Deadly abortion debate dramatized

as an American martyr for truth and candour, set upon by a gang of unscrupulous pro-abortion fanatics. His tone is sometimes wounded and pompous. He’s willing to acknowledge that his earlier comments about hanging were “trollish and hostile,” but he clearly feels more sinned against than sinning.

At the very least, he’s right to call out journalists who wrote about his views without bothering to contact him. And no matter what you think of Williamson’s work in general or the right to abortion in particular, toward the end of his essay he makes a crucial point about what’s happening to us all:

“What matters more is the issue of how the rage-fuelled tribalism of social media, especially Twitter, has infected the op-ed pages and, to some extent, the rest of journalism. Twitter is about offering markers of affiliation or markers of disaffiliation. The Left shouts RACIST!, and the Right shouts FAKE NEWS! There isn’t much that can be done about this other than treating social media with the low regard it deserves.”

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a less effective platform than Twitter to discuss the morality of abortion. Heartfelt conversations about the meaning of life and the dimensions of personal autonomy cannot possibly take place in the hate-filled quips that fire back and forth on social media. And yet, as Williamson notes, the distorting miasma of vitriol that Twitter emits has seeped into almost every public forum.

Few of us will probably ever change our minds about abortion (like Oates, I’m prochoice), but many of us may need to change our minds about our ideological opponents. Fortunately, there is an alternative to Twitter, Facebook and all those indignant op-eds that we use to confirm the superiority of our beliefs. It’s a flexible, troll-free, hacker-resistant platform on which complex social and moral questions can be carefully explored. It simultaneously engages our empathy and models the action of empathy for us.

It’s called a novel. And Oates has written one that will stretch the affections of readers who know that abortion is murder and readers who know that access to abortion is fundamental to women’s freedom.

How Oates can do this so effectively is part of the thrilling mystery of a good book.