Civil Discourse, Critical Thinking…and Facebook

I’m going to tell you about my abortion, but first some background. Facebook has only been accessible to the general public for about 10 years, but it’s hard to remember life before it—probably impossible for those of a certain age. As a social networking site, it started out as a place to share personal information and photos and to meet like-minded others. It developed a reputation for focusing excessively on “what people had for lunch,” which is how those who disdain it still think of it.

Honestly, I can’t remember why I joined Facebook, and there have been periods when I haven’t paid much attention to it. It’s a curious phenomenon. At my Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain) last month, I asked everyone to share the first word or phrase that came to mind when I said “Facebook.” The responses varied; mine was information. That’s primarily why I use it now, and why I would be loathe to give it up. So many educational, scientific, and just plain thought-provoking sources update their Facebook feeds on a regular basis that it allows me to keep current without having to spend hours going to individual websites or searching the internet for what I might not even know is available.

But more and more Facebook is also becoming a place for us to let everyone know where we stand in matters political, social, religious, moral, dietary, and in regard to the age-old question: which makes a better pet, a cat or a dog? I guess this is only natural, a logical outcome of the sharing we do of our favorite movies, the books we’ve read, the sports teams we follow, and the posts we “like.”

The cat vs. dog argument rarely gets ugly. The same can’t be said for our stances in those other, more highly charged, areas. That’s because we don’t simply want to let others know our position. Kind of like chest-beating apes, we want to proclaim our superiority. We want to demonstrate how right we are and how wrong those who disagree with us are. As a result, many such posts amount to a whole lot of signifying, righteous indignation, and extreme disdain for those on the other side. Because if we’re on one side, there has to be another side. And if we’re right, those others have to be wrong.

This cognitive bias is known as black and white thinking. It’s a simplistic way of viewing an issue that doesn’t allow for shades of gray. Imagine two groups of people shouting at each other across a vast chasm. Neither group is listening to the other; no difference is being made. But everyone has a sense of satisfaction as a result of expressing their opinion.

The problem is that although no practical difference is being made, this state of affairs is not innocuous. If one person proclaims his or her position and implies that those on the other side are misinformed, mentally challenged, or flat-out evil, you can bet those others are going to react. It’s like throwing a metaphorical hand grenade into a crowd. Most likely, those on the receiving end are going to respond as if they’re being threatened. How do you react when you’re being threatened? Do you stop to evaluate the merits of your aggressor’s point of view?

On the Other Hand…

I have this crazy idea that Facebook could be a possibility for civil discourse between people of opposing views, so every once in a while I attempt to engage with someone who clearly doesn’t see things the way I do.

One of my friends shared a recent meme suggesting that men who want to purchase guns should be required to go through the same hoops women seeking abortions have to go through. One of her Facebook friends commented that most people who buy guns never kill anything, but every woman who has an abortion kills a human being.

I had an abortion many years ago, and this woman’s assertion hit me hard. After taking a deep breath, I decided to respond. I replied that what she’d said was a generalization that wasn’t true. Her response was that regardless of my opinion, abortion was MURDER (caps hers). She also indicated she had children, who had been “valuable human beings from the moment of conception.” At that point I realized it was the ideology talking, so it was futile to pursue a dialogue. I told her she was fortunate to have been able to conceive and bear children, which wasn’t the case for some of the rest of us. And I ended the interaction.

But it was painful to have this woman who knows nothing about me or my experience make unwarranted assumptions about me and obliquely, at least, cast me in the role of a murderer. Every woman who has an abortion kills a human being. Based purely on the fact that I’d disagreed with her, she determined I was on the opposite side, and therefore in favor of abortion. Since, in her mind, there are only two sides (you’re either with us or against us), that meant I was wrong and she was not interested in hearing anything I had to say.

I’m pro-choice. That doesn’t mean what anti-abortionists think it means. In my case, having an abortion was not only the last thing I wanted to do, it didn’t actually involve much choice on my part.

Failure to Conceive

I’d always assumed I would have children—that it would just happen when I was ready to start a family. I don’t recall ever thinking otherwise. Both of my younger brothers had married and had children by the time I got married. But it never happened for me. I spent more than two years going through fertility treatments, seeing different doctors, taking my basal body temperature every day, having to show up at the gynecologist’s office at the crack of dawn, and facing the same disappointment month after month. I joined the subculture of women who are consumed by their attempts to get pregnant. And I mean consumed. Getting pregnant was the number one focus of our attention, the main thing we read about, talked about, and thought about.

Finally, as a result of the most painful medical procedure I’ve ever had, it was determined that my Fallopian tubes were blocked, which meant all of my efforts of the previous two years had been futile. I could not get pregnant. There might have been further treatment available. I can’t remember. I do know I was worn out from the ordeal by then. So I came to terms with the situation and settled into my childless life. No one had told me it was possible for Fallopian tubes to become unblocked all by themselves—which is what happened to me a few years before menopause.

I’d been feeling tired and run down, but didn’t think anything of it at first. I wasn’t nauseous. I just didn’t feel like myself. Then I noticed I hadn’t had a period for two months. A couple of friends kept asking me if I’d had a pregnancy test, and I remember being quite irritated. So late one Friday evening, I drove to a drugstore and bought a test solely to be able to prove they were wrong. The insert that came with the test showed a pale pink “positive” response. What I got was hot pink—closer to fuschia. I was stunned.

I wasn’t working at that time and had no health insurance. I was also in my mid-40s, and my then partner (the same person I’d been married to previously—another story altogether) was 14 years older than me. But after the shock wore off, I immediately started trying to figure out how I could do this thing. I checked out every pregnancy book the local library had on its shelves. I told several of my friends—and everyone I spoke to offered to help me any way they could. One person gave me the name and number of her gynecologist, and early on Monday I called for an appointment. They got me in within a couple of days, by which time I already knew there were potential problems and risks associated with having a first pregnancy at my age.

Happy Valentine’s Day

I had an amniocentesis. My fingers were crossed for the better part of a week. If the baby was OK, I would have it. I would be a mother! But that wasn’t the way this story played out. When the doctor called to give me the test results, he told me that I would eventually miscarry, and if I waited for that to happen, it could be dangerous, even life-threatening. He wanted me to have the abortion procedure as soon as possible. In fact, he had a cancellation that week. It was on Valentine’s Day. I took the appointment.

I’m sure the Facebook commenter who thinks all women who get abortions are murderers is quite confident she is in the right. For my part, it’s hard to imagine how someone who was able to have children—something I may have spent more time, attention, energy, and money attempting to do than she did—could possibly have anything but sympathy for me. It’s true she doesn’t know the particulars of my situation. But that’s exactly my point. When you’re shouting (MURDER) across the chasm at the other side, you don’t need to be bothered by particulars. There are no shades of gray.

It doesn’t matter what the issue is or what side of the political spectrum we’re on or how confident we feel about our beliefs or positions. If we’re participating in this shouting match, we’re part of what’s wrong in the world. It’s so easy to share things on Facebook or to dash off a righteously indignant comment that we don’t even have to think about it. But we ought to think about it. We ought to engage the conscious part of our brain for a few seconds to ask ourselves what we’re doing. Do we really need to keep shouting and lobbing metaphorical hand grenades at each other? Is that the best we can do?