Public Conversations Founder Laura Chasin will bring years of experience facilitating dialogues about about abortion to her role as moderator of a plenary at Princeton University's upcoming conference Open Hearts, Open Minds and Fair Minded Words.  Chasin will moderate the plenary Bridging the Abortion Divide: Recurring Challenges, Emerging Opportunities, which is one of a handful of roundtable sessions at the two-day conference in October.  In addition, Public Conversations Project Associate and Project Manager Mary Jacksteit will be one of the participants in that plenary, sharing the table with Frances Kissling, Jennifer Miller, David Gushee, and Rachael Laser. 

The conference was inspired by President Obama’s call during his Notre Dame address for those on different sides of the abortion issue not only to work together where we agree, but also to engage in "vigorous debate" with "open hearts, open minds, and fair minded words."

The Public Conversations Project was created in 1989 when a televised debate on abortion caused Chasin to question how family therapy practices could improve polarized conversations about abortion and other public issues.  The nonprofit Boston-based organization entered the public eye with a series of citizen dialogues about abortion. This was followed by a highly publicized article about five years of groundbreaking dialogues between pro-life and pro-choice leaders after the fatal 1994 shooting of two women's health clinic workers in the Boston area.