Listening with Compassion
Back in May, on May 14 to be exact, I attended a Planned Parenthood rally to support the fight to keep the Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, intact. You can find that blog post here: Because it Matters for Everyone. That rally gave me hope. It inspired me that so many people across the country met on the same day and voiced their opinions for the support of women’s rights. It gave me hope that if so many people were coming out in support of Roe v. Wade, well then maybe the ruling wouldn’t be overturned.
Sadly for me, and millions of other supporters, 6 weeks later, the ruling was overturned. On the morning that the announcement of the overturn was made, I felt sad and disappointed. It came during a week of disappointments for me. Two other Supreme Court rulings on education and gun laws went against my own personal views in these areas. I was feeling disillusioned by the Supreme Court system.
I was feeling miserable and frustrated. I was angry. I felt compassion for the millions of women and the families who were losing what I consider an important right in the lives of child-bearing women. During the day, I felt distraught. I became distraught reading articles that covered the devastation that I saw happening in women’s lives, while the opportunities for woman to have agency over their bodies were slipping away. As soon as the announcement was made, multiple states, including my own, enacted trigger laws that banned abortion in their jurisdictions.
In my email inbox, I found an invitation for a rally from the same Planned Parent organizers who organized the rally on May 14th. That evening, they would be rallying at the Capitol in my city. I immediately knew I wanted to be there. I reached out to friends, who I knew supported the same rights that I did, and encouraged them to join me.
The evening came, and I left my home to pick up my friend. 2 others would meet us at the rally. When we approached the road leading to the Utah Capitol, the road was closed. We had to travel around the city to get to the Capitol. By the time we arrived, parking was limited. I would have to drop off my friend and find a place to park a few streets away. After parking, I headed to the Capitol. According to Siri, I was 1/3-miles from the building.
As I walked to the Capitol, I could hear chanting and shouting. Once I arrived, I was at the outer edges of the crowd. There was a speaker, but I couldn’t hear her well. I maneuvered my way into the crowd so that I could hear the speaker and find my friends. Numerous speeches were given, and numerous chants were led. I heard stories of despair and hope. I felt connection and a sense of purpose. I knew that coming to the rally was good for my psyche. Towards the end of the rally, we heard a chant that wasn’t initiated by the rally leaders. It was coming from a group that was protesting the rally. The rally leader shouted, “Don’t engage! Let’s chant louder and drown out their chant!” We all started chanting, “Our bodies our choice.” To me, being in the middle of the chant, we seemed louder. Honestly, I’m not sure who was louder. Then our rally broke up. It was time for me to find my car so that I could pick up my friends. As I walked backed to the car, I was concerned. Would I run into the rally protestors? What would I say? How did I feel about these people?
After I reached the car, I spent a fair bit of time attempting to drive to the pickup spot for my friends. There were so many people dispersing from the rally; travel was very slow. This slow crawl allowed me the opportunity to think about the folks who were protesting the rally. What did I really think about them? I knew that I didn’t agree with their stance. I knew I felt angry about the stance they were taking. But what did I think about them as people?
When I finally reached my friends, they were talking about the opposition. One woman said, “There go the crazies. That guy comes to all these events and just talks crazy talk.” Another woman said she couldn’t stand them. I just listened.
After I dropped everyone off at their homes, I still wondered. I wondered about how we were so divided. The group I came to the rally with were angry that Roe v. Wade had been struck down. I agreed with their arguments. I felt similar feelings. But yet I wondered how I could be so different from the people who were grateful that Roe v. Wade had been struck down. I see the rally argument as an argument for women’s rights. I see the opposing argument as an argument for the life of a fetus. These two seem like apples and oranges. Or are we both fighting for the right to life, just one is for a grown person with autonomy, and the other is for a life that is not yet viable outside of a woman’s body?
I’m not sure that screaming at each other at rallies will get us where we want to be. We both seem so firmly planted in our beliefs and thinking the other side is “wrong”– there is no middle ground. There is no negotiation space. As I mentioned in my earlier blog, women deserve the right to sexual freedom and the right to chose when and if they have children. Abortion is nothing new. It’s been going on for thousands of years. In some cultures, it has even been encouraged. In China, the one-child policy actually forced women to have abortions. There have been forced abortions of people of color and the learning disabled. In these cases, women’s rights to choose has been taken away. While I chose to go to the rally and will probably attend more of them, I question what the right way for us to communicate is. How can we have compassion for one another? How can we hear each other to find some sort of middle ground?
I think about the Buddhist teachings that I’ve been studying. I think of the words in my sangha’s practice manual on “compassionate listening.” We say we will, “listen without judgement, no respect or disrespect” and “be still and listen.” Are those the actions we are taking about the abortion argument? Is there a way to tamper our fear, on both sides, and come together and listen? In a perfect world of compassion, I would think so. In our reality, I am not so sure.
