A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about Michele Bachmann’s latest crazy claim — this time that the health care reform legislation favored by Pres. Obama would allow 13-year-old girls to get abortions authorized by school health clinics and go home afterward with “mom and dad none the wiser.”
A lively conversation started up in the Comments section about the larger issue of public support for abortion rights and whether or not abortion should remain legal. One reader pointed to a recent article at CNN.com titled “Abortion Support Falls Sharply, New Research Finds,” and said he was a bit surprised that no one at TMV had blogged about this poll yet. I think his implied point — that this shift in public opinion regarding abortion rights is significant and should be noted — is well-taken. Hence, my decision to do this post.
First, let me quote from the CNN piece:
Support for abortion rights has fallen sharply in the past year, with Americans now split roughly 50-50 between those who back legal access to abortion and those who oppose it, according to a new survey.
The findings mark a dramatic shift in public opinion, supporters of abortion rights have outnumbered opponents for many years, with one brief exception, studies have shown.
But only 47 percent of Americans now feel abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a drop from 54 percent a year ago, according to the poll.
Meanwhile, 45 percent say it should be illegal in all or most cases. That’s up from 41 percent a year ago.
Given the survey’s margin of error, the two camps are statistically tied.
“These data suggest that a number of people have changed their minds in the past year,” said Gregory Smith of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, one of the survey’s authors.
If you look at the actual poll results, there appears to be a rather simple explanation for this shift: We have a pro-choice Democratic President in the White House now. The effect of this is to make liberals and Democrats relax a bit about abortion rights, feeling perhaps that nothing really bad can happen as long as Obama is in office. (I think this attitude is wrong-headed, but that’s another post.) The flip side of the coin, of course, is that Republicans who want to make abortion illegal in all or most cases, and/or even more difficult to get than it is now, feel the urgency of their concern more strongly because they no longer have an ideological friend in the Oval Office.
No single reason for the shift in opinions is apparent, but the pattern of
changes suggests that the election of a pro-choice Democrat for president may be a contributing factor. Among Republicans, there has been a seven point decline in support for legal abortion and a corresponding six point increase in opposition to abortion. But the change is smaller among Democrats, whose support for legal abortion is down four points with no corresponding increase in pro-life opinion. Indeed, three groups of President Obama’s strongest supporters – African Americans, young people and those unaffiliated with a religion – have not changed their views on abortion at all. At the same time, fully half of conservative Republicans (52%) – the political group most opposed to abortion – say they worry Obama will go too far in supporting abortion rights.
So this may be not so much about more Americans turning against abortion rights as it is about one demographic considering it a relatively low priority given who’s in power, whereas the other demographic feels a greater sense of urgency.
All of which is not to say that there is no significance to a poll that appears to show Americans turning against abortion rights. And obviously, anti-choice activists are pleased with the poll’s results. What grabs my interest about the CNN piece, though, is the way some of these activists frame their opposition to abortion. There are the usual heartfelt declarations of absolute certainty about God’s existence, what God wants and demands, and why all women everywhere should be governed by their religious beliefs. And then there is this:
“This is great news. This poll shows that the pro-life movement is winning hearts and minds. Pro-lifers are making an effective case that all women deserve better than abortion and that every child deserves a chance to be born,” said Cathy Ruse, the senior fellow for legal studies at the anti-abortion Family Research Council in Washington.
Skip past the stomach-turning, patriarchal infantilization disguised as concern for what women “deserve.” Focus on the phrase I have bolded: “Every child deserves a chance to be born.”
I suppose I should be impressed, because it’s rare that opponents of legal abortion express their true motivations so openly. Usually, this sentiment is couched in fuzzier language about the “right to life.” Well, life, of course, encompasses much more than birth. In my experience, most proponents of criminalizing abortion (note that this does not include people who are against abortions but do not support making it illegal) are not all that interested in a child’s life — only its birth. This woman, at least, is being honest.
Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling a little testy. “Every child deserves a chance to be born.”
Not “Every child deserves to be wanted and loved.”
Not “Every child deserves to have a healthy start in life.”
Not “Every child deserves a chance — not a guarantee, a chance — to make it to adulthood.”
Not “Every child deserves to at least start life having a mother.
Not “Every child deserves to have a mother who is not herself a child.”
Not “Every child deserves a chance — again, not a guarantee, a chance — to be independent, to learn, to play a part, to have choices.
Not any one of hundreds of rights that we owe children because of the simple fact that they did not choose or ask to be here.
No, the right that Ruse sees as supreme is the right to have a chance to be born. If the baby is stillborn, justice has been done because the baby still had a chance to be born. If the baby dies hours after birth, and the mother’s health is destroyed by a pregnancy that was doomed from the outset, justice has been served because the baby had “a chance to be born.” If the baby never gets to eat solid foods, sit up, crawl, or walk; can’t eliminate on her own, can’t move a single muscle, can’t talk, laugh, or even smile; can’t show recognition of anything around her; has to be on medication to prevent devastating seizures that turn her face blue; has to be fed intravenously almost from birth; cannot cough or sneeze and so has to be aspirated regularly so the fluids that build up in her lungs don’t choke her to death; and if that child dies at the age of 3 never having actually lived in any meaningful sense of that word — by golly, justice has been served, because that child had the chance to be born.
CODA: A small portion of this post is slightly modified from a comment I posted in the “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” thread.
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