Pro-Life Polls Revisited

Back in May, I blogged on the significant news of the Gallup poll asking people's questions on abortion (read here). Now, there's a follow-up poll and Amy Sullivan from Time magazine is gloating a little bit from the more settled numbers:

My skeptical interpretation of the poll didn't turn out to be terribly popular. The idea that just a few months after the election of a pro-choice president, Americans were racing to embrace the pro-life cause was too tempting a storyline. The poll made headlines everywhere, and we ran an essay on it anyway.

Now along comes a follow-up poll from Gallup and whaddya know, the much ballyhooed pro-life majority seems to have disappeared. The percentages of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are essentially the same (47% for pro-life; 46% for pro-choice). Meanwhile, the positions they hold--a more useful indicator than the labels people choose for themselves--haven't budged. A solid 78% think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances.

Besides the fact that a journalist shouldn't use the non-word "whaddya," Sullivan's point to undermine the numbers are meaningless. Saying that abortion should be legal in "some" circumstances is very different from "all" circumstances. Heck, "some" is very different from "most" circumstances. Consider:

-"Some" can include cases of rape, incest, and the risk of the life of the mother (which all-told constitute a small number- in most cases less than 5%- of all abortions). See Francis Beckwith (Defending Life) on this- he allows abortion only when the life of the mother is at risk. He falls in the "some" camp, I suppose, but he has written an impressive and compelling treatise on the illogical nature of the pro-choice movement.

-"Most" can include other unwanted pregnancies like teenage pregnancy, women in poverty, etc.

-"All" is morally egregious (as is "most") but I do not wish to think of the mere fancy that a baby can be killed merely because someone doesn't want the baby.

Morally speaking, there is a vast difference from "some" to "most" here, and Sullivan shouldn't be so giddy as to presume the moral sensibilities of Americans. The "enligtened" course of action would be to make murder illegal. Apparently there's still a significant number of Americans who agree with this.