One Utah

There are some problems with the polling questions as Jesse points out but it shows Americans are pro-choice:

I’m not a particular fan of the “legal under any circumstances” versus “legal only under certain circumstances” distinction, if only because I think most people can think up at least one circumstance where someone shouldn’t be allowed to get an abortion that would immediately push them into the more restrictive second group - most of them revolving around non-medical late-term abortions. But regardless, what we see above is that 82% of America supports abortion rights of some sort. Seventeen percent don’t.

Digging into the numbers over at Gallup, there’s some interesting stuff.

For instance, the “illegal under all circumstances” number has never been higher than the “legal under any circumstances” number. The closest its ever been were three polls in 2005; today the “illegal” group is 17% and “legal” group is 28%.
The gallup poll also points out that 71% of Americans do not want Roe v Wade overturned.
Drew Westen at HuffPo writes:

. . . the concept of life is what cognitive psychologists call a “fuzzy set” — a concept that doesn’t have clear boundaries. Unconsciously, most people view a newly fertilized embryo as qualitatively different from a late-term fetus because it doesn’t seem like a person. But the point at which a fetus seems to us more like a person than not is indeterminate.

Regardless of their conscious beliefs — that life begins at conception or that life begins when a baby takes its first breath — most people’s feelings follow their unconscious perceptions. That’s why early in pregnancy even most evangelical Christians find it morally repugnant to force a rape victim to bear her rapist’s child, even though they may consciously believe that the fertilized egg is a life, whereas late in pregnancy most people aren’t comfortable with abortion except in exceptional circumstances. In their guts, most people feel that Roe v. Wade got it about as right as we’re going to get it — which is why the vast majority of Americans don’t want it overturned — even if they can’t articulate why.

(Emphasis added.)

In a post at Feministe, Shannon writes:

Nowhere is it more difficult to obtain an abortion than it is in South Dakota. Women who are faced with abortion are also faced with a slew of regulations and restrictions . . . parental notification, 24 hour waiting periods, women must be asked if they wish to see their sonogram, and they go through mandatory education about their options. A recent 8th Circuit Court ruling just changed that education to include a message from the doctor where he or she must tell the patient that she is “terminating the life of a whole, separate unique, living separate human being.” On top of that, the doctor must tell the patient that having an abortion will increase her risk of suicide and depression despite the fact that there is absolutely no proof to support this claim.

It’s no wonder anti-choice extremists chose South Dakota as their battleground, and South Dakota residents as their pawns.

Americans don’t want Roe v. Wade overturned by a noisy, zealous, minority that keeps pushing the issue. But they can’t quite figure out how to fight back and with screaming anti-choicers calling everyone a baby killer, there’s no room for any kind of rational discussion. There is a solution - coincidentally -that has the potential to reduce the abortion rate in the US.

Effective, comprehensive life span sexuality education combined with easy access to contraception greatly reduce the need for abortion by preventing unintended pregnancies. It’s a simple solution to the problem but it is one that is unacceptable to anti-choice activists for one simple reason - the majority of them are also oppposed to contraception. Amanda Marcotte:

On the policy issue—”life begins at conception” has morphed in anti-choice activism from just an attack on abortion and is now an attack on woman-controlled contraception, especially the birth control pill. There’s a convulted woo reason for why the pill is “abortion”, but it’s irrelevant because they made it all up in an attempt to shoehorn a pre-existing faith-based belief into secular law. From the personal belief system of the anti-choice nuts, it’s clear that they consider all forms of contraception to be assaults on the natural male need to dominate women’s bodies through pregnancy, and “abortion” is a code word for anything that women can do or insist on to escape their fate as flowerpots to demonstrate male virility.* In this view, even condoms are “abortion”. They’re just not going to roll out those arguments until the anti-pill arguments are mainstreamed. But it’s on the agenda, which is why international HIV funding has been tied to anti-condom initiatives.

Here’s the thing that wingnuts seem to not get: if abortion is legal, you always have the choice of not getting one, if contraception is legal you always have the option of not using it. If abortion is illegal, every woman who gets pregnant - be it accidentally, through rape, or by design - has no choice but to bear the child - it’s called forced childbirth. If contraception is illegal, people who want to actually, you know, be mature and plan their childbearing are unable to do so. (FWIW, in their lives, 98% of American women will use contraception.)
Before both abortion and contraception were legal, people did their damnedest to get both. Making abortion illegal won’t make it go away - it will just make it more dnagerous. Making contraception illegal won’t make it go away - people will just come up with folk remedies and figure out ways (of varying and decreasing effectiveness) to prevent unwanted babies. The wingnut fantasy that people will stop having sex is nothing more than a dream. People won’t stop having sex - sex will just become significantly more risky (which sometimes seems to be the whole point). The conservative dream world of sex only between straight married people has never been real, it will never be real and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise. And all the treacly talk about “tiny babies” isn’t enough to cover up the real goal which is to control what people do in their bedrooms.

This entry was posted Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 12:37 pm and is filed under 2008 Election, Contraception, Privacy, Religious Fundamentalism, Sex, Society, This Blog, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.