A group of women who disagree on abortion met in secret for nearly 6 years. What we can learn from them

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On Dec. 30, 1994, a gunman walked into two abortion clinics, just two miles apart in Brookline, Massachusetts, and opened fire. He killed two young women who worked there and wounded several others. The violence sent shock waves throughout the community and became a grim tipping point in the already overheated national debate over abortion.

In the days that followed, leaders on both sides of the abortion debate wrestled with how to move forward. William Weld, Massachusetts’ governor at the time, and Cardinal Bernard Law of the Catholic Church, both called for something different — a dialogue, however fragile it may be, between those who had long see