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Rep. Mark Souder is both a Notre Dame graduate and a strong pro-lifer, but he is among those who worry that the extreme protesters of President Obama's commencement speech will hurt more than help the pro-life cause:

“I understand the passion of those like myself who want to protect innocent babies from being killed,” Souder told WSBT News. “But the key thing here is to persuade those in the middle who don't agree with us.”

An interesting point. Editorial writers are taught there is a time to preach to the choir and a time to reach out to the unconverted. Preaching to the choir seems to be the norm these days, especially online. There's such a take-no-prisoners atmosphere in the blogosphere that it's hard not to get sucked into the polemics.

So we could use more persuasion and less confrontation these days. But I'm not sure abortion is the right issue to try it out on. The pro-life and pro-choice partisans are too entrenched and too unwilling to listen to the other side. Those in the middle who might be persuaded to drift one way or the other will just get smacked hard down by the zealots of the opposite side and decide it's not worth developing a thoughtful opinion on the subject.