Starting with common ground

Pro-choice people love to use President Clinton’s famous phrase that the goal is for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.”

The brilliance of this phrase of course is the inclusion of “rare,” which reminds people that abortion is generally a bad thing. And although many pro-lifers wonder just how serious pro-choicers are about the rare part, I’ve always said that anyone who is genuinely pro-choice would prefer a world where almost no one chooses abortion.

But something else suddenly intrigues me about this phrase. Instead of leading with what divides us, wouldn’t it be interesting if people reversed the order of words? Since the real point of commonality between the camps is “rare,” why not emphasize it by saying “rare, safe, and legal?” In fact, if we’re really shooting for emphasis, why not leave the latter bit off entirely?

I don’t know how much difference it will make, but wouldn’t it be fascinating if both sides started reinforcing to this culture a message in unison that our common goal for abortion is simply to make it “rare?”