Posted on 11/28/2001 2:48:37 PM PST by Caleb1411
At 6:15 a.m. in an industrial park in central Los Angeles, a plain-looking warehouse is unlocked. Beyond the iron gates and surveillance camera, another iron gate leads to a truck yard, which leads to the giant doors. Inside, the trucks are warmed up. A few more people show up. Some are staff, some are volunteers and two of them are off-duty police officers who will escort the trucks.
The reason for all the security is apparent when you look at the trucks. Photographs of aborted fetuses, blown up to billboard size, decorate each side of the bed of every truck. The word "Choice" in quotation marks and a web address loom over the photos. Some of the babies are juxtaposed against a dime as big as their entire body. Every working day, five days a week, since June, these trucks have been on the freeways of Los Angeles turning heads for three hours as they drive through morning traffic.
The trucks are the latest weapon of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a non-profit pro-life group dedicated to getting the public to face the issue they love to avoid. Its founder and director, Greg Cunningham, briefs the crew before leaving on today's run. Using a large map, he reveals his plan. Today they will follow a loop that begins on the 605 North to 60 East to 57 North, to 210 West to 134 West, to 405 South to the 10 East to 5 South and back to 605 South. "We will drive this loop ad nauseam -- that is, until every driver that has seen us is nauseated!" Cunningham jokes. The session ends with a brief prayer. At 6:40 a.m., everyone boards the trucks.
Riders wears body armor -- a 50 pound, bullet-proof SWAT vest with steel panels on all four sides of the torso. Each vest has pepper spray in its pocket. Helmets are located under the seats, just in case. "The California Highway Patrol turned down our application to armor-plate the cabs," explained Cunningham. "The windows are not bulletproof, but they are coated with mylar film, which can stop a brick. We don't put our people in harm's way for the purpose of getting beaten up."
A security car, outfitted like a police car, follows the convoy of trucks, keeping lanes clear behind them and making sure no one can stalk the convoy upon return to the warehouse. The security car and the trucks are equipped with video cameras that document all surrounding activity on each trip. Each member of the convoy communicates by radio. "Violence against pro-lifers is under-reported because a lot of pro-life activists just don't think the police will do anything about it," explained Cunningham, "and frequently they won't do anything about it. It's harder to get district attorneys to prosecute it and it's harder to get judges to find people guilty for it or penalize them significantly. [Yet] a bogus allegation of an assault against a pro-abort is likely to land a pro-lifer in jail."
During the early part of the trip, the trucks are going against the commute. Stalled traffic on the other side of Highway 60 cannot miss the message on each truck. The trucks move at 45 mph, the minimum legal speed on California's highways. As he drives, Cunningham explains their mission. "The truck campaign is an outgrowth of the [pro-life] Genocide Awareness Project, which involves the outdoor display of large photo murals on university campuses. We've now been on 33 public campuses all over the country. Probably three quarters of a million students have seen these pictures now.
"The campus project resulted from a fairly sophisticated analysis we had done on the unchanging principles of social reform, going back 150 years or more. We've examined every movement from the abolition of child labor, the abolition of slavery, to the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Successful social reformers invariably used horrifying pictures to dramatize injustice and to confront the culture and prick the collective conscience. But since the reformers were social liberals, they found sympathetic allies in the press, who would broadcast these photos. Clearly, the press, if not hostile, is certainly not sympathetic to our [pro-life] point of view. So we had to come up with a new mass medium, a way of putting these pictures into the heads of people who are never going to see them in the media. The freeway system is built for transportation, but it could be appropriated for educational purposes. Commutes are getting longer and freeways are getting more crowded each year and you basically have a captive audience of people who can't change the channel and can't turn the page when they see us."
Cunningham's voice is earnest, steady and gentle. "When I am asked a question on talk-radio, two or three words into my answers, everyone starts shouting me down. When I was on the Leslie Marshall show, she got so angry with me that she hung up on me. I was supposed to come on at six in the evening on the Brian Whittaker show; but he kept me on hold until six-thirty, just beating the heck out of us, criticizing, misstating facts, and taking hostile calls, not letting me off hold into the conversation; so I finally hung up. Without realizing it, these talk show hosts who are so vehemently opposed to the truck project are making our point, which is, you can't hang up on the trucks. You can't put them on hold and you can't shout them down.
"The trucks are in your face," said Cunningham. "That's critical, because another aspect of social reform that we identified was massive societal denial among people complicit in injustice or complacent in response to the injustice. They felt guilty about it, and, as a consequence, didn't want to know more about the injustice than they already knew. So if you want to teach people who don't want to learn, you've got to develop methodologies that don't rely on the consent of the person you are trying to educate. Once you look at the pictures, they are in your head and you're never going to get them out. Every time you hear the word 'abortion' thereafter, instead of an abstraction, you are going to see a dead baby, tortured to death, bloody, sickening. Over time, if you have a functioning conscience, these images will begin to change the way you feel, think and ultimately, behave."
"Those who shout me down are foils for me," mused Cunningham, "because they are demonstrating their fear of my answer. These trucks have created pandemonium on the other side, because there is nothing they can do to stop this. If they respond violently, they draw more attention to us and discredit themselves. If they take us to court, they create a forum for the project. It's like the dilemma of an animal caught in a leg-hold trap; the harder it pulls, the deeper the teeth sink into its leg. The pro-aborts don't know whether to ignore this or resist it, so the only semi-coherent criticism we hear, besides 'You're upsetting children,' is that the pictures aren't real. The liberals know that if the pictures are real, they're dead. There's no moral defense for their position that's in any way convincing, so they resort to the same tactics that neo-Nazi skinheads employ when confronted with evidence of the Holocaust. They just say the pictures are fake and it never happened."
Cunningham recognizes that some people will never be convinced. "This project only works with those who have a functioning conscience. This is an educational, not a spiritual, project. A person who understands the magnitude of the evil that abortion represents and endorses it nonetheless is not ignorant but is morally bankrupt. I'm not aiming this at the 20 percent of the population that is irremediably evil, but at the, maybe, 60 percent that's just confused about all of this or believes abortion is the lesser of two evils because they don't know how evil it actually is. Evil that remains invisible quickly becomes tolerable. It's imperative that you make it real to people."
The unwanted nature of the message is what Cunningham believes gives it power. "That creates a great deal of anger, but Martin Luther King created a great deal of anger, the anti-Vietnam war movement created a great deal of anger. Earth First creates a great deal of anger. Social reformers don't care what people think of them, but what people think of injustice. I'm willing to get people angry at me to get them angry at abortion."
Though a conservative, Cunningham does not spare conservatives in his prescription to end abortion. The principal reason the pro-life movement has made so little progress over the last 30 years is because social reform is new to conservatives," he said. "Conservatives, to their discredit, are frequently defenders of an unjust status quo and it's political liberals who usually try to effect reform. Conservatives mistakenly imagine that in order to be effective, you have to be liked. At some level, they just can't deal with disapproval the way liberals can." Conservatives are "beaten down by liberals who are very clever at identity politics. 'If you're against abortion, you're against women.' That's an intellectually dishonest way of changing the subject; to discredit your opponent because you don't want to deal with his argument. None of those tactics work in the face of a dead baby picture in your windshield on the way to work. Is this a baby or isn't it? Is this an act of violence or isn't it? Should this be lawful or not?
"The pro-life movement doesn't have a clue as to how to change peoples' understandings of the facts of abortion. They just want to shout conclusions and opinions at people. What's really bizarre is that mainstream pro-life organizations and the Church are working harder than Planned Parenthood to suppress the best evidence we have -- photo evidence -- that abortion is an act of violence and it does kill a baby."
Cunningham is very disappointed with the efforts -- or lack thereof -- of Catholic bishops to fight abortion. "The U.S. bishops just bought an ad campaign whose operating principle is subtlety. During the Vietnam War, the working press had historically low approval ratings because people were angry that night after night the television showed the police chief of Saigon blowing out the brains of a Vietcong suspect, or naked children whose clothing was burned off by napalm running toward the camera. Those photos lodged in the public mind and gradually eroded public support for U.S. involvement in the war. The press was willing to take the hit. The protesters were willing to accept persecution. They had their eyes focused on a public policy objective and you can't win that on the cheap.
"But the bishops want to win this on the cheap," continued Cunningham. "They are laboring under the misconception that to be effective you have to be liked. They need to go back and read the prophets of the Old Testament and note the consistency with which they were persecuted and even martyred. Jesus said, 'If they persecute me, they will persecute you.' Well, they're not persecuting the bishops because the bishops have been very careful to avoid any behavior that invites persecution.
"The National Council of Catholic Bishops is releasing these insipid, 'subtle' ad campaigns that are designed to be just pro-life enough to mollify the 20 percent of the Church that is comprised of traditional orthodox Catholics, but not pro-life enough to antagonize the 20 percent of parishioners who are hard-core pro-aborts and are constantly trying to throttle and thwart pro-life activism in the Church. So the 60 percent who are in the middle on all of this are just abandoned to twist in the wind. It's the attempt to create the impression that NCCB is serious about abortion, when they're really only doing half-measured, conscience-salving stuff that is so dishonest.
Cunningham is equally disappointed with Evangelicals in the fight for life. He believes both Catholics and Protestants are losing an opportunity and uses the term "the Church" as a reference to all denominations. "The bishops are wrong about this," he said. "It may be that when you offend people they will close their ears, but I'm not speaking to them. I care what they do with their eyes and they can't close their eyes on the freeway without having a wreck. We are a visual culture. So many people in the pro-life movement learned in an age when people read and listened. That's over. Kids learn today by looking, and people my age, middle-aged people, don't get that. The bishops and Respect Life coordinators don't get that, and that's one of the reasons we're losing this thing. Gut decision makers tend to be voyeuristic; so if that's where the culture is, that's where we've got to engage them. The bishops are just bureaucrats. If the bishops were where the pope is in the fight against abortion, this fight would be over.
"This slaughter is occurring with our permission. The Church is permitting an atrocity to happen that God has given us the resources to stop. That's why the Church has blood on its hands in a very real sense. When Jesus commanded us show our love for God by obeying His commandments, he wasn't just talking about prohibitions against doing evil, He was talking as well about our affirmative duty to intervene on behalf of those who are being victimized by injustice. That's what the parable of the Good Samaritan is about and it's that affirmative duty that the Church is failing to discharge. Even while the Church mumbles platitudes about abortion being law, you show me your checkbook and I'll show you what you're serious about. From that perspective, the Church is hardly serious about abortion. All 'peace and justice' issues are irrelevant to dead babies. Illiteracy, homelessness, poverty, disease, hunger are absolutely irrelevant to a dead baby. Abortion is a threshold sin. It's a foundational evil."
As we turn on the 210 and enter the San Gabriel Valley, traffic gets heavier. As we get closer to Pasadena, the cars start getting more expensive. Although no one is making obscene gestures at us today - otherwise a frequent occurrence -- many people are glaring or staring at the trucks. Passengers in cars point and seem to be having animated discussions. "When we are in Orange County and the Inland Empire, we get looks of stunned disbelief," said Cunningham. "Some people will attempt to cut us off or break into the convoy. They'll do that when they haven't seen the police car behind us. We'll see more aggressive driving the closer we get to West L.A. That's where the cultural elites are.
"Sometimes we'll go into Malibu and Topanga Canyon and that's where the studio bigwigs are. You'll start really seeing the obscene gestures and scowls and frowns. They're scandalized because they regard these areas as their domain and we're violating the sanctity of their liberal environs by bringing the truth of abortion to Malibu."
To prevent legal harassment, the project keeps two public interest law firms on retainer: the Life Legal Defense Foundation and the Thomas More Center. "We involve counsel in the planning of everything we do, from the conceptual level all the way through implementation," said Cunningham. "We structure our activities to give us maximum litigation advantage and our adversaries the minimum of openings to harass us in court. In the eleven years the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform has been doing its work, we have not been sued once. We are easily the most aggressive pro-life organization in the country. We've only sued someone else once; we brought a federal lawsuit against Indiana University last year and forced a settlement on them that allows us to display our Genocide Awareness Project at a very prominent location on their campus."
In spite of the "in your face" approach of this project, Cunningham denounces all pro-life violence. Still, Cunningham thinks the pro-life movement has not been all that violent. "Look at the history of social reform," said Cunningham, "and note the thousands of bombings and riots and injuries and arrests and murders (especially during the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war movement). Compare that to the pro-life movement, where only seven lives have been lost in 30 years, with only a tiny fraction of bombings and arsons and virtually no riots. To suggest that the pro-life movement has been violent is preposterous. There were more people killed during a few days of rioting in the Rodney King matter in Los Angeles than have been killed in the entire history of the pro-life movement -- not only in this country, but worldwide.
The Genocide Awareness Project is funded by donations. "Ironically, much of our work is being funded by people in the southeastern United States. There are some enlightened donors there who believe the best way to fight abortion in Kentucky is by funding pro-life activism in Southern California because California is such a trend-setting state. If you're able to make a dent in public opinion here, the theory is that the influence that the activism creates will spread to other parts of the country. Almost all of the funding has come from private individuals and almost none of it is institutional money." What is Cunningham's goal should the funding continue to increase? "Expansion to more cities," he said.
A former state legislator, justice department official, and assistant U.S. attorney, Cunningham, 54, says something deeper keeps him doing pro-life work. "I sat in the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles," said Cunningham, "and every week watched 25 or 30 resumés come across my desk from people at very good law firms and from very good law schools; day by day it became clearer to me that any one of these people could do my job at least as well as I, and some of them better. But none of them would be willing to fight the greatest moral evil the world has ever seen. I thought to myself, 'I'm going to have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and explain what I was doing while the sewers of our cities were running red with the blood of our children.'"
"I don't understand Christians who agonize about being in the will of God and then dedicate their lives to doing the work that the pagans are perfectly willing to do! Christians want to live a 'normal life' and the 'American Dream,' but that notion would have been absolutely anathema to firstcentury Christians. I admit, I'm a materialistic person. I used to have a private plane. I had a Rolex and drove a Porsche, and I miss them. But I can't have those things and sit here on the freeway, scandalizing Southern California with the horror of abortion. We've got to make a choice. If I'm going to be serious about giving more of my time to this work, then I've got to be willing to live more modestly than I was willing to live. I'm not some super-spiritual person; this was not easy. My contemporaries with whom I went to law school are at the apex of their careers, doing things I would rather be doing and living in places where I would rather live.
"A guy named Leith Anderson wrote a book called Dying For Change about the Church," continued Cunningham. "He noticed that the Church and para-church organizations tend to move away from geographical centers of cultural influence while liberal organizations tend to move into centers of cultural influence. We see this again and again, that conservatives would rather live where they want to live and be left alone, where liberals want to change the world. So liberals go where they can have the greatest possible impact -- the news centers, media, entertainment and education - to the points of influence that have the greatest impact on the culture. Conservatives, again, are dumb as a post about all this. The irony of it is most traditional Christians, Catholic, Evangelical, what have you, are conservatives, and they're under a biblical mandate from our Lord to change the world. It is we who are supposed to be changing that world and we have abdicated that responsibility to pagan liberals -- some of them masquerading as Catholic clerics."
As we enter a bumper-to-bumper 405 South at the Sepulveda Pass, we are in what Cunningham describes as one of the areas where the offense taken at the photos is greatest. He is able to generalize reactions according to car models. "Porsches aren't that bad and Mercedeses aren't that bad, but there's something about a BMW that attracts serious pro-aborts. I saw a lady who almost had a wreck on the 405 North; she got off at one of the Hollywood exits and she was leaning out of her window, wobbling and swerving, trying to shout backward at us, while she tried to exit. I was afraid she would get cut in half. If abortion is O.K., then why do these pictures upset them so?"
As we move south of Westwood, we turn east on 10 and traffic thins out. Gawkers continue to slow down and stare as they pass us, but the ride back to the warehouse is uneventful. As we pull into the lot, a pickup following us takes down the building's address, then flees before the police stop him. They don't bother chasing him. Another successful mission is accomplished. An estimated 400 thousand drivers have seen the message.
Cunningham's strategy is best summarized by analogy to a chess game. "This is like a chess game where we don't even let our opponent sit down at the table until we've pre-positioned the pieces to place him at checkmate," said Cunningham. "Then we invite him to sit down and tell him, 'It's your move.' Although we're not going to do anything unlawful or immoral, we're not going to play this game pursuant to rules written by pro-aborts and weak bishops."
Every woman that goes for an abortion would have to sign and informed consent form. The form would stipulate that she had read an abortion information pamphlet.
The pamphlet would be much like those we get for voting. Each side would have space to make their case. Each side would have space to rebut the other side's case.
...Just my own opinion. Not meant to reflect the views of anyone else.
In 50 years we will be creating human life without sperm or ova ever meeting. In 50 years we will be able to clone ourselves or body parts for ourselves. In 50 years we will be able to design our babies at a computer screen. In 50 years we may well have over come the problem of aging.
In 50 years, our views of what life is, when it begins and when it ends will make our current views look mideveil at best.
Yes, and some of us will still be claiming that it is wrong to play God.
http://www.prolifeinfo.org/upl6.html
Most Women Believe Abortion Has Hurt Relationships Between Men and Women
WASHINGTON -- "Abortion rights activists, like Betty Friedan, promised the country that abortion would make women whole, but four out of five people say abortion has emotionally torn women to pieces," Family Research Council Policy Analyst Gracie S. Hsu said Tuesday. "The damage is not limited to emotional consequences; a majority of Americans believe that abortion-on-demand has hurt relationships between men and women, driving the two apart. In addition, 70 percent of them say legalized abortion is not necessary to help women pursue educational and career goals. Americans are saying that the promises of pro-abortionists were lies, and that now Americans need serious healing."
Miss Hsu spoke Tuesday at a news conference held at the Family Research Council to unveil polling data on the social and emotional impact of abortion. A survey of 1,000 adults, conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide, found the following:
Most adults (53%) believe that abortion has hindered the relationships between men and women. 58 percent of women and 48 percent of men agree. Most Americans (78%) strongly agree that women who have had abortions experience emotional trauma, such as grief and regret.
Most Americans (70%) believe that legal abortion is not necessary for women to pursue various educational and career goals. Hsu said that the poll's results "challenge pro-abortionists' claims that abortion helps women. The untold story of abortion is the tragic social and emotional damage it causes women."
Post-abortion grief is not limited to women. Bob Kirk, from Boulder, CO, told his story Tuesday about the emotional trauma and drug addiction that followed his experience with abortion. Olivia Gans, Director of American Victims of Abortion, also spoke about her post-abortion experience, which included anxiety attacks, depression, and serious dysfunctional behavior. Both have undergone counseling and been involved as post-abortion counselors. Vicki Thorn, founder of Project Rachel, a post-abortion counseling network within the Catholic Church, described the model she created for post-abortion healing. Thorn also directs the National Office of Post-Abortion Reconciliation & Healing (1-800-5WE-CARE), a national referral network for men and women seeking healing.
Bauer Says 'Pulse Of The Nation Reads Americans Are More Pro-Life'
WASHINGTON -- "It's true. Americans are becoming increasingly pro-life and are strongly opposed to later-term abortions," Family Research Council President Gary Bauer said Wednesday. "Elected officials must make progress in banning abortion by standing with the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose partial-birth abortion and later-term abortions."
Bauer spoke Wednesday at a news conference held at the Family Research Council where polling data were released and pro-life strategy discussed. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, his son Chris Casey, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, Chairman of the Board of the pro-life political action committee the Susan B. Anthony List, joined Bauer in discussing the pro-life shift in public opinion and the future of the pro-life movement.
The January 1998 Wirthlin poll commissioned by FRC found:
Most Americans believe that abortion should not be permitted after signs of life can be detected.
Specifically, 61 percent disagree that "abortion should be permitted after fetal brainwaves are detected," and 58 percent agree that "abortion should not be permitted after the fetal heartbeat has begun." (Note: Fetal brainwaves can be detected as early as the sixth week of pregnancy, and fetal heartbeat usually begins between days 18 and 21.) American attitudes toward abortion have become increasingly pro-life. Most Americans (57 percent) describe their own personal position on abortion as pro-life. Only 21 percent believe that abortion should be legal for any reason during the first three months of pregnancy. Only 10 percent believe abortion should be legal for any reason during the first six months of pregnancy, and only 9 percent feel abortion should be legal at any time during pregnancy and for any reason.
Women are more pro-life than men -- a trend over the past decade. Sixty-one percent of women hold a pro-life position compared to 53 percent of men. Women under age 34 and over 55 are more pro-life than middle-aged women.
"In the last quarter of a century, more than 35 million lives have been sacrificed needlessly," Bauer said. "It is a standing rebuke to a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal.
The shift in public opinion and behavior is heartening. It shows Americans will continue to chip away at Roe until it is reversed."
1998
The following is a Wirthlin Worldwide poll conducted 1/98: Pro-life
12% believe abortion should be prohibited in all circumstances
12% would prohibit abortion except to save the life of the mother
35% would prohibit abortion to save the life of he mother or in cases or rape and incest
TOTAL: 59% pro-life
Pro-abortion rights
27% would allow abortions but not after the third month
7% would allow abortions but not after viability
Only 7% believe abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy
TOTAL: 41% pro-abortion rights
1994
Of those who said that abortion affected the way they voted in the 1994 elections, twice as many people said they voted for pro-life candidates than pro-abortion. - Wirthlin, November 9
If choosing between a Republican candidate who opposed abortion or a Democrat candidate for favored abortion, people support the pro-life candidate 45%-37%. - Wirthlin, November 9,
68% said they were strongly or somewhat concerned that a health care plan might promote abortions (47% strongly concerned) - Washington Post, February
33% of people are actively pro-life, 19% are inactively pro-life, 14% are personally opposed to abortion but wouldn't say no to others having one; total "pro-life" - 66% - From "Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War," by James Davidson Hunter, 1994.
1993
55% said abortion should either be prohibited in all circumstances, legal only to save the life of the mother, or legal in the cases or rape and incest and to save the life of the mother - Wirthlin, January 18-22
66% said abortion should not be covered in any health care plan (66% men said no, 65% women said no) - CBS/New York Times, June
52% said any national health care plan should not include abortion - NBC Poll, September
62% said abortion should not be included in health care and the mother wanting abortion should pay for it herself - Harris Poll, September
64% said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances or legal only under certain circumstances - Gallop, January 16
1992
73% favor requiring that minors obtain the consent of one parent before having an abortion - Time Mirror, May 8 81% support requiring women to wait 24 hours and to give their "informed consent" before having their abortion - Time Mirror, May 8
61% of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 voice pro-life views - Wirthlin, January 22
63% oppose federal funding of research using tissue from aborted fetuses - Wirthlin, January 22
69% favor requiring a woman to notify her husband before she has an abortion - Times Mirror, May 8
63% favor "a law requiring a pregnant woman to notify her husband if she decides to have an abortion." - Gallop, January 18
Abortion should be either legal under certain circumstances or illegal at all times - Newsweek, July 23
males w/ college degrees 54%
females w/ college degrees 51%
males w/o college degrees 75%
females w/o college degrees 70%
Exit polls by Wirthlin and VRS (Voters Research Survey) showed that for those who considered abortion to be one of the top two issues, Bush received a 2.5-6% lead. - Wirthlin and VRS, November
1991
64% say "abortion should be illegal in all circumstances" or "legal only under certain circumstances" - Austin American Statesman, October 8
86% mostly favor legislation "requiring women to receive information about fetal development and alternatives to abortion before going ahead to the procedure." - Gallop, done in 1991, reported on January 16, 1992
73% favor a 24-hour waiting period - same as above
70% support parental consent - same as above
73% support spousal notification - same as above
1989
80% oppose abortion as a form of birth control - Los Angles Times, March 19
65% support legislation which, in a pregnancy of 20 weeks or more, doctors must test to ensure that the fetus is not developed enough to live outside the womb before a woman could have an abortion - CBS News/New York Times, September 17-20
54% support legislation stipulating that no abortions be done "in public facilities except to save a woman's life." - Newsweek, July 17
57% said abortion should not be allowed "if the woman is unmarried and does not want to marry the father" - Atlanta Journal-Constitution, October 8
85% believe abortion should be illegal "if the woman cannot afford to care for the baby." - Washington Post, October 7
92% believe abortion should be illegal "if the family decides they don't want another child." - Washington Post, October 7
54% agree that "the solution to abortion is adoption." - Los Angles Times, March 19
69% said "in general the lives of unborn babies should be protected." - Wirthlin, October
60%- 98% (depending on the reason) oppose 98% of all abortions in America - Boston Globe, March 31; NY Times January 22; Los Angles Times, March 19; Newsweek, April 24
Best wishes on your writing -- your subject-matter is worthwhile.
I admire the courage, the dedication, and the creativity.
What would happen if 100,000 pro-life Christians (a redundancy?) got involved at this level? That'd only be about a half percent of those who say that's what they are.
Most Americans are fat and happy and unwilling to rock the boat or even cause quizzical looks from neighbors for what they claim to believe in.
No. Just accept that it is what I believe and I that do not care if anyone else believes it.
If we look at the Gallop poll and combine groups we can have:
Abortion should be either legal under certain circumstances or illegal at all times: 73%
Or we can combine the groups the other way and get:
Abortion should legal under any circumstances or legal only under certain circumstances: 82%
If you want to corrupt the data to make yourself feel good, go right ahead. However, you should understand that your opposition is using poll data to strategize. The 1998 shift did not happen by chance.
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