Public Opinion on Abortion
There’s been a lot of talk lately about a couple of polls that seem to indicate rising popularity of the “pro-life” self-ascription. John Sides helps us put this in context with some time-series data from the National Election Survey:
There has been some discussion about abortion during recent years. Please tell me which one of these opinions best agrees with your view:
1. By law, abortion should never be permitted.
2. The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger.
3. The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been established.
4. By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.
Looks like not much is happening in terms of trends. It continues to be the case that the orthodox conservative position on abortion is extremely unpopular, but that the orthodox liberal position doesn’t command majority support either. At the link you can see data from the General Social Survey that leads to a similar conclusion.
68 Responses to “Public Opinion on Abortion”
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May 17th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
As an aside, part of the problem with abortion polls phrased this way is that timing really matters to a lot of people.
Anyway, I’d actually suggest the polling showing more people identifying themselves as “pro-life” these days indicates a kind of subversion of the old “pro-life” position, because obviously a lot of those people must believe in abortion being legally permitted in at least a decent number of cases. I’d also note that we have more and more people today who have been raised in the “legal but rare” era, and some of those people may well consider themselves “pro-life”.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
How about a poll on the Rpe v. Wade standards (sneakily not identifying them as such):
:
May 17th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Im sure that Mr. Hector will be along to inform us that polls are irrelevant.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
It’s always curious to me how people can be pro-choice, but only in certain situations. It seems to me that one would either believe a fetus is a life or not. If it’s a life, why would the fact that it was created in a horrible way mean it shouldn’t be protected?
/pro choice, btw
May 17th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
The problem of course is that there is no practical way to implement what the majority of people want. I don’t actually know for sure but my sense is that people think there is some pretty extreme abortion related behavior going on. There is some small truth to this in that some woman are having multiple abortions because they aren’t using birth control and/or are in abusive relationships. Of course banning abortion really isn’t the solution to that.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I wrote about this yesterday. Following up on DTM’s comment, I think the new rhetoric of choice that’s being adopted by the GOP probably has a lot to do with this. The nation’s most prominent pro-life politician, Sarah Palin, routinely describes “life” as a morally admirable “choice” made by her and others, encouraging people who might not choose abortion for themselves to think that’s what being “pro-life” is. Of course, that any choice is or should be involved at all is incompatible with what the term “pro-life” has historically meant.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Re: Im sure that Mr. Hector will be along to inform us that polls are irrelevant.
Mr. SLC,
They are irrelevant in terms of determining right and wrong. Government by polls is nothing more than government by the mob, and as we know the mob will always choose Barabbas.
I would not though that the polls do seem to indicate that only 41% of people favor the hard pro-choice position.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I’m surprised there isn’t a 5th question in between 3 & 4, that takes into account thinking about trimesters.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
No poll can really capture the squishiness of many of these positions. Expensive, in-depth interviews would be a start, but even then I’m not so sure. How many pro-life politicians (including McCain and Steele) have slipped up over the years, suggesting that it would be the woman’s choice, even if the woman was their own daughter? Few viewers want an old man saying that he would demand his daughter take it to term. The optics just aren’t good.
Frankly, most people care about the reason a woman chooses to get an abortion. That is impossible to square with the idea that it is as uncomplicated as murder.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I always thought the legal but rare stuff was just clever rhetoric, was there ever really a legal and frequent era? I am only 26 so I really wouldn’t know. I have heard that decades ago there were some eugenics advocates and that some people who wanted to loosen restrictions on abortions saw eugenics advocates as useful allies and incorporated some of their rhetoric. But that was very long ago.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I went to feministing to see their take on the Pew & Gallup polls and found nothing. Their top stories right now are about sex and rock & roll.
Feministe had a single post on Friday, but it got fewer comments than the post on Dell’s new computer, the Della.
Pandagon had nothing. Broadsheet mentioned the Gallup poll towards the end of an article about Obama’s visit to Notre Dame. In contrast, Dell’s new computer and an SNL skit each got their own story.
I’m always surprised that feminist blogs don’t seem particularly interested in politics. They are also ignoring the controversy over Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to head the OLC, even though she’s been talked about extensively in the rest of the progressive blogosphere. Johnsen’s confirmation is being held up (and in danger of being denied) because of the work she did for NARAL 15 years ago. She did work for the cause, is now having her confirmation jeopardized because of it, but the issue gets a big yawn from feminist bloggers.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
It’s always curious to me how people can be pro-choice, but only in certain situations. It seems to me that one would either believe a fetus is a life or not. If it’s a life, why would the fact that it was created in a horrible way mean it shouldn’t be protected?
It’s not necessarily that simple. Cancer cells are “alive” just as the tiny group of cells that make up a two-week-old fetus are. It’s simply not feasible to treat it the exact same way as a live baby, which you would logically do if you thought it was just as alive: that would imply treating a miscarriage as manslaughter, treating first-trimester abortion doctors as parties to a first-degree murder, etc. Though I’m sure some of the more militant pro-life types wouldn’t mind doing this. I have no idea what Hector thinks should be the actual penalties for an abortion or miscarriage.
Personally, my justification for being pro-choice is that a fetus that cannot successfully live outside the mother’s body isn’t yet fully alive and shouldn’t get the same treatment as a baby. That still leaves a lot of grey area though. It’s a very thorny issue if you’re not going to be an absolutist, and being an absolutist on this issue is insane.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Feministing just posted their Weekly Feminist Reader. The polls are buried as a single bullet point at the bottom of the list. I guess that indicates how important they think the issue is. The bullet point about the polls comes after much more pressing matters like: a pink version of Scrabble; a review of “The Princess and the Frog”; and asking “Is Liz Lemon a feminist?”
Another political question, “Does Obama want LGBTQ issues to ‘just go away’?”, also got buried.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Old articles don’t necessarily lose their value, and Cynthia Gorney’s conclusions can account, in part, for the distribution. The entire thing deserves to be read, but I’ll quote this section:
Gorney’s basic point is that Roe creates the conditions for a zero-sum battle in which both sides feel compelled to adopt absolutist positions, because giving ground (on late-term abortions or rape/incest exceptions, respectively) is perceived as sacrificing principle to the slippery slope.
I’m surprised, though, that there’s very little mention of Canada in these discussions, with no restrictions whatsoever since 1988 and a lower abortion rate than the US.
One of the fights over health reform will presumably relate to abortion and reproductive health in general, where the Old Man’s Club of the Senate will huff and hem about women’s autonomy and things that make them feel icky. The Canadian example, like that in Western Europe, suggests that legal impediments to abortion are ineffective by comparison with decent universal healthcare and sex education.
(Of course, the usual crowd will show up soon enough to blame The Darkies for the US abortion rate.)
May 17th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Adam Says: Personally, my justification for being pro-choice is that a fetus that cannot successfully live outside the mother’s (woman’s) body isn’t yet fully alive and shouldn’t get the same treatment as a baby.
This is pretty much where I have been on abortion since I was a teen. At this point in time, humans are gestated within a woman’s body, it’s her choice if she wishes to permit that activity which does have a negative impact on her health and could lead to her death.
We don’t compell people to submit to live organ donation, even if they might save a living person – why should society compell a woman to allow her body to be used if she does not wish to?
May 17th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I’m curious why they always include the “rape, incest, and life of mother” exception, but never an exception related to severe deformity of the fetus, such as Down Syndrome. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the most prevalent reason for abortion for married couples who are reasonably well off. I think it would be barbaric to forbid abortions in these cases.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
It’s always curious to me how people can be pro-choice, but only in certain situations. It seems to me that one would either believe a fetus is a life or not. If it’s a life, why would the fact that it was created in a horrible way mean it shouldn’t be protected? – lvf #4
Of course. That very position is the tell, the proof that the pro-life position has never been about protecting fetuses, but about controlling women, about punishing women for having nonprocreative sex.
On a slight tangent here, I’ve noticed exactly two things about Sarah Palin that can I respect. One is that she bristles whenever asked whether high office is an appropriate aspiration for a woman with small children – a question, never, ever, ever, ever asked of a man. A disgusting question to put to any politician. The second is that her position on abortion – I’m speaking of her public position before the national campaign – was that rape and incest are not sufficient cause to permit abortion. THis is the only consistent position for a “prolifer” to take.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
lfv,
The basic answer to your question is that the mother has rights and legally-protected interests too, and so even if you imagine the fetus having rights and/or the state having an interest in the welfare of the fetus, that doesn’t necessarily trump the mother’s rights and interests. Given that framework, the question then becomes how to strike a balance between these competing rights and interests in various circumstances, which can be a very complicated question.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I always thought the legal but rare stuff was just clever rhetoric, was there ever really a legal and frequent era?
I’d suggest a slightly different consideration, which is that among countries where abortions are legal (to broadly comparable degrees), there can still be wide variations in the abortion rate–and the United States’ abortion rate is on the high side for comparable countries. So one could imagine setting it as a goal for the United States to reduce its abortion rate at least to something toward the low end of the scale for comparable countries.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Jim W,
That issue gets covered if you follow the link.
May 17th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
The chart indicates that things are anything but static. See that sudden, sharp upward trend from 2004 to the present amongst those who believe abortion should always be available (the sharpest upward trend since the period 1988-1992)? Now look at the sharp downward trend amongst those who believe it should only be available in cases of incest, etc., which occurred within the same time period.
This tells me 2 things: people are suddenly rediscovering the need for at-will choice, and many of those new converts may be coming from the ranks of those who once believed abortion should be state-controlled. This gives me hope that the right to choice may be getting a second wind.
As for the category of respondents who believe the need for the abortion should be “established”, I wonder who they think should make that decision? Those who voice this view evidently never had to face the prospect of themselves or a loved one having to make this choice; those who have, know how difficult it is, and only those who must live with the consequences have the standing to do so.
May 17th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Re Hector
It’s doctor SLC.
May 17th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Better be careful with the terms, though– with ultrasounds and personalizing miscarriages (ever see those little Precious Moments-esque angel-baby signatures online?), there’s a lot of cultural conditioning to consider fetuses as ‘living.’ I agree with you, but more in the political sense that fetuses really aren’t people in society’s terms: they interact with no one, cannot survive without using another human’s body, and we (meaning outsiders) simply don’t miss them if they never arrive, so they can’t really stake an equal and competing claim on an actual person’s body.
The disability-rights people really get up in arms over that issue, trust me. I’d probably abort for DS, but that’s because, to be blunt, I would most likely not outlive a disabled child, and I have no older & fully-abled children who could care and advocate for a sibling who would likely not be able to fully care for him- or herself. When I was younger, having a DS child probably would have sucked, destroying my marriage and ruining my economic prospects, but I still would most likely have had a long enough lifespan remaining to ensure that they weren’t manipulated or abused in care situations. Even so, that’s not an argument I’m usually willing to make publicly, because people get seriously worked up about it.
—————
And regarding the poll… well, people enjoy disapproving of abortion. It’s cheap & easy moralism, because it’s all about what other people are doing and uses a bunch of impractical existential frames applied to sexual issues, all to demonstrate seriousness. A winner all around– deep thoughts, sexual ‘responsibility,’ and no uncomfortable self-examination!
May 17th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Re: Personally, my justification for being pro-choice is that a fetus that cannot successfully live outside the mother’s body isn’t yet fully alive and shouldn’t get the same treatment as a baby.
J–s Holy Chr–t. Let me guess, you’re not a biology major.
May 17th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
DTM Says:
May 17th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
lfv,
The basic answer to your question is that the mother has rights and legally-protected interests too, and so even if you imagine the fetus having rights and/or the state having an interest in the welfare of the fetus, that doesn’t necessarily trump the mother’s rights and interests. Given that framework, the question then becomes how to strike a balance between these competing rights and interests in various circumstances, which can be a very complicated question.
Right, I get all that. I guess my comment was at the tenuousness of the case by people who think abortions should be allowed only in cases of incest or rape. The logical conclusions of that, as far I can tell, is that people born as a result of incest or rape are worthy of the same protections or compassion as people who aren’t, and are therefore somehow less than fully human. Seems kind of repulsive to me. If someone wants to say fetuses have rights, then ALL fetuses have rights.
All that said, my view is what has been expressed here insofar as a fetus that can’t survive outside of the womb isn’t yet a human.
May 17th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Re: All that said, my view is what has been expressed here insofar as a fetus that can’t survive outside of the womb isn’t yet a human.
Yes, LFV. Clearly, it’s a frog or a rhododendron. Do you people even listen to yourselves?
May 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
As I’ve said before, I fail to see just what substantive difference exists between your garden variety abortionist, and the a charming fellow like Sameer Kuntar. Indeed, Kuntar’s method of operation was not too different from that which takes place every day in Planned Parenthood clinics across this nation.
Culture of death, indeed.
May 17th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The sentiment for Option 3 is probably larger in the public than in this poll. The poll question really foregrounds what is problematic about it; one is led to imagine some kind of committee approving or denying abortions on a case-by-case basis.
Even people who have qualms about abortion can see that such tribunals (fairly well inherent in any scheme short of outright prohibiiton) would be rife with injustice. But when they aren’t thinking clearly, a lot of people basically think they or their girlfriends ought to be able to get abortions, but not sluts or bad people. Or that girls who have been accepted to college should be able to get abortions, but not girls who don’t have plans for the future.
May 17th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Always been curious about how these polls separate rape and incest. A father impregnating his 12-year-old daughter is rape, but is that considered incest here? If not, what is the rationale for allowing a baby made between two consenting relatives to be aborted, but not others?
May 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Re: Right, I get all that. I guess my comment was at the tenuousness of the case by people who think abortions should be allowed only in cases of incest or rape. The logical conclusions of that, as far I can tell, is that people born as a result of incest or rape are worthy of the same protections or compassion as people who aren’t, and are therefore somehow less than fully human. Seems kind of repulsive to me. If someone wants to say fetuses have rights, then ALL fetuses have rights.
This is a good point. There are a few counterarguments though.
I wouldn’t say quite that ‘fetuses have rights’ because I’m uncomfortable with using right-based language in general. It would be more productive to talk about abortion (and actually, most other issues) in terms of obligations. And in this case, it can be argued that when you voluntarily undertake a course of action that can lead to the creation of a new person, you’re more directly and deeply obliged to that person than you are if you happen to be linked together to that person through no choice of your own. It’s well known that every sexual act carries some risk of procreation: we are (legally, at least) entitled to try and overcome that risk through the use of various types of family planning, but some risk is always present, and that’s a risk we assume when we engage in the act.
I wouldn’t make an idol of either free choice or bodily autonomy, and I certainly wouldn’t give them as high a place as the liberals do, but it would be nice to grant them _some_ value, even an attentuated and conditional one. If rapists are effectively allowed to exert supreme power over the procreative life of every woman in society, then this leads to some pretty unreasonable as well as unpleasant outcomes.
This isn’t to say that abortion in cases of rape and incest is necessarily moral, but you can make a case for it to be legal. In the case of children under, say, 16 who get raped, there would be strong grounds for granting health exemptions- pregnancy at a young age has a fairly high chance of being life threatening. Personally I would have early-term abortion be legal only in cases of threats to the life (or, perhaps, severe health threats) of the mother and also in the case of nonviable fetuses- probably for rape and incest as well.
In my ideal society of course, the legal penalties for rape and incest would be so draconian and bloodcurdling that rape would be a very rare outcome.
2) If
May 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Re: If not, what is the rationale for allowing a baby made between two consenting relatives to be aborted, but not others?
Probably because legally, it’s a lot easier to prove the fact of incest (between, say, an 17 year old and his 15 year old cousin) than it is to prove whether it met the legal qualification of rape or statutory rape. Incest is what you call incestuous rape when you can’t legally prove it was rape.
I think that consensual adult incest should be illegal, but I wouldn’t have the offspring of such liaisons be aborted, unless it was going to be nonviable anyway (based on stories I’ve heard from a person in the field, many of them in fact are nonviable).
May 17th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
a fetus that can’t survive outside of the womb isn’t yet a human.
And that’s why premature born fetuses in developing nations that lack the advanced neonatal medical care the US and Europe have are less human than our own children. I like the way of your thinking.
May 17th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Re: That very position is the tell, the proof that the pro-life position has never been about protecting fetuses, but about controlling women, about punishing women for having nonprocreative sex.
Huh? If a pregnancy has resulted then the sex was definitely not “non-procreative”!
May 17th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Huh? If a pregnancy has resulted then the sex was definitely not “non-procreative”!
But if you have an abortion, then it becomes non-procreative without any consequences (other than the abortion which is a medical procedure).
May 17th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Re: But if you have an abortion, then it becomes non-procreative without any consequences (other than the abortion which is a medical procedure).
“Non-procreative” would mean there was no pregnancy in the first place.
The original post betrays a particularly silly trope of feminist ideology which ignores the real world completely. Men (for the most part) do not want women to get pregnant. Men are not looking for children. Men are looking for sex. To the extent that men objectify women and treat them unjustly that is the goal: bed-mates to serve their pleasure, not kids to empty their wallets.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Re: To the extent that men objectify women and treat them unjustly that is the goal: bed-mates to serve their pleasure, not kids to empty their wallets.
Precisely. It is no accident that Hugh Hefner was a great backer of the pro-choice cause. Really, the reason why cosmopolitan Yglesian young men are pro-choice is so transparently obvious. They like f*cking around and using young women for sex, and they want to be able to dispose of the consequences if necessary, even through homicide if necessary. They can prattle on about second-wave feminism, autonomy, blind violinists, and I don’t know what as long as they want, but their real agenda is plain for all to see.
May 17th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Right, that’s why the real political debate is between men who demand mandatory abortions and feminists who don’t want women to be objectified. Thanks for keeping the discussion confined to the real world, JonF. I don’t know what we’d do without you.
Meanwhile, Wogglebug has a good point: if the abortion debate was only about the status of the fetus, then the circumstances of its conception are completely irrelevant. Instead, people talk about “irresponsible abortions” in which women escape the consequences of their bad behavior. And no, this is not only about men controlling women; both sexes participate in social control. (Of course Wogglebug never said it was only men, and actually explicitly mentioned Sarah Palin.) And the social control is not generally coming from the prospective father; there are plenty of “pro-life” people, both men and women, who are mainly concerned about regulating *other people’s* behavior but are hypocrites when it comes to their own.
May 17th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
If the only reason you think women are having sex with you is to procreate or you are managing to trick them, you are doing it wrong.
May 17th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Re Hector
Just out of curiosity, if abortion was made illegal again, what penalties would Mr. Hector propose, both for the individual who performed an illegal abortion and the woman who underwent the procedure?
May 17th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
It is a fact that most people support abortion. It is also provable, at least that most pregnant women support abortion. How do I know. Somewhere between 80-90% of all Down’s syndrome babies are aborted. Even Sarah admits to considering it, even if for a moment. When that number has fallen to below 50% then let’s have the discussion again.
From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, abortion will never be stopped. It is very easy to perform (not always safely) and in this day and age, most people with any means could travel if necessary.
I would challenge the right to making it as rare and safe as possible and when we achieve less than 50% abortion rate on Down’s children then maybe they can say that America is pro life. I wonder just how many of the white middle aged male senators would support abortion if there own daughters were the victims of rape or even if they found they were about to be the grandfather of a mixed race child?
May 17th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I guess my comment was at the tenuousness of the case by people who think abortions should be allowed only in cases of incest or rape.
With rape it is basically the negation of a waiver theory. The background idea is that a lot of people agree no one should be forced to be pregnant against their will. But if you agree to be pregnant, or perhaps agree to risk to be pregnant, some people believe you have then waived your right to not be pregnant. Voluntarily having sex could be considered to constitute such a waiver, but rape could not.
Incest is more complicated, because it involves a bunch of scenarios. One is the implied rape scenario. Another is the mistake scenario (not knowing until too late it was a case of incest). Yet another is the notion that the fetus is likely to have genetic problems, or perhaps to be some sort of moral abomination (I’m not particularly comfortable expressing that idea, but I’ve seen some variation on it many times in these discussions). And so on.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
By the way, the waiver theory also helps you get to what is a common approach in many other developed countries, namely allowing abortion to be freely elected, and publicly funded, but only for a relatively short period at the beginning of the pregnancy. Again, the basic idea is that you shouldn’t be forced to be pregnant, and moreover these countries are not insisting that if you voluntarily have sex, you have waived this right. However, you have a duty to monitor whether or not you are pregnant, and you only have so long to make your decision once you find out you are pregnant, because then the waiver kicks in.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
So, to summarize.
Least popular option on abortion availability, according to that chart: never. Second least popular: legal with established need. As kth points out, the likely reasoning is very obvious. Even people who are comfortable with forced organ donation as a general, blanket policy find that imposing it on a capricious case-by-case basis a bit is too much to swallow. Second most popular: only with exceptions for rape, incest or health of the woman. This is logically incoherent, but who would expect anything else? However, it *is* pretty much as close as possible to evenly splitting the difference between the conflicting priorities. Most popular option of all: always legal.
Just so we’re clear that we need to laugh out loud if we hear someone calling America a “pro-life nation” or something ridiculous like that.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
[...] that shows a rise in the number of people calling themselves “pro-life.” Ed Kilgore and Matt Yelgesias explain why the poll is [...]
May 17th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
May 17th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
DTM,
It is, actually, an unfortunate fact that a great many fetuses of incestuous conception are nonviable, and that alone could be a reason for allowing an exemption from abortion laws.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:24 am
It is, actually, an unfortunate fact that a great many fetuses of incestuous conception are nonviable, and that alone could be a reason for allowing an exemption from abortion laws.
You don’t need a legal exemption for genetic defects that would lead to spontaneous abortion, which is most of them. Otherwise, while there can be an increased risk of genetic diseases from incestuous conception, the base probability is usually so low that even as increased the probability is usually still very low (the exception would be when there is a known recessive trait that the parents could have both inherited with a significant probability). In fact, in most cases you get more increase in the chance of genetic diseases from the parents being relatively old than from the parents being closely related.
Basically, there really isn’t a sound medical reason for treating pregnancies resulting from incest much differently than any standard pregnancy. You might do a bit more screening, but that is about all that is justified by the genetic issues.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:56 am
I’m for abortion, but I just want to point out if you labeled the two positions “place some limits on abortion” and “place no limits on abortion” the former would be larger.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:00 am
DTM,
What about genetic defects where the fetus can be born but has no chance to live more than a few days or weeks? I’d support a right to abortion in those cases.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:46 am
What about genetic defects where the fetus can be born but has no chance to live more than a few days or weeks? I’d support a right to abortion in those cases.
I haven’t seen those broken out separately, but I strongly suspect the odds are extremely small for children produced by incest. You have to remember that something like 95% of pregnancies with genetic problems end in spontaneous abortion. And the incidence of the genes for the remaining disorders is relative rare, such that the odds are there just isn’t anything relevant to pass on in the first place.
So again, the odds are very low unless you happen to know of a recessive gene problem, say incest between two siblings of a parent with a recessive genetic disease–and even then the odds are only about 25% of the child having the disease. Moreover, the sort of disease you are describing would have killed such a parent before they could have siblings who could reproduce, so you are back to the extremely low odds again.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:31 am
there’s a lot of cultural conditioning to consider fetuses as ‘living.’
Like that whole pesky “science” thing.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:32 am
I believe in abortion rights for the Irish, Italians, southern Euros you know those aliens who are detrimental to the white race.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Woman’s right to choice is my choice.
And a renewed focus on teaching good health education, including sex education. As Bristol says, abstinence doesn’t work.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Adam Villani,
Yep. It’s amazing how many people seem to believe that life begins whenever we choose to say it begins. At birth, or whenever. Er, no, folks. There are organisms out there (in the Arachnida) that complete their entire life cycles pre-birth. There is a tremendous amount of our identity that is laid down during our life in the womb (including, it would seem now, sexual orientation: that doesn’t appear to be as much genetic as it is caused by the womb environment). The biologists have at least a vague definition of what life is, and fetuses are certainly metabolically active and can be killed, thus it would seem this won’t fly.
You can choose to arbitrarily define _personhood_ at viability, or birth, or, hell, at twelve years of age, and declare that anyone can be killed before that age. But then you fall into the nasty history of Nazis, Klansmen, Aristotle, and others who denied humanity to African-Americans, women, Jews, and various other groups.
I say again, I would guess that the ‘fetuses aren’t alive’ yahoos studied gender studies in college as opposed to a real discipline like, say, biology?
May 18th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I’m for abortion, but I just want to point out if you labeled the two positions “place some limits on abortion” and “place no limits on abortion” the former would be larger.
True, but so what? That’s pretty much meaningless. Judging by the chart above, in 2008, the former position would have polled at 59 percent. But if you split it up differently and labeled the positions “abortion should be sometimes available” and “abortion should never be available,” the first of those two positions would poll at a ridiculous 85 percent despite falling on the opposite side of the divide you offer.
But then you fall into the nasty history of Nazis, Klansmen, Aristotle, and others who denied humanity to African-Americans, women, Jews, and various other groups.
I commend your honesty and thoughtfulness for the way you recognize that it’s not as simple as “pro-choice = Nazi”.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Cyrus,
To be clear, I’m not saying Aristotle was the moral equivalent of a Nazi (though give me Plato anyday) but I couldn’t think of a better example off the top of my head of someone who explicitly taught that women were less than fully human.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:22 am
It’s odd, Hector, that you support abortions in those rare cases you mention (absolutely fatal genetic defects). What do you think about the fact that there are some pro-lifers who would you consider you too liberal in your opposition to abortion?
May 18th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Claiming that a person who doesn’t believe a fertilized human egg should have all the legal rights as a fully-developed human being is the same as a person who denies the full humanity of women or people of particular ethnicities isn’t really advancing the discussion.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:40 am
To be clear, I’m not saying Aristotle was the moral equivalent of a Nazi (though give me Plato anyday) but I couldn’t think of a better example off the top of my head of someone who explicitly taught that women were less than fully human.
I admit I wasn’t aware of that; I didn’t pay much attention to the classics. Also, I find at least some tension between any invocation of women’s rights and anti-abortion arguments. I compared abortion to “forced organ donation” upthread, so would you support requiring that of men? If not, why for women? I know analogies often make things more confusing, but this one does seem apt to me.
But my point of singling out Aristotle was that your claim proves too much. Exactly the same complaint could have been said of many of the founders of Christianity and roughly a third* of America’s founding fathers. Some anti-abortion people apparently believe that it’s just pro-choice people making common cause with Nazis, like whoever the moron was who signed their comment “Margaret Sanger.”** But if anything, the reverse is true. People disagree about this stuff all the time.
* Half or a little less came from slave states depending on whether we’re counting Declaration-signers, Constitution-drafters, Continental Congress-attendees or some combination, and I’m sure that there were those from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line who would have dissented from their home states if given an opinion poll, so let’s give them a little benefit of the doubt and assume that a third were pro-slavery…
** Assuming it’s not a spoof or troll, that is.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:11 am
It’s unfortunate that these really interesting and ambiguous polls are moot. The Supreme Court decided long ago to take this issue out of the realm of practical politics and to inscribe it as a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
Even pro-choicers must admit that the result is the very antithesis of democracy. And you must admit the frustration of pro-lifers, who must face the reality that what is preferred by, at the most, 41% of the population, has been interpreted as a Constitutional right. Surely, even if you are pro-choice, you can admit the absurdity in this scenario, no?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:23 am
And another thing. I hope that contributors to this post realize that what is motivating the pro-choice stranglehold on the Democratic Party’s national platform is not the fact that national Democratic Party nominees are high-minded “rights” enthusiasts but rather the fact that they are both dependent upon and therefore easy targets for the well-funded, well-organized, multi billion dollar abortion industry–an industry whose history and practices have shown it clearly to care more about lining their own pockets that protecting the ‘rights’ of their patients.
Here’s an idea: Why don’t we allow abortion but make it illegal to profit from it? Let’s see what happens then.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Even pro-choicers must admit that the result is the very antithesis of democracy.
Calling it “the very antithesis of democracy” is irresponsible hyperbole, but sure, it obviously wasn’t pure majority rule either, I’ll admit. Good. Neither was Brown v. Board of Education. I assume you would have opposed that?
And you must admit the frustration of pro-lifers, who must face the reality that what is preferred by, at the most, 41% of the population, has been interpreted as a Constitutional right.
This is a lie. I suppose maybe I should phrase that more charitably – “you are mistaken” or something mealy-mouthed like that – but you can’t be here and have said what you’ve already said and not be aware that this plainly false. Roe v. Wade – and even that has been rolled back here and there in the intervening years – allows abortions for any reason only in the first trimester, and after that states can restrict abortion a lot as long as they carve out exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother. That’s not interpreting “always,” the 41 percent answer, as a constitutional right; that’s “always” plus the second most popular answer. I’d also say that the hoops some states make women jump through is pretty close approximation of the third most popular answer as well, but I’ll be generous to the dishonest side of the argument and only claim a 68 percent majority.
Here’s an idea: Why don’t we allow abortion but make it illegal to profit from it? Let’s see what happens then.
Boring troll is boring. First of all, you apparently don’t even know what “non-profit” means. (If you’re alleging that Planned Parenthood and similar groups are violating their charter, I’m sure you have a mountain of legal documents just ready to link to.) Second, this way of splitting the difference abandons any pretense to intellectual integrity. If you aren’t standing up for life and you also standing up for individual autonomy, then you’re apparently standing up for no beliefs, right?
May 18th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Argh.
If you aren’t standing up for life and you also aren’t standing up for individual autonomy, then you’re apparently standing up for no beliefs at all, right?
May 18th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Cyrus,
Just because I criticize judicial overreach in Roe V. Wade as
being “the very antithesis of democracy” surely does not commit me to opposing Brown V. Board. Here’s one reason why: the legal reasoning in Brown found clear support in the text of the 14th amendment, whereas the reasoning in Roe relies on suppositions, penumbras, etc. that are nowhere clearly defined and are not well-regarded even by pro-choice legal scholars. Besides, you can’t seriously want to insinuate that opposition to Roe is the equivalent (or is analogous to) opposition to constitutionally-grounded though relatively unpopular safeguards against racial discrimination, can you?
Tell me: what is the legal understanding of the “health of the mother” exception for late term abortions, and when has this understanding ever been forwarded to *deny* an abortion? As everybody knows, the “health of the mother” exception is a catch-all phrase, that includes within it not only legitimate concerns but also spurious rationalizations about “psychological distress” etc., that de facto permit abortion on demand at any point in the pregnancy. Else why the resistance on the part of the Industry to enumerate the specific conditions that could fall under this phrase?
I don’t understand your last point.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Re: It’s amazing how many people seem to believe that life begins whenever we choose to say it begins.
The question of when life begins is a red herring. There is never a point in gestation when something that is dead becomes something that is alive. Sperm and egg are alive, after all. The real question is shen should legal personhood begin?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Hector
I say again, I would guess that the ‘fetuses aren’t alive’ yahoos studied gender studies in college as opposed to a real discipline like, say, biology?
The distinction is human.
I have a PhD in a physical sciences discipline. How about you?
May 19th, 2009 at 2:27 am
LFV,
Currently graduate student in a life sciences disciplien.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
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