TIME: Understanding America's Shift on Abortion

[question everything]

(Apologies if already posted)

Monday, May. 18, 2009
Understanding America's Shift on Abortion
By Nancy Gibbs
TIME

The abortion debate is a shape-shifter, its contours twisted by politics, culture, timing and the very language pollsters use when they ask people how they feel. So when the folks at Gallup announced that, for the first time, more Americans are pro-life than pro-choice, there were all kinds of ways to misunderstand what that means. First and foremost are the labels, which cloud the issue by oversimplifying it — that's why the advocates picked them. Most people are neither pro-choice nor pro-life, but both; we cherish life, we value choice, and we trade them off with great reluctance. Good luck explaining that to someone who is politely requesting a binary answer over the phone.

But if we place any stock at all in those labels, something dramatic has happened. In 1995, when Gallup started asking the question, the split was 56-33 in favor of abortion rights. Now the lines have crossed, and 51% call themselves pro-life while only 42% say they are pro-choice. It's a shift that stretches past personal convictions and into legal constraints. For 35 years, a majority of Americans have wanted abortion to be, essentially, legal with limits. But the movement toward greater restraint is clear. In the mid-'90s, when pro-choice forces were especially dominant, only 12% believed abortion was always wrong; now that number has nearly doubled. At each extreme, slightly more people now believe abortion should be illegal under all circumstances (23%) than legal under all circumstances (22%).

So what has changed? Gallup attributes the new numbers to Republicans' purifying their views: 70% now call themselves pro-life, up 10 points in a year. But that's to be expected; when fewer people call themselves Republican, the party condenses into a pool of true believers. It's the people in the middle who are constantly weighing which restrictions are reasonable. A new Pew poll finds that while a majority of independents said abortion should be legal in most cases as recently as October, just 44% do so now. This may inspire some introspection on the part of political operatives in both parties who attribute the Republicans' present frailty to its orthodoxy on social issues. The GOP may have fielded some hapless messengers, but their message, on abortion at least, may be closer to the mainstream than Democrats care to acknowledge.

(snip)

Of course, anti-abortion activists have worked hard to make the issue more intimate. Nebraska is the latest state to debate what activists call "window to the womb" laws, which require that women be shown an ultrasound of the fetus before going ahead with an abortion. The Missouri Senate just passed a bill that would require doctors to talk about a fetus' development and its ability to feel pain. Opponents of "informed consent" laws that talk about fetal pain warn that doing so just causes the woman pain, and call it emotional blackmail. But there is no denying that the battleground has shifted. As, most obviously, has the political context. Abortion has forever been blown by electoral trade winds; when the right was in charge, people feared the return of coat hangers in back alleys. Now that the left leads, they fear abortion on demand. The very meaning of the labels adjusts; calling yourself pro-choice at a time when a liberal Democratic President and allies in Congress are lifting abortion restraints may imply no qualms at all, and that's not where most people are.

(snip)

You can tell Obama isn't interested in a culture war. He has left gay marriage to the states, dropped family-planning money from the stimulus bill, refused to fund needle-exchange programs and said he wants to "tamp down some of the anger" surrounding the abortion debate. He is inviting all sides to the White House to discuss ways to reduce the number of abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies. My theory? People always apply the brakes to whichever side has the momentum. The stakes are too high, the pain too private, whatever decision a woman makes, to see the issue treated as an ideological toy or fundraising tool. Obama got in trouble in his talk last August with Rick Warren for saying that the question of when life begins was "above my pay grade." But just because he was glib doesn't mean he was wrong.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1899143,00.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. No progressive shift here the way gay rights and drug legalization have experienced. nt

[high density]

2. I knew somebody would take one data point (Gallup poll) and come to a lot of crazy conclusions

That's like saying the A330 is an unsafe plane because one likely crashed this morning.

[Frank Cannon]

3. What a load of horse manure

I don't personally know anyone who is pro-choice who isn't also pro-life. Time should rerun the survey and ask people if they are pro-choice or pro-child-abuse.

[zulchzulu]

4. I could do a poll where 90% are for abortion rights... it's about framing.

Instead of a vague "Are you pro-life or pro-abortion" question, I'd phrase it in more realistic terms...

The question would be "If your wife or daughter were raped by a Muslim terrorist, would you want to have an abortion?" Replace "Muslim terrorist" with "robber", "relative", "black man", "illegal alien" or other phrases and you'd bet you would get a very wide difference in poll numbers.

[4lbs]

7. Or how about this?

"If you, your wife, daughter, or sister was pregnant and needed an abortion to save your/her life, would you agree to that?"

I would bet that 90% would say yes.

Then I could claim that 90% of the public supports abortion!

[kenny blankenship]

5. Translation: We in the corporate media have worked assiduously for 40 years

to demonize abortion providers and feminists, while imputing nothing but the wholesomest of motives to Operation Rescue and other religiously insane opponents of abortion, because we know it's our job to help the Republican Party make the most of abortion. We do our best to portray the abortion clinic bombers as People of Faith, representing the only possible moral stance on the issue while portraying reproductive choice advocates as maniacally immoral angry lesbians who despise men and who will stop at nothing to destroy the nuclear family. We have considered it an honor to represent the issue of abortion this way, and as nothing less than our duty, since abortion has been one of only two or three issues with which the GOP, our sister corporation within the TPTB family of companies, has managed over this 40 year period to draw any non-rich constituents to its banner. To the extent that, we the corporate media, have persuaded numbers of Americans to believe that a woman's body is not her own property and accordingly to vote for Republicans, we have been successful and are pleased to have been of service.

[d_b]

6. great. we're a pro-life nation

now let's see how many of them favor overturning roe v wade. there's a poll i'm interested in.

[asphalt.jungle]

9. The same Gallup poll showed 3/4's favored it remaining legal

It was a little further down in their report and they didn't promote it as much as those that consider themselves "pro-life". One of the failures in the left allowing these wackos to co-opt "pro-life" is that you can support choice and still be pro-life (death penalty, not murdering people you disagree with, etc.). If Gallup asked those same people who said they were pro-life if was "pro-life" to murder an abortion provider or support the death penalty I wouldn't be surprise if at least half said no. Pro-life encompasses more than just abortion.

I see Better Believe It just posted that data.

[d_b]

10. k

I just knew it was bullshit :D

[Better Believe It]

8. Nancy Gibbs understands that there has not been a "shift" on abortion rights ....

and she knows that.

It's pure b.s. but it makes an interesting news story that gets published in a major magazine and that helps her career.

"PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% 'pro-choice'."

The news headlines regarding this Gallup poll on abortions falsely created the impression that a majority of people have changed their views and 51% have become "pro-life" abortion foes.

That's hardly the case. In fact, it's a total lie!

According to Gallup Polls ....

In 1985 76% supported legal abortions and 20% were opposed to legal abortions.

In 2009 76% support legal abortions and 22% are opposed to legal abortions!

Ya. That's a huge shift in 24 years. The country is moving to the right on this issue.

Well, I guess they could have asked "are you against murdering unborn babies? They might have gotten 70% or even 80% in the affirmative to that loaded question.

The bottom line is that three out of four people support legal abortions and a small minority don't.

So Nancy Gibbs can take her article and put it where the sun don't shine.

[OneGrassRoot]

11. Megan McCain is a perfect example....

She considers herself a proud Republican and is "pro-life," something she stated clearly when on "The View" not that long ago.

However, in discussing the morning-after pill, she said she once took a friend of hers to a clinic to get the morning-after pill and feels it was the right thing to do. She said, "I definitely think it should be the woman's choice."


THE RIGHT HAS BEEN SO EFFECTIVE WITH LABELS AND CORRUPTION OF LANGUAGE that many people equate "pro-choice" as explicitly meaning "always favoring abortion."

It's amazing how people miss the whole point: that it is about CHOICE. And, the choice could indeed be to carry the child to term.

Megan McCain and many others brainwashed by the Karl Rove School of Language consider themselves pro-life (which REALLY translates to anti-choice), yet they are TOTALLY pro-choice.

Oh, the irony.............

[SemiCharmedQuark]

13. Good point.

[jenmito]

12. Gallup oversampled Repubs.-32% Repubs. & 32% Dems. THAT'S why

there's a supposed "shift" and no other reason:

And here's the truth: "The latest Gallup (5/7-10/09) poll has party identification tied at 32-32 and caused an immediate howl of "outlier!" in the comments at Pollster.com. In this case, the howl is justified. Compared to all recent Gallup polls (so we compare apples to apples) this latest stands out quite a bit from the rest."

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/new_gallup_has_pid_tied_yep_it.php