Hyten is co-executive director of Essential Partners.
Abortion is one of the most polarized topics in American politics, yet we know that most Americans hold nuanced, complex, sometimes contradictory perspectives on abortion. A recent Pew study found that many supporters of abortion access are open to some restrictions, while many opponents say it should be available in some circumstances.
It is a peculiar irony that the complexity of those views also creates the circumstances for our national polarization. In their everyday lives, people have had vanishingly few opportunities to talk about abortion. It is often taboo or else people find it too difficult to articulate their views —and they choose silence.
This reticence has allowed the most extreme voices to dominate this discussion in the media, in our politics and in our communities. As a result, few if any political leaders express the views of the people they represent. Polarization is anathema to a functioning democracy.
Since the Supreme Court handed down a decision that effectively reversed Roe v. Wade, one polarized national conversation has turned into 50 distinct deliberations unique to the history, context and communities within each state.
As you navigate conversations about this topic in the coming months — whether in direct response to the Supreme Court draft decision or not — it is essential to honor both the complexity and the urgency around this conversation. It is also vital to the future of our nation that we empower the voices of everyday people, so they are able to clearly articulate and advocate for their views.
The organization that I lead, Essential Partners, was founded 30 years ago out of the need for better public discussions about divisive topics like abortion. In 1994, following the murder of two women’s clinic workers by an anti-abortion activist, our founders spent more than five years leading confidential dialogues between pro-life and pro-choice leaders in greater Boston.
"The most important thing I learned from the dialogue,” said Nicki Nichols Gamble, who was then the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood League of MA, “is that there is no more fundamental or profound responsibility for a leader than to understand the differences of opinions around you."
It is now more urgent than ever that our leaders understand the differences of opinions around them. But that can't happen as long as we are trapped in a public debate that is dominated by extreme voices. Now is the moment to break out of that old, dysfunctional, polarized pattern.
Drawing from our work on these conversations over the past three decades, I want to share three recommendations to help you have a healthier, more open, more nuanced conversation with someone who may have a different perspective.
Reflect on your own views
Make sure you understand yourself and what you want to share. Before a conversation about abortion, take a few moments to reflect on your own values. Think about a personal experience that shaped your view. Think about a person in your life who influenced your perspective. Consider taking notes if it helps you focus or remember what’s most important to you.
Make your purpose clear
Hard conversations often implode because people enter them with different purposes. One person is curious; the other person is trying to win. So before you dive in, make sure everyone has the same goal. It can be as simple as saying, “I’m not here to try to change your mind, shame you or scold you. I want to understand you and be understood. How does that sound?” You’ll be amazed at what can happen with a shared purpose.
Embrace the personal
Abortion is already personal. Embrace that fact in these hard conversations. When you talk about your views, speak only for yourself — not on behalf of all women, or all Christians or all liberals. Talk about me, my, and I, rather than you, we, and everyone. Talk about an experience that shaped your values rather than an argument in favor of your view (or against another view). Make yourself known in the way you wish to be known.
Private conversations have a profound influence on the public discussions of issues like abortion. When Americans fail to talk about important political questions, we cede the conversation to hard-line, divisive stances. We erase the diversity of thought that allows our democracy to thrive.
In the wake of this ruling, we have a choice. Whether we fall further into political polarization and dysfunction will depend on the conversations we are willing to have today.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.