According to this new poll:
54% say abortion should be legal all or most of the time (31% say “all the time”, 23% say “most of the time”). 70% believe the Roe v. Wade decision should be protected (including 57% who strongly support protecting Roe v. Wade), only 24% want it overturned.
Some on this board have claimed that the abortion issue is moving in the direction of the Republican party- I think it’s pretty clear it’s not.
For a contrary view, see Time’s cover article from a few weeks back:
Is the Pro-Choice Movement Is Losing the Fight for Abortion Rights? | TIME.com
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2132761,00.html
Who?
Did you mean people who confuse polls about being “pro-life” with polls about whether abortion should be legal or not? I think we’ve seen that many people self-identify as “pro-life”, meaning they wouldn’t get an abortion themselves, but they still don’t want all abortions to be illegal.
IIRC, OMGABC strongly pushed the idea that abortion was slowly becoming a winning issue for Republicans- that public opinion was moving against legalized abortion. There may have been others too; I don’t recall.
He probably falls in the category I mentioned in post #4.
At any rate, I think it’s well established that social issues are trending towards the Democrats in general, with SSM being the most obvious. However, the anti-abortion side doesn’t see it as “the abortion issue”, and I’m sure you know that they have been very successful, at the state level, in passing restrictions on abortion. They’re not getting the brass ring on this issue, but they are getting lots of consolations prizes.
Public sentiment may be becoming more pro-choice, but we can’t forget that there are many anti-abortion people that base their vote 100% on the abortion issue. My brother in law would use it to base his vote for drain commissioner, if he knew how the candidates felt about it. So of the fervent anti-abortion people, Republicans get 100% of their vote. Even if the pro-choice side is larger, it does not vote as a block and Democrats may only get say 70% of their votes. Even if the public is 60-40 pro-choice, Republicans may do better getting 100% of the anti-abortion vote plus a minority of the pro-choice vote.
Yes, this is very true.
Couldn’t the trend be that making abortion illegal is a losing battle, but that making it hard to get (making women and clinics jump through hoops) is a rising trend?
I think it’s difficult to say that abortion is a losing issue for Republicans. There are plenty of pro-life people who agree that abortion should be legal in at least some cases, but there’s also plenty of Republicans who will agree with that issue. I think the big reason that abortion still comes up is that there are a number of essentially single issue voters who will not vote for a pro-choice candidate; in fact, I’ve met some who are clearly pretty liberal in most other areas but, because of their religious beliefs, have very strong objections on abortion. Thus, they pretty much feel forced to vote Republican.
In fact, I think that’s the basic idea. I think most people are somewhere in the range of not wanting an abortion personally, with some or all of the typical “rape, incest, or life of mother” exceptions. So, practically speaking, for most people there’s not a whole lot of a difference between “abortions should be legal and rare” and “abortions should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest, or life of mother”, so for the majority of people, they’re not going to care a whole lot one way or the other. But how many people think abortions should be legal no matter what and care enough to make themselves essentially a single issue voter on it? OTOH, there’s a large number of people who are on the other side that see abortion as a great evil. Basically, we can’t just look at the general numbers that most people are for or against it, but rather who cares enough that it will change their vote?
Personally, I just wish the issue would go away precisely because it’s only being used to try to grab single issue voters on it and it’s not going to go anywhere. It comes up in every presidential election, but even with a fairly conservative president and SCOTUS, Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned yet. So, I just see the whole issue as pretty much a bunch of noise that dilutes the real issues that a candidate might actually change. This is a bit different on a state level since, obviously, states have a lot more say from free access at any time to all kinds of barriers and banning anything past what Roe v. Wade requires, so I understand it there, but not at a national level.
Yes. I sill wish there was more of a trend from the pro-lifers to reduce the *need *for abortions through more progressive economic, social and healthcare programs, but alas…
The country is basically divided into three camps, of approximately equal size. One camp believes that abortion should never be legal, one believes that it should always be legal, and one camp believes that it should sometimes be legal and sometimes illegal. The two camps on the end are perpetually trying to claim that camp in the middle, saying things like “Two thirds of the country thinks at least some abortions should be banned”, or “Two thirds of the country thinks at least some abortions should be legal”. Both sides think they represent a significant majority, but really, the country is still about evenly split.
You hopped on that train quick. Did you happen to miss the fact that majorities (especially the under 30 crowd) can’t tell you what Roe v Wade dealt with yet still think it should be upheld? Or the fact that more people have begun to side with Republicans on the issue as when compared to Democrats (down from a 16 point advantage for Dems last March to 5 now). Of course, I can’t post anything without a cite so… There you go.
That poll also indicates consistent support against overturning Roe v Wade, (by about 2-1 margin), and no indication that the under-30 crowd oppose Roe v Wade any more than the rest of the population. Both the poll I cited and the poll you cited show 60-70% opposed to overturning Roe v Wade- and if there’s a historical trend in any direction, all the data from both polls (with the exception of the Democratic party’s reduced advantage on this issue that you mention) shows that the trend is in the direction of maintaining abortion rights as they are now.
I urge you to read the second sentence of my post. And the third, which us probably most pertinent to the thread.
Fighting against abortion is a hallmark of the religious whackjobs that unfortunately have a stranglehold on the Republican party. The worst mistake the Republicans ever made was getting in bed with the religious right.
What, if anything, do you think we should take from this?
The second sentence you speak of provides no evidence that suggests that young people oppose Roe v Wade any more than society as a whole, and I did mention the data you refer to in the third sentence. I urge you to read my post more carefully.
Can I buy you a Coke?
Then MAYBE you should have made it the FIRST sentence.
