Abortion Polls

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Father Frank Pavone is the cofounder of Priests for Life.]

Professor Raymond J. Adamek (Department of Sociology, Kent State University) has done the pro-life movement a great service in his study "Abortion Polls 1965-1998: Designed to Measure or to Mold Public Opinion?"

His analysis of major opinion polls on the abortion question during that time frame reveals that, given the way the questions are asked, what is being measured is not the public's opinion about the current abortion laws and practice. What is being measured is their opinion about imaginary abortion laws and practice. This is simply because so many of the questions misrepresent the facts.

Professor Adamek explains, "On 85 occasions from 1973 to 1998, 8 major pollsters described Roe v. Wade as permitting abortion during 'the first three months of pregnancy.'[T]his description is incomplete and misleading, since it gives the uninformed respondent the impression that the Court did not legalize abortion beyond the first trimester, and focuses the attention of the informed respondent on only part of the decision."

A reading of Roe and subsequent abortion decisions, a study of the legislation and Court battles on partial-birth abortion, or a journey through the "A" section of the Yellow Pages of a major city is enough to dispel any doubts that abortion is legal throughout pregnancy. So why can't a poll that wants to measure what people think about that policy ask people what they think about that policy,instead of what they think about some different policy?

The conclusion: You simply can't believe a poll that tells you that most Americans agree with "Roe vs. Wade." They still don't know what the decision said, and it is most likely that the pollster hasn't helped them find out.

Another imbalance in abortion poll questions is the way they speak about "rights." Professor Adamek explains that he analyzed "all questions from 1965 through 1998 that explicitly mentioned the woman or the unborn and the word 'right(s)'. An illustrative 'woman's right' question is: Do you favor or oppose the Supreme Court ruling that women have the right to have an abortion during the first three months of their pregnancy? (Yankelovich Clancy Shulman 4/5/89). We found 66 items asking about the woman's right to (choose) abortion but none asking exclusively about the unborn's right to life! By asking questions about only one side of the rights issue,polls yield an incomplete and skewed picture of public opinion."

A third problem area is the fact that 65% of questions referred to the abortion-making decision as one in which the doctor was involved. Yet in reality, fewer than 25% of women, if that many, bring the doctor into the decision making process at all. Now since the majority of Americans approve medical necessity as a justification for abortion, mentioning the doctor in the question increases the "pro-choice" responses.Questions which specify the actualreasons for which abortions occur would yield a better measure of what people think about abortion practice in America.

Good practical advice, therefore: Don't just look at a poll's results; look at its questions.

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Find pro-life books on abortion and euthanasia http://www.roevwade.org/books.html

The pro-abort position is a slavery view: dehumanize a particular group of humans based upon their biological characteristics---race, sex, stage of development---and then use that dehumanization to justify inhuman treatment of the group so dehumanized. Slaveowners, Nazis, pro-aborts...same d-mn philosophy.

The pro-aborts go one step further. Make those you have dehumanized thank you for protecting their right to be dehumanized.

I'm speaking, of course, of the woman who is dehumanized by asking someone to destroy her child. She debases herself into a pleasure-machine, destroys her own child so she doesn't have to complicate the life of the man she's been servicing (or because she can't find him anymore), and then turns around and thanks the pro-aborts for protecting her rights.

It makes me weep.

Shalom.

It just annoys me that all you pro-life people bring this down to a religious issue which is pointless because unless you are a christian, the points you make mean nothing.

Just so you know, I don't bring G-d into the abortion debate because I think it is interesting or because I think G-d is the only way to answer abortion. I bring G-d in because G-d is in everything I do. I died to myself a long time ago and now live for Him. G-d is in the abortion debate, the gun debate, the tofu debate (at least, the debate in my house), and the hangnail debate (for Dr. Kopp). There is no part of life that G-d is not lord over.

I'm sorry if that bothers you. I don't say it to bother you. I say it so you will understand. Asking me to leave G-d out of it is like asking me to leave oxygen out of it. He is the very air I breathe.

At least JMJ was speaking compassion towards the abortionists. If she had echoed the 'rot in hell' sentiment to which she was replying, would you have preferred that?

Shalom.

So, really, those people are using polls and statistics as if reality and science were a matter of miracle!! 40 posted by lavaroise But, my friend, isn't life miraculous? Aren't we so accustomed to the miraulous, now that we may technologically duplicate things God accomplishes merely by speaking the event into existence ... so accustomed to the miraculous that we now tend to hold ANYTHING as non-miraculous, on the assumption that our intellects will eventually figure out how to accomplish whatever the human heart desires to do? The Babel Tower and the confrontations Moses had with Pharoah's sorcerers come to mind. Did God not tell Himself in Eden that '... now lest they live forever in their fallen state, shall we not withhold the fruit of the tree of life from them?'(paraphrasing, of course...Genesis: 'And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." ' Yet we strive for that 'forever' with our God-given minds/intellects.)

The former group seems to turn out OK, the latter are little barbarians.... at our gates! 45 posted by backhoe Like Pogo, I fear that having seen the enemy, the barbarians amongst US, 'they are US'!

But something else that is odd, is even my pro-choice friends admit that it is wrong to them, they just don't think anyone should have a say in what a woman is suppose to do with her body. Interesting they would admit to me it's WRONG. 49 posted by SpookBrat A most poignant observation, my Freeper friend! In your opinion, would discussion comparing the lifetime already begun for the preborn as weighed against a few months of pregnancy for the mother to give life support be useful?... I ask because I am constantly in debates with pro-abortion folks where they appear to admit just as you've cited, but something doesn't click to bring them into consciousness of the individual lifetime running along already in the womb! My strategy is usually to avoid religious arguments with abortion debates, in favor of the clear scientific proof of an individual life running in the borrowed womb and the appeal to American values of life and liberty. Do you think it would be fruitful to appeal to the sense of fairness weighing a lifetime against a few months of inconvenience?... With the caveat that our nation put or tax dollars where our sentiments are, with supporting the little ones to be rejected by their mothers; a situation that would start as a costly enterprise, but which would quickly evolve into a socital affirmation of the life of the little ones and thus the greater valuation on keeping and raising the children, all children.

I have maintained for several year that rhetoric is no longer taught because it is being used against us. Logic is no longer taught because it would protect us. 46 posted by Woahhs A kean observation! You are aware that science of the preborn, the truth of prenatal life, bespeaks a unique individual lifetime begun --at the very least-- with implantation, and that any purposeful termination of life support from that implantation onward is abortion; so how might one deal with a group of agenda-driven people who wish to obfuscate the raw truth, using science when they can twist their sometimes ambiguous claims over clear data to support their death cultist beliefs, then switch to irrational emotional arguments when science slaps their assertions into the dust?

I'm speaking, of course, of the woman who is dehumanized by asking someone to destroy her child. She debases herself into a pleasure-machine, destroys her own child ... 50 posted on 12/17/01 10:21 AM Eastern by ArGee It is one of the mysteries of iniquity that the human mind can delude itself so easily. And what a shame that our women can be so easily deluded to support serial killing of the unborn ripped from their God-blessed female bodies! It boggles the mind how effective the satanic influence has become as technology as grown more and more to be depended upon.

My view from experience is that nearly all folks oppose late term killings. Over half of folks oppose abortion per se. It's about even when you take "mitigating" or extreme circumstances into account. The battle for me is to take victories when we can get them and keep plugging.

I think there is also a divide amongst those with children and those without. Likewise it sometimes seems that conservative men are disproportianally pro-life ....maybe more so than any demographic ...slightly edging out so-called conservative women....

These are just my observations.....I actually had a long conversation oddly at deer camp about this and amongst the men it was nearly unanimous but some of the women waffled. And all were essentially Southern conservatives. I don't think anyone but the fembots applaud abortion. My cousin at camp expressed the view that one day folks will look back and wonder how we tolerated this abomination in much the same way folks look back at the Germans and wonder how they could allow the systematic murders to go on right under their noses. Well put.

Polls are inherently flawed and exploited and skewed.

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