51% of Americans prefer restrictions on abortions
19% of Americans consider themselves truely pro-life
only 28% of Americans consider themselves truely pro-choice
63% of Americans are against partial birth abortions
48% of Americans are against RU-486
50% of Americans are for RU-486
Bush received 47.9% of the popular vote in 2000
Clinton received 43.3% of popular vote in 1992
According to this data, how can you say that Clinton had a mandate when he passed laws reducing restrictions on abortions yet say that Bush does not have a mandate by placing restrictions on abortions.
I consider myself pro life…but don’t really understand your post.
comparing the popular vote of Clinton in 1992 (with THREE major candidate) against Bush (with TWO major candidates) is silly.
Who is saying that Clinton (or Bush, for that matter) had any mandate on the abortion issue? It’s not surprising that once elected each candidate pursued policies closer to their own philosophies on the topic…thats not the same thing as a “mandate”
Also, there already exist lots of restrictions on abortions. To say that most Americans favor some restrictions on abortion (without specifying what those restrictions are) is not at all the same thing as to say that most Americans are in favor of having Bush place more restrictions on it.
I honestly don’t recall who the third was in 1992, but I’m not sure why he/she is “major,” but Nader isn’t. If Nader isn’t major, then is the combination of Nader/Buchanan equal to a whole major for comparative purposes.
Unless I’m missing something, the comparison looks valid on the surface in an inexact and aproximate way.
Election was basically a tie.
Very few people are in favor of no restrictions on abortions. Very few people are in favor of making abortions totally illegal. Since RU-486 issue is basically a tie, if Bush picks either side he is going to get the same amount of complaints. Most people are against partial birth abortions. If congress once again passes legislation banning partial birth abortions, Bush will most likely not veto it.
How can anyone say that Bush is acting like a far right, radical, fundamentalist, conservative? It seems that he is acting completely mainstream on this issue.
Furthermore, Bush has stated that he supports abortion in cases when the woman’s life is in danger, or incest or rape has occurred. To restate that another way, he is in favor of restricted abortions. This is the same viewpoint that the majority of America has. They may argue on the restrictions, and I will concede that Bush is more likely to say more restrictions are better than less.
I realize that this board is more liberal, but when people on here say things like Bush is being a radical right winger, fundamentalist, anti-women’s rights, or fascist or anything else similar is just completely wrong. Not only that, it is hateful, ignorant, and biased.
I just don’t understand why people can’t agree that this is an issue where both sides have reasonable points. People that are pro-life are not anti-women’s rights. Just like people that are pro-choice are not baby killers.
Not even close. H. Ross Perot was a major enough candidate to be allowed into the debates. (Nader, despite my best efforts and those of many others, was not.) IIRC, he got around 17% of the vote that time.
Nader/Buchanan were significantly less of a force than Perot was in the popular vote. Whether they were more significant in the electoral vote is a debate best left to another thread.
I think a better question is who would the Perot voters have voted for if they could only choose between Bush and Clinton.
I am speculating, but Perot seems to be more of a conservative than a liberal. His stances on trade, regulation, and the fact that Reform Party is more conservative in general, seem to me to indicate that of the 18 or 19 percent that Perot got, more of that vote would have gone to Bush rather than Clinton. That is a pretty bad run on.
This really pisses me off when people bring up the fact that, “Clinton didn’t receive as much of the popular vote as Bush, and no one complained about him!” That’s just ridiculous. Yes, Bush got more, but Bush also had someone that got even more votes than he did. Clinton had the highest percentage of the popular vote, Bush did not!
From this, the OP decides that ‘most’ Americans aren’t really in favor of the legality of abortions. The self designation of ‘consider themselves truely pro-life/choice’ isn’t defined, either, but let’s have a look at some other numbers, as well
From ABC poll (which doesn’t force you to download stuff):
59% believe that abortions should be legal in all or most cases (sounds like ‘most Americans’ to me). Furthermore, they also question on other oft repeated exceptions (in cases of rape/incest, and in case of threat to maternal life), only 8% want abortions to still be illegal when the mother’s life is at risk - that sounds, frankly overwhelming to me, and the percentage only goes up to 14 and 16% for wanting abortions to be illegal in cases of maternal health risk or rape/incest. So, Mr. BUsh is firmly in the 84% of Americans who want abortions to be legal in cases of rape/incest (would assume those would also make the exception for maternal health/life), but out of the loop of ‘most Americans’ who favor that abortions should be legal in all or most cases. It’s all in how the question is worded.
59% of them say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. However, the very same survey says that 55% percent do not believe that abortion should be legal simply because the woman does not want the baby. Only a tiny fraction of abortions occur because of rape, incest or serious threat to the mother’s life. In other words, the majority of Americans oppose the majority of abortions.
There appears to be a widespread perception that abortions mostly occur due to medical reasons, or rape, or incest. They do not. This misperception doubtlessly explains why this survey produced conflicting results with the same group of people.
It’s not necessarily conflicting. IN addition to health of mom, life threat to mom, rape/incest, there are other reasons besides the catch all “'cause I don’t want it”. There are other reasons for wanting an abortion than the ones listed there, and many folks may fall into the category of ‘well, that’s ok, but this other isn’t’ (other things can include -failure of birth control method, genetic disease, problem with fetus etc.)
My personal belief on why the numbers seem odd is that many people seem to object to the concept of abortion being used as another means of birth control - IOW - a woman simply refusing to take b/c measures, but checking in for abortions 3 times a year. Frankly, that’s the scenario that I think is rare, but haven’t found any reasonable way to measure that.
However, I found a ‘right to life’ site that used these same kinds of stats to claim the aforementioned roughly 25% believe in rtl. I don’t see it - 'cause if you do believe abortion is murder, then the circumstances of the conception wouldn’t change that fact, and you’d be left with the 8% who wouldn’t agree to an abortion even if mom’s life was in danger (maternal health isn’t the same thing at all).