Abortion and Abortion Polls
By Bruce Walker (11/02/07)
A series of polls in mid-October on the question of abortion yields interesting results, when the actual poll questions and answers are examined closely. Most polls are presented something like this: "A clear majority of Americans do not favor overturning Roe v. Wade" or "The number of people who consider themselves pro-choice is slightly greater than the number of people who consider themselves pro-life."
The Fox News poll of October 24 shows that only 39% of Americans favor making abortion illegal simply because the abortion is unwanted (which is precisely the pro-choice position – pregnancy as an inconvenient truth.) A whopping 50% of Americans oppose making abortion illegal simply because the pregnancy is unwanted, while 11% of Americans are undecided. That means that the pro-life camp – at least those who oppose abortion on demand – are a huge plurality of Americans. But this, after all, a Fox News poll, and all good Leftists know that Fox News is unfair. So what do the other polls of October say?
A few days before the Fox News poll, the Los Angeles Times released its own poll on abortion. This poll showed that only 31% of Americans believed that abortion should always be legal – a smaller percentage that the comparable question in the Fox News poll – and 13% of Americans believed that abortion should be legal “most of the time” (or that it should be illegal some of the time.) A huge 40% of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal “with a few exceptions” while 10% believed that abortion should be illegal “with no exceptions” and 6% of Americans were unsure. This poll, from a Leftist newspaper, shows that an even greater majority of Americans are pro-life than in the Fox News poll.
Shortly before the Los Angeles Times poll, CBS News (that bastion of conservatism) released its own poll. In that poll, only 26% of Americans believed that abortion should be legal “in all cases” (a smaller pro-choice percentage than either Fox News or the Los Angeles Times), while 16% of Americans believe that abortion should be more restricted than it is now, 34% believe that abortion should be allowed only in cases of incest, rape or the mother’s life is in danger, 4% felt that abortion should never be legal, and 6% were unsure. Or 54% of Americans in this CBS News poll believe that abortion should be illegal unless there was rape, incest or the mother’s life was in danger.
During exactly the same polling period in October as the CBS News poll, CNN conducted its own poll on abortion. In this poll, only 23% of Americans believed that abortion should always be legal (the smallest pro-choice percent in any of the four polls) and 54% of Americans believed that abortion should be “sometimes legal” (which is not pro-choice.) A surprising 22% of Americans believed that abortion should always be illegal, and 1% of Americans were unsure.
What is remarkable is the consistency of these polls – all of them showed only a small minority of Americans favored what Roe v. Wade has actually held, that abortion on demand was constitutionally required – and a surprisingly large percentage of Americans would want abortion laws to be more restrictive than prior to Roe v. Wade, when states were allowed to make abortion legal or illegal (and three states had legal abortion.)
The idea that Americans would capriciously allow a mother to die in order for a baby to live was never remotely true. Films throughout the golden age of movies were full of stories with lines like “We were able to save the mother, but we couldn’t save the baby.” Since Roe v. Wade those advocating a pro-life position have consistently said that it was reasonable to make exceptions in those cruel cases of rape or incest.
Life and death decisions have never been cut and dried. Sometimes operations are necessary to allow one Siamese twin to live and the other die. These are heart-rending, but they are not the sorts of decisions that require federal judges reading nonexistent text in the Constitution to decide, but rather state legislatures who are much closer to the family members and doctors who bear the weight of these decisions.
So, given these poll results, why do so many Americans believe that there is a rough balance between pro-life and pro-choice movements, when America is overwhelmingly pro-life? It is, of course, because the poll questions are consciously skewed. The polls usually asked “Do you believe in upholding Roe v. Wade?” or “Are you pro-choice or pro-life?” Obviously Americans have been tricked into believing that odious Supreme Court decision and the terms used to apply to how different Americans feel about that question are something other than what they are. Surprise: the Left and its anti-life nihilists lie.
Bruce Walker
http://brucewwalker.com/
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