SEEKING COMMON GROUND
PA Women Rise, Montgomery County Pro-Life Coalition hold moderated forum
HORSHAM » Members of two local organizations came together last week to participate in a mediated discussion in search of commonalities amid a tense national climate.
The players: PA Women Rise and the Montgomery County Pro-Life Coalition.
The hourlong conversation was moderated by Attorney Scott Polsky on July 9 at his office in Horsham. He advised participants of both groups to focus on experiences as opposed to personal opinions.
“The purpose of that [approach] is to listen to each other … so that you can better understand the other side and be more likely to compromise,” he said at the beginning of the session in a video broadcast on PA Women Rise’s Facebook page.
The idea to hold last week’s discussion came from a rally prior to a June 18 Montgomery County Commissioners meeting in Norristown. Several grassroots organizations held marches and demonstrations both condemning and supporting Montgomery County Commissioner Joseph C. Gale, who has come under fire for a racially charged statement last month.
His comments referenced the “violence, arson and looting” during protests in Philadelphia in the weeks after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
“The perpetrators of this urban domestic terror are radical left-wing hate groups like Black Lives Matter,” Gale said in the June 1 statement.
As protests grew along with calls for Gale to resign, he called for the attention to be turned to anti-abortion issues.
“If the Black Lives Matter movement was really concerned about Black lives mattering, those protesting me would instead be at Planned Parenthood protesting the slaughter of Black children in the womb,” Gale said on June 7.
Those statements garnered support from organizations including the Montgomery County Pro-Life Coalition, who was present at the June 18 county commissioners meeting and surrounding protests.
Coalition Director Mike McMonagle said “we wanted to show support for Joe.”
PA Women Rise member Carmina Taylor observed demonstrators with signs with “comments” about “BLM supporting killing of Black babies in the womb,” she said during the July 9 discussion. She added that the “signs took me by surprise.”
Others, including PA Women Rise member Marlena Green, took issue with the signage.
“They were hurtful because the signs just made
it seem like we’re just killing our babies and having these abortions in Montgomery County,” Green said.
Taylor added that she wanted to speak to the demonstrators. That initial introduction opened the door for a secondary conversation leading up to the July 9 roundtable.
“[I was] concerned about pending volatility that’s happening in our country,” Taylor said. “The volatility that I thought would be happening here in Montgomery County that I wanted to take a proactive outreach to see how we could kind of tone down perceptions and misperceptions.”
PA Women Rise member Danielle Kwock Phillips, who leans pro-choice, stressed that the organization was “nonpartisan” and focuses on “racial justice.”
Both organizations had different expectations going into the July 9 discussion.
“The goals were really to understand why they’re seeing abortion and Black Lives Matter as the same issue, and to try to get them to support our movement, not necessarily just about Joseph Gale, but about racial justice in Montgomery County,” Phillips said in a phone interview following the discussion.
“Well our main purpose [is to] expand the pro-life movement beyond ‘OWG’s’ (old white guys) ... but into the community most affected by killing children in the womb [which is] is Black Americans,” McMonagle said on July 9.
While McGonagle said there was some “common ground” between the groups, he said the protest “sign was perfectly legitimate” and held his stance on the matter.
However, Polsky asked participants to stay focused on the topics at hand in an attempt to focus the conversation.
“The goals were really to understand why they’re seeing abortion and Black Lives Matter as the same issue, and to try to get them to support our movement, not necessarily just about Joseph Gale, but about racial justice in Montgomery County.”
“So we’re not gonna solve the abortion debate today, alright so if that was the goal, then that’s way too lofty a goal to accomplish,” Polsky said.
After hearing comments from several members of PA Women Rise, the Montgomery County Pro-Life Coalition as well as an outreach representative, participants agreed that education and resources were important tools for community members.
Green said in a phone interview on Thursday that she felt last week’s talk was meaningful “because I feel as though that pro-choice has a bad taste about prolife and pro-life has a bad taste about pro-choice.”
McMonagle was invited to attend a PA Women Rise demonstration, and he accepted the invitation.
“I honestly believe that that did bridge a gap and open some doors,” Green said in a phone interview.