Pro-Voice: How to Keep Listening When the World Wants a Fight

Aspen Baker

Jun 2015 · Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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Dialogue, Not Dogma
When Aspen Baker had an abortion at the age of twenty-four, she felt caught between the warring pro-life and pro-choice factions, with no safe space to share her feelings.

This enhanced edition includes a video of Aspen sharing her personal story, but it also includes videos of the women and men who've been profoundly changed by the movement Aspen founded. As you watch and listen, you will see how the Pro-Voice movement can be a game-changer. Through deep listening, storytelling, and embracing gray areas, the movement has generated love, empathy and support on both sides of America's most controversial issue.

In this hopeful and moving book, Baker describes how she and Exhale, the organization she cofounded, developed their “pro-voice” philosophy and the creative approaches they employed to help women and men have respectful, compassionate exchanges about even this most controversial of topics. She shows how pro-voice can be adopted by anyone interested in replacing ideological gridlock with empathetic conversation. Peace, in this perspective, isn't a world without conflict but one where conflict can be engaged in—fiercely and directly—without dehumanizing ourselves or our opponents.

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Aspen Baker is the founder and Executive Director of Exhale. She was a finalist for the 2014 American Express Ngen Leadership Awards; was named a “fun, fearless female” by Cosmopolitan in 2013, and was awarded a Gerbode Professional Development Fellowship in 2012. She has been featured by media outlets across the country, including CNN Headline News, Fox National News, Ladies Home Journal, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and many more.