One of the things I find most frustrating is the fact that most conservatives in America don’t consider abortion an important issue, particularly when it comes to how they vote in the political realm. Fox News, in partnership with the Associated Press, issued a 2024 voter analysis that reveals just how little Republicans care about the abortion issue. Consider the following data points:
- Only 11% of Americans considered abortion to be the most important issue facing the country. Ironically, 85% of those who considered it to be the most important issue voted for Kamala Harris. In other words, the vast majority of the 11% who considered abortion to be the most important issue in America are for abortion, not against it. Only ~2% of Republicans considered abortion to be the most important issue facing America this election:
- Not surprisingly, the issue of abortion caused more Harris supporters to vote in this election than Trump supporters:
- When asked specifically about how important abortion policy was to their vote, 27% of Americans said it was either not a factor or only a minor factor. More than ¾ of that 27% cohort were Trump voters:
- While Trump voters do not consider abortion to be that important of an issue, they are much more likely to think government policy should be pro-life. More than 1/3 of Americans think abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. Trump voters make up ~82% of those who take that position. This means that while Trump voters are more likely to think abortion should be illegal, that political viewpoint does not exert much influence on how or why they vote.
- It’s also interesting that of the 38% of Americans who think abortion should be legal in most cases, 40% of them voted for Trump. Anyone who thinks that Trump supporters, or those who vote Republican more broadly, are all rabid pro-lifers, is (unfortunately) mistaken:
If we ever hope to outlaw abortion in this land, not only do we need to convince more people that abortion is wrong, but we must help them to understand why it matters so much and encourage them to translate their moral ideology into political action.
Thinking to Believe 
July 27, 2025 at 9:20 am
You are clearly deeply against abortion rights…but I would really like to know why. Try to step back from your political and religious ideology and look at the situation with clear eyes. WHY is it that you think a single cell with NONE of the characteristics of what we would ever call a person should be regarded as a person? Sure, the DNA of a person is there…but so what? We discard DNA all the time without a second thought, and a zygote has NONE of the differentiated parts of mind and body—most importantly consciousness—that we use to determine personhood and actually VALUE in another person.
More importantly, why do you think ANYONE should have the right to essentially highjack the body of another person and force them to become a gestation machine against their will? Why do you think that the life of ANYONE—much less a single cell with only the potential to become a born baby—is worth more than one’s right to bodily integrity?
Is this purely out of a belief that your God is against abortion? If so, then why do you have that belief? After all, despite abortion being common for centuries before Jesus came along, NOWHERE in the Bible is abortion ever condemned. The only mention is a single instance where it describes HOW one should perform an abortion.
I can understand how a woman might decide to not have an abortion, even if she can’t stand the thought of having a child. Morally, that is to me how it should be: a personal choice. But you wouldn’t allow her to make that choice, would you? You would force her to take the fetus to term. Does it really not matter to you that others may not share your beliefs? Just as you would surely not appreciate being forced to, say, memorize the Quran because you’re not Muslim, don’t you think that non-Christians should have the right to value bodily integrity over a zygote and choose something different than one dictated by your religion?
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July 30, 2025 at 12:27 am
Derek,
You should know better than to think that one’s position on abortion is caused by one’s political and/or religious beliefs. There are Democrats who oppose abortion and Republicans who support it. There are Christians who oppose abortion and Christians who support it. While it’s true that Christians and Republicans are more likely to be opposed to abortion than Democrats and the non-religious, the fact of the matter is that the pro-life view does not depend on any political or religious beliefs. Indeed, there are atheists who are pro-life. I’m really tired of people on your side of the aisle trying to paint this as a religious issue. It’s not. Given what I know about biology and philosophy, I would be pro-life even if I were an atheist and Democrat.
Why am I pro-life? You know why. Because abortion is an act of violence against a whole, distinct, innocent member of the human species that ends in their death. I am prolife because I am persuaded that the preborn are biologically and morally equivalent to the born, and therefore abortion is morally equivalent to the murder of any born human. That’s why.
And if the topic here is abortion, why are you bringing up the status of a single cell? No abortion occurs at the zygote stage. Be that as it may, you know that a zygote is a distinct human individual. It’s not a skin or heart cell. It’s not part of the mother. It’s a whole human organism that is actively developing itself toward maturation. Since you can’t win on the biological question, you shift the goalpost by inventing a new category: personhood. You distinguish between biology and personhood, and only want to attach value to personhood. What’s the difference? And what is your objective basis for attaching value to personhood rather than biology? And what makes consciousness the sine qua non of value? Ground that claim objectively. What is your evidence for that? Stop passing off your assertions as settled truth.
The problem with all of you functionalists (those who attach value to certain human functions rather than the human himself) is that (1) you can never agree on which functions are value-laden and (2) your lists are entirely subjective. Indeed, your methodology is dishonest. You don’t start with an honest assessment of biology and philosophy. Instead, you start with the conclusion that abortion should be allowed and then try to find a way to justify it. So you look for some characteristic that the unborn doesn’t have, attach value to that characteristic, and then declare that since the unborn does not have this characteristic it has no value and can be killed.
The characteristic you settled on is consciousness. But if I could demonstrate to you that the unborn are conscious (at least at a certain stage of development, such as 8 months), you would either find a new characteristic to attach value to (that the unborn lacks), or find some way to argue that it’s still ok to abort the conscious, unborn baby. If I could demonstrate to you that newborns are not conscious, you would find some way to argue that the newborn can’t be killed even though he is not conscious. The tail wags the dog for you pro-abortionists. And in this case, one of those positions is surely true. It’s not as if consciousness is tied to location, such that the unborn immediately becomes conscious as soon as he leaves the womb. So tell me, Derek, why can’t we kill newborns? Or how can you justify killing an 8 month old unborn baby that is (or may be) conscious? Your criterion can’t be applied consistently because it’s false.
A baby is hijacking the body of its mother and forcing her to become a gestation machine? You can’t seriously believe the words you are writing. The baby is right where it’s supposed to be, doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, and the reason it is there has everything to do with a decision its mother made. She engaged in an act that was designed to put that baby right where it was. She may not have wanted that act to result in a child, but she knew that the act is designed for that very purpose and that when you engage in such an act, it is reasonable to expect that it may produce exactly what it’s supposed to produce. But on your view, the baby is at fault and the mother is the victim who needs to get rid of this unwanted hijacker. You’ve taken something as beautiful as creating new life and portrayed it as something ugly and cruel. It is disgusting!
I’m so tired of your side trotting out the bodily autonomy argument. You pretend as if pro-lifers don’t believe in bodily autonomy. Of course we do, and we do more consistently than your side does. After all, it was your side of the aisle who had the opportunity to uphold bodily autonomy when it came to Covid vaccines. Instead, you denied people their bodily autonomy (as well as their medical autonomy) and forced millions of Americans to get the vaccine on pain of losing their job. So don’t tell me pro-abortion advocates are strong advocates of bodily autonomy. So what is different between the Covid jab and abortion? The Covid jab only involves my body. Abortion does not. Abortion involves two bodies: the body of the mother and the body of the unborn child. Whose bodily autonomy should take precedence? You assert that it’s the mother’s, but I argue that it’s the unborn child’s. Why? When two rights conflict, the greater right takes precedence over the lesser. The right to life is the penultimate right (because all other rights depend on it), and thus the baby’s right to life trumps the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.
Rape has been common for centuries, too. Are you going to justify that? Murder has been common for centuries, too. Are you going to justify that? Oh right, you are. As for your claims about the Bible, it’s true that abortion is not specifically condemned. And? Does it follow from that that the Bible is for abortion or indifferent about it? No. The Bible is against the unjust killing of human beings. The unborn are human beings, ergo, abortion is morally wrong. And sorry, but the Bible never tells a person how to commit an abortion.
No, I would not allow a woman to make the choice to murder her unborn child any more than I would allow her to make the choice to murder her born children. Murder should never be a personal choice. Every human being is valuable in light of the kind of thing it is, not in virtue of some function that you arbitrarily consider valuable. And every human being has a right to life. A mother can’t decide to rob her own child of that right simply because the existence of that child is an inconvenience to her.
Jason
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