PRO-LIFE AND PRO-CHOICE ACTIVISTS CLASH IN MADISON,WISCONSIN
The LA Times reports:
At a time when President Obama is trying to convince opponents in the abortion battle that they can find middle ground -- in rhetoric, if not reality -- a new Gallup Poll shows that more Americans describe themselves as "pro-life" than "pro-choice."
For the first time since it began asking the question in 1995, Gallup reported Friday, a majority of adults questioned for its annual survey on values and beliefs -- 51% -- said that when it comes to abortion, they consider themselves "pro-life"; 42% consider themselves "pro-choice." (The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-abortion-poll16-2009may16,0,3897855.story
Most Americans are not as pro-life as the Vatican or Dr. Dobson and certainly nothing approaching a majority of the public has ever been as pro-choice as Planned Parenthood. It is significant, however, that a narrow majority of Americans now select the pro-life rather than the pro-choice label. This polling does give greater momentum for policies to discourage abortion although far from a mandate to ban all abortions which has only 22% support. Less than a quarter of the American public
(23%) oppose all restrictions on abortion. A solid majority - 55% of Americans favor a middle ground approach to the abortion question.
The poll results confirm that the hard-line pro-choice position is a distinctly minority view in this country but also discredit the pro-life movement's unrealistic claims that banning abortion is just a Supreme Court decision away.
President Obama and Congressional Democrats should be paying attention to this polling data. It is time to show support for reasonable measures to curb the abortion rate by strengthening the safety net for expectant mothers and their children. Passage of the Pregnant Women Support Act sponsored by pro-life Democratic Senator Bob Casey would be a step in the right direction.
2 comments:
Watch out for the dropping of the question, so that the answer cannot be given. But for now, savour this moment.
Savour this moment. And savour its context: the beginning of at least the forty-year dominance of the historic party of Catholics, white Evangelicals and the black church, to which the first two are returning in droves, having seen through the party that courted them by pretending to oppose abortion but which did absolutely nothing about it while oppressing the poor and waging wars that pointlessly harvested the young men of the Catholic, the white Evangelical and the black churches.
These are the people thanks to whom Barack Obama is President Obama. The people who reaffirmed traditional marriage in California and Florida, and who declined to liberalise gambling in Ohio or North Carolina, on the same day that they voted for him, in all but California’s case decisively.
There is no realistic doubt that he won North Carolina, considering that it returned a Democratic Senator on that day. And he certainly cannot win in 2012 unless he carries there, Ohio, Florida, and indeed California, centre of moral and social conservatism that it clearly is, as Arnold “Yes We Cannabis” Schwarzenegger should bear in mind. The Freedom of Choice Act is “not a high priority”. The Employee Free Choice Act is. The Pregnant Women Support Act, a Democratic initiative as such things always are, should be. And President Obama’s Commencement Address at Notre Dame has as good as said that it will be.
Democratic America still needs a proper Republican Party, not least to make the case for a strong defence capability used sparingly because used strictly for its proper, defensive purpose. But there is no sign of the re-emergence of any such party, partly because the old broadly or very conservative lay base of the old mainline Protestant churches is in such decline. So registered Republicans are down to a mere fifth of the electorate.
And America, which never had an avowedly pro-life majority under the Republicans, now has an avowedly pro-life majority under the Democrats.
Not North Carolina, of course - Missouri. Sorry.
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