Make a Difference: Embrace Gray

… or, if you prefer the British spelling, grey.

I’ve stated before that I believe in right and wrong. But I also believe that we live in a world where many issues are not black-and-white. There are shades of gray. And if we embrace the gray, we may be able to listen to and understand others better.

I’m going to use a personal example that will probably alienate me from many people on both sides of the abortion debate. I have talked about this with very few people, but it feels like the right story to share here.

When I was a teen, I identified as pro-choice. For me, my stance was a no-brainer. Legal abortions were safer abortions. It was clear to me that many women would seek to terminate an unwanted pregnancy for a variety of reasons, whether or not abortion was legal. I believed that legal abortions would at least protect the lives of the women who chose them.

Partway through college, I changed my point of view. A large factor in my shift was an ethics class I took. During class, we examined abortion through a pro-choice perspective outlined in the “people-seeds” example from Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion.” While many people agree with Thomson’s reasoning, I was disturbed by it, because it granted no consideration to the “person-plant.” To stick with Thomson’s analogy, since a woman whose mesh screen failed to keep a “people-seed” from taking root in her home would only be obliged to put up with the person-plant for nine months, it seemed to me a callous point of view not to consider possible pain and suffering and even a right to life on behalf of the person-plant. In fact, it seemed to be a very selfish point of view.

During this time, I began to encounter liberal people who embraced feminism but who were also pro-life, challenging my sense of what sort of person a pro-lifer was. Meanwhile, my fellow pro-choicers were alienating me. I was put off by the slogans chalked around campus, such as “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” It seemed to me that many women were approaching the issue from a very “me-centered” point of view. While I continued to believe in the legality of abortion when a woman could lose her life or was a victim of rape or incest, I was concerned about the rights of the unborn child, too. So I began to identify as pro-life.

While I did switch sides on the debate, I refused to condemn the faith of pro-choice women. Some Christians (though certainly not all) seem to equate being a Christian with being pro-life. I knew that I was every bit as passionate about following Christ when I was pro-choice as when I was pro-life. I no longer agreed with my previous pro-choice perspective, but I knew I’d held it out of a deep concern for what I thought was the best solution to the difficult problem of unwanted children. This willingness to acknowledge good will in another’s point of view is part of what I mean by embracing gray.

Since college, I’ve continued to meet people on both sides of the debate who are people of good will. I’ve witnessed acts of intolerance by both pro-choicers and pro-lifers toward people they disagreed with (although I can’t think of a time when a pro-choicer has bombed a pro-life facility). I’ve met women who chose to have an abortion, such as a Catholic woman who was pregnant with an anencephalic baby. I’ve met women who chose not to have an abortion, including another woman who was told her baby had anencephaly — and the diagnosis turned out to be wrong. (I don’t believe this means that the first woman I mentioned was wrong to make the choice she did.)

I’ve been deeply disturbed by people who say they are pro-life but who will not embrace completely pro-life principles, including abolishing the death penalty. Likewise, I’ve been frustrated by some of the proposed pro-life legislation at state levels that seems to prove exactly what pro-choicers have said about pro-lifers: They only care about unborn children, not women. Many pro-lifers seem to fail to see that by addressing issues related to women and poverty, such as paid maternity leave and adequate health care, they will go a long way to reducing abortions.

On the other hand, I’m saddened by the refusal of many pro-choicers to refer to an unborn child as anything but “fetus,” to avoid doing anything to humanize him or her. We need to have serious conversations about pain and suffering and about how oppressed groups are frequently dehumanized. Are we dehumanizing and oppressing unborn children, who cannot speak for themselves?

While I don’t see both sides of the issue completely (I’m not God), I do see them to some extent. I believe there are nuances we need to acknowledge and discuss. We need a deeper conversation than merely whether or not abortion should be legal. For me, abortion is not a black-and-white issue. It’s colored in shades of gray. Maybe that’s why I’d rather not identify myself as pro-life or pro-choice these days.

I’m not telling you this because I think I’ve reached some sort of mystical state of enlightenment on abortion. I haven’t. If anything, I’ve felt a little jaded lately and could use more of God’s grace. But my journey is an example of how we can acknowledge that issues are more complex than the stark black-and-white colors we want to paint them in. We live in a world of gray, and that’s not a terrible thing. If anything, being willing to embrace gray may help us grow in humility and in love for those we disagree with.

As we engage in debates about all sorts of issues, let’s acknowledge that there’s a lot of gray in the world. We don’t need to become relativists. But if we’re willing to respectfully engage in deep conversations and to wrestle over more difficult questions than “Which side of the issue is right?” we may actually make progress on some of the world’s most difficult problems. If nothing else, we’ll ease some of the tensions between groups with opposing points of view.