It’s Time To Find Common Ground

Baby Think It Over is a doll that mimics a real baby. It cries every three hours, all hours of the day and night. High school students, trying to learn about parenting, hate these wailing dolls. They are given a key that turns the crying off, but they must hold the key in for 20 minutes, the time it takes to feed an actual baby.

Baby Think It Over costs $220. Expensive. A typical life skills class would need 25 or more. That’s $5,500.

Today, on the 22nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, we thought of Baby Think It Over.

You see, it’s time to change the societal way we deal with the abortion issue.

Rigid thinking, on both sides of the issue, has dug a hole of anger, hatred and violence.

The time has come for people from the differing sides to work together for a common goal.

Start simple. Start, for instance, with Baby Think It Over. How would a new, shared vision work?

Well, some pro-choice folks would join together with some prolife folks and sponsor a Baby Think It Over fund-raiser.

They would make enough money to donate a classroom’s worth of dolls to an Inland Northwest high school.

The Baby Think It Over committee would have some ground rules as they plan and execute the fund-raiser.

Committee members could not debate the usual issues that divide people so violently on abortion. No talk of women’s rights versus rights of the unborn.

Committee members would acknowledge that they share this common value: Every child who comes into the world is a precious gift. Every child has a right to be loved and cared for.

By the end of the fund-raiser, the pro-life folks would probably still be pro-life. The pro-choice folks would probably stick to their beliefs, too. But they would come to know others on the opposite side, get to know them as human beings. They would discover they have more in common then they ever imagined.

As a result of their collaboration, a class of teens would spend some time with Baby Think It Over. It might help many of the teens realize that babies cry a lot; you lose sleep and fun times when you have them. It might prevent some teen pregnancies from ever taking place, thereby preventing the wrenching decisions young people face when they are pregnant before they are ready to be parents.

Sound too idealistic? Hey, the Berlin Wall came down.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rebecca Nappi/For the editorial board