The Family Research Council recently alleged that my speaking at Planned Parenthood's prayer breakfast casts doubt on FPL's work to bridge ideological divides and seek solutions on abortion.

In a Friday blog post, FRC's JP Duffy excerpted my recent remarks at a recent Pew Forum panel discussion, and asked rhetorically:

Butler should explain how working "closely" with Planned Parenthood helps achieve "common ground" to solve the "problem" of abortion.

This question suggests a misunderstanding of Faith In Public Life's track record of bringing together pro-choice and pro-life leaders to work on common ground approaches to abortion. At Planned Parenthood's prayer breakfast I urged pro-choice progressives to sit down with evangelicals and come up with ways to reduce abortions, and I highlighted abortion-reduction policies outlined in Come Let Us Reason Together: A Fresh Look at Shared Cultural Values Between Progressives and Evangelicals, published by the think tank Third Way. This follows our hard work to bring together progressives and pro-life evangelicals to launch Come Let Us Reason Together last year.

I also emphasized this approach to abortion reduction in my Pew Forum interview -- but FRC excluded these remarks from their excerpts of the discussion, altering my message in a misinformative way.

Finding common ground and making real progress on contentious issues such as abortion entails working with parties who disagree with each other, such as Planned Parenthood and conservative pro-life evangelicals, and I'm proud to facilitate that. We've seen where polarization, demonization and an unwillingness to communicate in good faith have gotten us -- nowhere. If the most strident ideologues wish to continue talking only to those who agree with them, they will stay stuck in old debates that solve nothing. Bridges anchored only to one side are not bridges at all -- they are gangplanks that culture warriors walk at their peril.

Below is the entirety of the passage FRC excerpted in their blog post. The parts they omitted are underlined.

Yeah, well, it is interesting you asked that. I am speaking at the Planned Parenthood prayer breakfast tomorrow. And we have worked very closely with some think-tanks in town – with Third Way and with Center for American Progress. Many of these groups are also very interested in connecting more strongly with faith communities. And I’d say there has been a resurgence in their interest, an intensification since 2004. So I think it is extremely important to build those bridges there. And that is one of the functions that Faith in Public Life plays – connecting people. We helped Third Way, for example, recently with exploring some common ground on the polarizing, hot button, below-the-belt issues with evangelicals. And we helped find evangelicals that would be interested in coming to that table. We helped put that group together, and helped foster that conversation. So there is a lot of matchmaking going on and building of bridges among the secular organizations....

Yeah, there has been some recent progress in that arena because it has been a point of tension. I mentioned earlier our work with Third Way. And they worked with leading evangelicals and progressives to outline a strategy for approaching the abortion issue which, interestingly enough, did not involve compromise. And they were very clear that they didn’t want a watered-down solution to the problem, nor did they want people having to compromise on their ideals. But what they did outline was the best practices proposed from both sides, from conservatives and liberals, that would reduce the need for abortion. And there’s a bill, like Chris said, on the table in Congress right now, the Ryan DeLauro Bill, which outlines many steps that these two communities can take together. Leading evangelicals like Joel Hunter, pastor of a mega-church in Florida, and David Gushee, who just wrote a book on the evangelical center, came together to help shape that agenda. And I think it outlines a way that these groups can move forward together on that issue.