Local, USA

TINA McDUFFIE: Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994.

A gunman 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" on Local, USA.

(static crackling) TV ANNOUNCER: This is 7 News at noon on the News Station.

Local activists on both sides of the abortion issue reveal a secret they've been keeping.

7'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 1994 killings when John Salvi went into two abortion clinics, killing 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 1974.

Almost from the get-go... ...there were reasons to be truly frightened that one might be killed... ...or injured or-or that someone who works for me might be killed or injured.

(sirens wailing) -Opened up the door and started shooting 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 abortion 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 '90s, 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 11:00."

PETER COLEMAN: Boston was in some ways an epicenter of tension for this.

It's a highly Catholic city, I think 36% Catholic.

The rhetoric the leaders would leverage and weaponize against the other side had become more and more heated.

FOWLER: Talking about sin and murder, killing of children.

Their words, their words, "killing 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 kill your baby."

You know, "Think about it again."

"You'll regret this forever and ever."

We consider abortion a violent act.

It destroys a human life.

People feel strongly when they think innocent human beings are being killed, 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 abortion 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... ...kill people.

GAMBLE: If people hadn't been killed, 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 30, 1994.

-Once again, violence has struck abortion clinics, this time in a Boston suburb.

In two separate attacks, just minutes and a mile and a half apart, gunmen shot and killed 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 shooting 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, 25 years old, barely out of college, and another young woman, 38 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 rifle 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 shooting.

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 killed 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 30, 1994.

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 rifle 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): Murderer!

Murderer!

-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 shoot people?

Well, it probably has something to do with abortion.

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 5 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 shooting.

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 gunman.

I mean, here we are in this very suburban community, very safe, and there's, theoretically, this lone gunman, 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 murderer 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-47 or high-powered rifle 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 killed.

ELLEMENT: They weren't even doctors.

They were just receptionists who got murdered 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 killed.

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 assault on abortion.

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 gun and who shot the bullet.

KIVLAN: I mean, the evidence was overwhelming that he was the shooter, 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 5, the latest news around the clock.

Good afternoon.

The lawyer for accused abortion clinic gunman 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 40-year career.

It was a murder case that really became a political case.

The politics of abortion made this trial be about abortion.

The pro-choice movement viewed John Salvi as an extremist in the pro-life group.

That would make the women killed at the clinics martyrs.

-Planned Parenthood ran an ad, full-page ad.

I don't know, around here, if you saw it in The New York Times: "Words Kill."

Okay?

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

-Did you see this?

"Words Kill."

-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 kill" 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 abortion is murder has directly encouraged people like John Salvi to carry out murder.

Provocative demonstrations and venomous rhetoric of the so-called pro-life movement is inciting their people to murder.

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 abortion 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 abortion, "but we do not advocate for killing, 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 abortions "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 abortion 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 abortion.

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 abortion right after Shannon was killed.

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 killers.

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 abortion rights politician, and Law, a power in the Catholic Church, will meet to find some common ground.

Is there any on abortion?

-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 killed.

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 killed.

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 abortion 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 abortion-related violence today in Brookline, Massachusetts, where last December a gunman opened fire with fatal results.

More than 100 demonstrators from both sides of the abortion 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 abortion, 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 abortion.

(scoffs) What was happening in an abortion.

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 abortion, 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," "murderer."

We listed out, you know, maybe 100 or 200 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 abortion 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 abortion.

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 abortion.

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 5.

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 abortion 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 abortions had continued at abortion 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 abortions 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 abortion 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've given 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 Globe that 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 with The 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 that The 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 seeing The 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 the Sunday 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 to The Daily Show.

I'm Jon Stewart.

Folks, it is Monday.

It's a day after Super Bowl 35, a day after Survivor 2.

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 9: 00 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 killed.

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 abortion 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 7 News at 4:00 on the News Station.

Two opposing sides in the abortion issue make a surprise announcement.

They're political adversaries locked in one of the most bitter public debates of our time.

The abortion issue has prompted riots, pickets, even murder.

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 Globe wrote 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 1,000 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 and Casey have been overruled.

-This is overturning nearly 50 years of precedent that was first established in Roe v. Wade.

NEWSMAN: Conservatives in government and in law have been working for 50 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 1992.

HOGAN: It's 50 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 abortion hasn't really changed much in the last... 50 years.

We know that attitudes on abortion in the United States are actually very middle of the road.

KOLBERT: For the most part, most people believe legal abortion ought to be available.

Some regulation is appropriate.

Very few people believe that abortion 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. Wade to 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 3,000 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 war issue, it is health care.

Abortion 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 abortion 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 war 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.