Abortion: The Pursuit of Common Ground

One of my favourite quotations, which I think of whenever I hear a loud and vehement voice, is by the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke:

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

I was reminded of the quote when, within moments of the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe vs Wade, hyper partisans decrying or supporting the decision went into overdrive online and in the media. The fact that the decision does not do what either side of the partisan fringe claims it does is par for course in our almost wholly irrational times. What the decision should do, however, is focus the attention of those people who, like me, stand in the middle of this debate and who want a civilised and common-sense legislative approach to…