WASHINGTON - For all the recent tumult over abortion, one thing has remained surprisingly stable: Americans have proved extremely consistent in their beliefs about the procedure and extremely conflicted in their views.
A solid majority long have felt that Roe v. Wade should be upheld. Yet most support at least some restrictions on when abortions can be performed. Most think having an abortion should be a personal choice. But they also think it is murder.
"Rock solid in its absolutely contradictory opinions" is how public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman describes the nation's mind-set.
For our legal purposes, the main import of the article is that a majority of Americans say Roe should be upheld, but also support restrictions that would clearly be invalid under Roe. As I said, not a surprising or unprecedented finding in any way, but one worth examining from time to time.
1 comment:
Tom,
I take your point about much of the possible inconsistency being due to ambiguity in the polling questions. However, I must respond to one argument made in your comments:
"The position that there should be exceptions for rape and incest are even more inconsistent than the "its wrong but we can't tell them what to do" position.
Think about it for a minute: A woman is raped or commits incest. The child is aborted. Congratulations, you've punished the child more harshly than we punish the rapist. You've blamed the unborn for the parent's crime.
If pro-lifers believe in a right to life, how can we rationally modify that right based on the facts of conception? I don't see any rational or moral basis to do so. Only an emotional one based on the sympathy we feel for victims of rape or incest. That isn't enough."
As someone who would, if he had his policy druthers, make abortion illegal except for rape/incest/etc, I think there is a compelling logical justification for those exceptions. In ordinary circumstances, a woman can and should excercise her "choice" at the point where she decides whether to have sexual relations. This approach-protecting the woman's inital choice but holding her to that choice once a human life has come into being- allows us to respect both the moral right of a person to excerise a degree of control over their own body and the child's moral right to life. In cases of pregnancy by rape or incest (which is essentially another form of rape), the factor of choice is not present at all. Therefore, I would contend that scenarios involving rape/incest (which, of course, are a very, very small percentage of the overall number of abortions) are quite different than ordinary abortion-as-contraception situations. Anyway, that's my spiel on that point.
It's funny, just as I get back to work on law-related stuff the weather turns rainy and (tomorrow) cold. Hope that's not a sign.
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