Pick of the Day: Soft collision between abortion enemies

A few nice words about abortion to start the day?

That's the surprising thing about this piece in this morning's Los Angeles Times, a story about the abortion debate that is actually...civil. Writer Robin Abcarian drops in on a strange, and strangely satisfying, tradition at the University of California at Berkeley -- an annual face-off between a staunch opponent and a staunch defender of abortion.

The two professors, embryologist and gynecologist Malcolm Potts and professor of philosophy Raymond Dennehy, have never changed each other's minds in ten years of this public jousting, but they give an invaluable tutorial in respectful intellectual combat. Remarkably, whatever your views, you can imagine enjoying a chat with either of them; more so than any of the protesters on either side that surround the arena or take them on from the audience.

Hear hear for Abcarian's nuanced take on a charged scene.