Yahoo! News reported that “Obama calls for understanding in Notre Dame speech”. According to the report:
President Barack Obama strode head-on Sunday into the stormy abortion debate and told graduates at America’s leading Roman Catholic university that both sides must stop demonizing one another.
Obama acknowledged that "no matter how much we want to fudge it … the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable." But he still implored the University of Notre Dame’s graduating class and all in the U.S. to stop "reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It’s a way of life that always has been the Notre Dame tradition."
I think this is certainly taking the high road, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy. Ironically, I almost relayed about a month ago a blog entry that said that the expression “finding common ground” really doesn’t make much sense when 2 sides are so diametrically opposed to each other that there is essentially no common ground. Compromise can only occur when there is some common ground. Otherwise, it is a winner-take-all situation.
That makes civil discussion very difficult, if not almost impossible. Abortion is pretty much a black-and-white issue. You either consider it murder or you do not. There really is very little in-between. In fact, when you consider that decisions always had to be made in the cases of medical emergencies even before Roe vs Wade, then even the so-called “medical middle ground” disappears rather quickly as well.