in the ab*rtion issue

make a surprise announcement.

They're political adversaries locked in one of the most

bitter public debates of our time.

The ab*rtion issue has prompted riots, pickets, even m*rder.

So imagine the surprise yesterday

when pro-life and pro-choice leaders...

...reveal they have been meeting in secret...

...for several years...

...all sitting at one table.

This would be similar to Palestinians and Israelis

declaring that they have been meeting in secret

to discuss Middle East peace.

Now they say they are friends.

Now they want others to know why.

NECN's Alison King has the story.

KOGUT: It was

a big, big story.

And it followed up with, you know,

magazine articles and newspaper articles

and all this interest in it.

Yesterday's revelation in The Boston Globe

has sparked a lot of reaction.

GAMBLE: Some of my good friends

said, "I think this is the stupidest way

to spend time that I've ever heard of."

I was told that by having done this,

I had done

an evil thing,

that I had caused great scandal,

and that it was wrong.

Yeah, by a priest.

And other people were negative, too,

but the vast majority were positive.

I got a letter from a client, which said

that she was pro-choice

but that she had never heard the pro-life position

articulated before.

And she was grateful

to at least hear the position articulated

'cause it just never was in her circle.

So many people sent emails and letters

saying, "I haven't talked to my sister in this many years.

"Because of what you've done,

I'm going to give it another try."

HOGAN: I think it was even

the editor or some editor

of The Globewrote a letter about it,

and he was very proud of having it in his newspaper.

-Cardinal Law

thanked us for running it.

FOWLER: Then it began to be

a lot of outside-of-the-room stuff.

HOGAN: We were invited to places we would never

have been invited to before this

because we were uneducated, stupid women.

EMILY ROONEY: With me now are Reverend Anne Fowler

and Barbara Thorp with the Archdiocese.

My guests this evening are Nicki Nichols Gamble,

attorney Fran X. Hogan...

HOGAN: The Nieman Foundation at Harvard, we went there.

We were invited to the Ford Hall Forum.

We spoke at a few universities.

[applause]

Good evening.

HOGAN: We went out to Rhinebeck, New York

to a women's conference with , pro-choice women.

To see those three pro-life women

all dressed up in suits

and heels and nylons

in the middle of the summer coming in,

I'd never seen three people

look more out of place and more uncomfortable.

And then Cardinal Law had us to his house for coffee.

Nicki was nervous that when she walked in,

the house would fall down on top of her.

We sat around his dining room table, all of us,

the two facilitators and the six women and the cardinal.

He gave to each of them

the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

And when he gave it to Nicki, he said,

"Nicki, you might not agree with every single word in this."

And we're all thinking, "No kidding," you know?

But he said, "I recommend you read the section on prayer.

'Cause no matter what, we're all called to pray."

And she was very emotional at that moment.

I remember that.

There is no more fundamental

or profound responsibility of a leader...

...than to understand the differences

of opinion that are around you.

HOGAN: We were invited to more places.

We were considered respectable

and thoughtful and maybe wrong by a lot of people,

but at least they listened to us,

which they never did before.

And as I say, when I first began it,

I didn't realize that lowering the rhetoric

would help the pro-life position,

but it did.

FOWLER: In a million years, we couldn't have envisioned

what... could happen.

Anne Fowler, Barbara Thorp, thanks so much

for being with us. -Thank you. -Thank you, Emily.

All right. And when we continue...

McCOMISH: We didn't meet

too often afterwards, but we did meet.

We didn't want to break the connection.

Because we did like

each other.

FOWLER: The outcomes

for the six of us

exceeded any possible expectations

we would have had.

How it has affected the larger world...

...it's hard to say at this point.

It's very hard to say.

[crowd clamoring]

JIM SCIUTTO: The Supreme Court has just issued

the decision many were waiting for, a ruling in Dobbs.

NEWSWOMAN: Roe andCasey have been overruled.

-This is overturning nearly years of precedent

that was first established in Roe v. Wade.

NEWSMAN: Conservatives in government and in law

have been working for years to overturn it.

And this is the live reaction now.

NANCY PELOSI: It's just stunning.

This is extremism to the nth degree.

-We are now living in a dystopian nightmare.

PELOSI: You know

that this is a disgraceful...

NEWSMAN: And there are a lot of law enforcement officers here,

frankly, who are getting ready for any potential violence

or disorder that could come from this.

We have somebody now charged with thinking

about trying to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh.

KOLBERT: The parallels are, you know, uncanny.

Today looks a lot like .

HOGAN: It's years later now,

and it's still a hot, hot topic in the U.S.

And we need to keep the rhetoric under control again now.

That's very important.

Ironically, in all of this,

the public view of ab*rtion

hasn't really changed much in the last... years.

We know that attitudes on ab*rtion

in the United States

are actually very middle of the road.

KOLBERT: For the most part, most people believe

legal ab*rtion ought to be available.

Some regulation is appropriate.

Very few people believe that ab*rtion

ought to be banned or prohibited.

That hasn't really changed. "Safe, legal and rare"--

the articulation of President Clinton--

is pretty much where Americans are.

The country is still a bell curve.

It is most people in the middle

on most issues.

It is not a bimodal distribution

of political views out there.

The problem is, the political system

and the elected officials represent

our views as if they were two polar opposites.

Over to the radicals, over to the extreme and the socialist...

Old people and young people want Roe v. Wadeto maintain as

-the law of the land. -We don't want to dismember children!

We need to do that.

-And we have a right. -No, we are not going to stand for

-dismembering , children... -Extremists, we've heard enough

from the extremists, and we're tired.

Things are really quite difficult today.

[chanting]

Just the attitudes of people seem so bellicose.

As soon as they find out

the opinion of the other person, that's the end of it.

...even a culture w*r issue, it is health care.

ab*rtion is health care.

McCOMISH: There's very little you can talk about

without hitting a nerve.

-A court that is interested in protecting

a domestic supply of infants clearly sees us as baby-makers,

not as human beings, not as equal people in this country.

It's up to a woman to make those decisions

and up to a woman to make those decisions with her doctor.

I know you've never faced those choices,

nor have you ever been pregnant.

But for women out there who have faced those choices,

this is an incredibly difficult thing.

President believes that right should be respected.

Is the answer to the socialist Democrat left,

uh, to abort, uh, poor kids?

Have an opportunity to strengthen protections

for the right to life itself.

If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month

you can take the baby and rip the baby

out of the womb of the mother.

Things have gotten so much more

polarized and violent and hateful

in the last few years.

KOLBERT: We have lost the ability

to be civil with each other

about things we disagree upon.

Even in all of my days of being an activist, we were able

to discuss the issue of ab*rtion

with people on both sides of the issue.

-It's my stomach and I get to decide what I do with it.

You know why? Because it's mine!

Half the country isn't speaking to the other half

of the country. It's crazy.

Really, I don't think a society can survive that way.

KOGUT: For even a dialogue to work,

there has to be a commitment

from both sides that civil society

is a value that's right up there with other,

other values.

And I don't think we're there right now.

As a country.

Sadly.

We now have a situation where basically

each side views

the other side as...

evil, un-American traitors.

And that's a pretty dangerous recipe.

It has grown exponentially.

Every single election year has been

more polarized than the previous one.

COLEMAN: Donald Trump is not

an aberrant phenomenon that just happened.

Donald Trump was created through decades of vilification

and division that was growing both

in Washington and on the street.

I am all for

civil disobedience, march, protest,

contestation against things that are

really vile or wrong.

Right? I'm all for that.

When it gets to a place where we're burning stuff down,

right, where we're attacking the Capitol,

then we have to figure out a way to bring the guardrails back in.

That's what dialogue can do.

KOGUT: I mean, dialogue is great for the people who are

engaged in the dialogue.

I think the trick is,

how do you sort of broaden

that kind of experience to more people?

Where does it happen?

CHUA: I am worried more than I've ever been.

I don't see things getting less toxic.

I don't see more conversation opening up.

THORP: If we can't find ways to have civil,

dignified conversations, we will be

literally at w*r with one another, and we will have missed

opportunities for the wide beauty

and depth of human experience and human connection.

FOWLER: Treat one another with respect and...

...kindness and non-judgment

and nonviolence.

That's what it's gonna take.

It's a tall order. But we...

...we six women...

...are an example that it can happen.

-So I think it is important.

I think our-our story is important.

It seems so long ago, but I think the fact

that we did it and that we continued with it

and...

that we grew to like each other is important.

FOWLER: What kept us going was faith.

Faith that what we were doing was important.

Faith that it would at some point have some consequences

that would be good.

KOGUT: If we could sit down and talk...

with one another, have meals

together...

learn about each other's lives

and what made us

have the views that we had,

if we can do that

and-and have that kind of impact,

to have the result be more civil,

public dialogue, then anybody, anybody can do it.

It took many years.

So it's a-- it is an investment in time.

THORP: You don't have the time not to do it.

This is urgent.

It's urgent.

It will take people

who feel very strongly on one side or the other

to cross the line.

KOGUT: This type of effort is

more important than ever.

We need to find a way to get

in the room, whether it's in school,

government, wherever we gather, as people,

we need to find a way to talk.

In and of itself,

a more civil society is worth the effort.

THORP: We saw how fragile our democracy is.

We have to work at it.

We cannot take anything for granted.

Allowing division

on whatever the topic is

to reign, to sort of

revel in the division, to...

feed it, we cut ourselves

off from one another,

from the gift of life that we've been given.

FOWLER: When people are cut off from the common enterprise...

no good can come of that.

I mean, this country has incorporated so much

cultures and beliefs,

and we're still a young country.

I hope we can continue to evolve and understand

what it takes to become a mature country.

♪

With room for difference

and the desire for commonality.

I'm theologically committed to hope.

Does hope have to be for the same thing?

♪

Can we make our various hopes compatible?

How do we do that?

We have to try.

♪