There’s all this fuss about a majority of Americans labeling themselves “Pro-Life” for the first time, but the headlines don’t reflect what’s actually going on.
~23% of Americans think abortion should always be illegal
~22% of Americans think abortion should always be legal
~54% of Americans think abortion should be legal with some restrictions
That means that there are a lot of “pro-lifers” who think abortion should be legal at least under some circumstances. What exactly those circumstances are is going to be an important distinction, but it looks now like the largest group is in favor of a more restrictive policy. Those numbers haven’t shifted too much in the past year except that a few more extremists have moved toward the middle.
So why the apparent discrepancy between the pro-life/pro-choice lables and the opinions on the legality of abortion? One possibility is that lables are closely tied to political party. The greatest upswing in pro-lifers was among Republicans. Another possibility is that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” aren’t quite as clear-cut as they might seem. It is, after all, possible to believe that abortion is wrong (or wrong for yourself), but still feel that is should be legal.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Interesting stats… I think what people are hitting on is that, as the graph shows. There was a %6 drop in “Legal under any circumstances” and a %6 growth in “illegal in all circumstances” That’s a significant shift for a year in my opinion. (less notably is the %2 drop for “legal under most circumstances” and the %3 drop in “legal only in a few circumstances”)
Given those shifts, I’d say it’s a fair assessment to conclude that more people are “pro-life” than “pro-choice”. At least the stats back up that statement.
Now what is causing that shift is a good question to think about. I like the root of your thinking. Maybe those labels don’t quite mean what they used to. I hate being called “pro-life” but I fit the bill. Maybe it’s a “liberal” president that say he’s morally against it but not legally (to interpret and paraphrase).
May 27th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Yeah, I actually read the stats backwards the first time and while I corrected for that, I think it still colored my interpretation of what was going on.
The main point still holds that when someone reports that over 50% of America is “pro-life” it makes it sound as if the majority of Americans want abortion to be illegal, but that isn’t clearly the case because we don’t know exactly what that 53% of middle-ground people think. From a majority-opinion point of view, you can’t make a policy decision from the 51% pro-life statistic because “pro-life” doesn’t correlate with a specific opinion on the legality of abortion.
Of course, I think those with strong opinions on either side would agree that this law should not rest on majority opinion alone. There are strong ethical or moral feelings that guide people’s opinions on abortion (traditionally pro-life because fetuses are fully human from the moment of conception and should be protected by law and me because fetuses aren’t people, women (and men) should have reproductive rights, and it helps control the population). It will be interesting to see how the legal battle continues to develop.