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“The truth is that the best argument on each side is a damn good one,” Caitlin Flanagan writes in a new Atlantic magazine essay about abortion .

I know that many people have little interest in grappling with the other side of the abortion debate. Their own opinion is a matter of deep principle, and they’re not going to change it. Even so, I think there is real valu e in doing what Flanagan has done, asking readers to hear and understand that other side.

Public opinion on abortion is remarkably stable. There is no sign that it’s going to disappear as a political issue during any of our lifetimes. In that way, it’s a microcosm of the larger divide in American life: If we can’t agree, can we at least learn to coexist? The alternative seems chilling; Flanagan’s essay appears in a new issue of the Atlantic called, “How to stop a civil war.”