Thinking to Believe

One final note on the abortion poll…. Did you notice how support for aborting a baby because s/he was conceived due to rape or incest enjoys the same level of support as saving the life of the mother (70% vs. 75% respectively). While I am persuaded that the logic of the pro-life persuasion does not justify abortion in cases of rape/incest, at this point in time any attempt to outlaw abortion that does not make an exception for such cases is likely to fail. On a tactical level, we would do well to work towards passing legislation that limits abortion in those areas where the majority of Americans support such limitations. Once we have accomplished those limitations (which constitute 94-95% of all abortions), then we can take on the rape/incest justification. Of course, that is on a legal plane. In our personal, one-on-one pro-life evangelism we should demonstrate how the pro-life logic rules out rape/incest as morally justifiable exceptions as well.

Continued from below….

The Ayres, McHenry & Associates poll also gauged the public’s support for specific abortion rationales. Ironically, while a slight majority of Americans favor abortion rights, the vast majority of Americans reject the reasons for which the vast number of abortions are performed in this country. The majority of Americans think it should be illegal to obtain an abortion for the following reasons:

Legal / Illegal

• The woman does not like the gender of the fetus 17% / 79%
• The woman thinks a child would interfere with her education or career plans 24% / 72%
  The fetus has a physical abnormality that could be repaired, such as a cleft palate 28% / 66%
  
• The woman feels she cannot afford to raise a child 31% / 65%
• The woman has all the children she wants 32% / 64%
• The woman feels she is not yet ready to raise a child 32% / 63%
• The woman is not married 32% / 62%
• The pregnancy could cause depression or pose other mental health problems 42% / 51%
  

What reasons do justify an abortion?:

Legal / Illegal

• The pregnancy endangers the life of the woman 75% / 18%
• The pregnancy poses a threat to the physical health of the woman 70% / 21%
  
• The pregnancy resulted from rape or incest 70% / 24%
• The fetus has a serious physical or mental deformity 55% / 36%

This is quite amazing. We know that only 5-6% of all abortions are obtained to protect the health of the mother (in which “health” is so broadly defined so as to include mental health, rather than just physical health), because of fetal abnormalities, or due to rape/incest. The other 95% are obtained because the child will interfere with the mother’s education (10.8%), will cause financial hardship (21.3%), the mother is not ready for children yet (29.6%), the mother does not want any more children (7.9%), etc. That means Americans actually oppose 94-95% of all abortions being performed in this country!! This tells me Americans don’t know what their support for abortion in general, and their support for Roe in particular, is actually accomplishing. We would do well to inform them that their support of Roe not only allows the 5-6% of abortions they think are legally justified, but also the 94-95% they think should be illegal. A reasonable response by the pro-abortion majority would be to call for the overturning of Roe, and then work in their state to restrict abortion rights to the particular circumstances they believe to be legally and/or morally justified. Of course, a reasonable response by the pro-life minority would be to restrict abortion even further according to our own persuasions of what abortions are morally justifiable.

In conclusion, while the majority of Americans support Roe, the margin would be reduced to a statistical wash if Americans were correctly informed of Roe’s real import. Furthermore, while the majority of Americans support abortion rights, they only do so for a slim fraction of all abortions. We would do well, then, to educate the public that overturning Roe will not make abortion illegal in the U.S., and that their support of Roe has the unintended effect of killing the very babies they think should be protected by law.

The Ethics and Public Policy Center and Judicial Confirmation Network suspected that many who support Roe do so because they are under the false impression that if Roe were overturned, abortion would become illegal in the United States. If the public were properly informed that overturning Roe would simply return the abortion issue back to the states to decide the matter for themselves, public support for Roe would decrease. To test their hypothesis they hired a national public relations firm, Ayres, McHenry & Associates, to conduct a poll that would gauge the genuine public support for Roe v Wade, as well as other abortion-specific questions. The findings are quite significant to our understanding of the supposed public support for abortion rights.

To discover if their suspicions were correct, respondents were asked twice to declare their support, or lack of support for overturning Roe: the first time without being informed, and the second time after being informed that overturning Roe would merely return the issue of abortion back to the states, allowing them to decide their own positions on abortion. The poll results confirmed the suspicions of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Judicial Confirmation Network.

Prior to being informed of the import of Roe, 34% of respondents supported overturning Roe, while 55% did not. After being informed that overturning Roe would merely return the issue of abortion back to the states to decide, support for overturning Roe increased to 43%, while opposition decreased to 48%. The margin narrowed from 21% to 5% in favor of not overturning Roe. That is quite a shift! I think the media and pro-abortion advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood are largely to blame for the perception that overturning Roe would ban abortion in the U.S.

I will discuss what this poll tells us about how Americans really feel about abortion in a separate post.