Choose Life - The Growing Aversion To Abortion

[Lil Red]

[url="http://www.reason.com/news/show/124517.html"]From Reason Magazine[/url]

Choose Life
The growing aversion to abortion

Steve Chapman | January 21, 2008
The abortion debate has raged since 1973, when the Supreme Court gave abortion constitutional protection, but the basic law of the land has proved immutable. Abortion is legal, and it's going to remain legal for a long time.

Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things—such as racial integration—they once rejected. But sometimes, attitudes move in the opposite direction, as people see the consequences of the change. That's the case with abortion.

The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics. But maybe the chief reason is that the great majority of Americans, even many who see themselves as pro-choice, are deeply uncomfortable with it.

In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found 34 percent of Americans thought abortion "should be legal under any circumstances," with 13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only 26 percent said it should always be allowed, with 18 percent saying it should never be permitted.

Sentiments are even more negative among the group that might place the highest value on being able to escape an unwanted pregnancy: young people. In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is "morally wrong."

By now, pro-life groups know that outlawing most abortions is not a plausible aspiration. So they have adopted a two-pronged strategy. The first is to regulate it more closely—with parental notification laws, informed consent requirements and a ban on partial-birth abortion. The second is to educate Americans with an eye toward changing "hearts and minds." In both, they have had considerable success.

Even those who insist Americans are solidly in favor of legal abortion implicitly acknowledge the widespread distaste. That's why the Democratic Party's 2004 platform omitted any mention of the issue, and why politicians who support abortion rights cloak them in euphemisms like "the right to choose."

But some abortion rights supporters admit reservations. It was a landmark moment in 1995 when [b]the pro-choice author Naomi Wolf, writing in The New Republic magazine, declared that "the death of a fetus is a real death."[/b] She went on: "By refusing to look at abortion within a moral framework, we lose the millions of Americans who want to support abortion as a legal right but still need to condemn it as a moral iniquity."

The report on abortion rates from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the evolution of attitudes has transformed behavior. Since 1990, the number of abortions has dropped from 1.61 million to 1.21 million. The abortion rate among women of childbearing age has declined by 29 percent.

Those changes could be the result of other factors, such as more use of contraception: If fewer women get pregnant, fewer will resort to abortion. But the shift is equally marked among women who do get pregnant. In 1990, 30.4 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion. Last year, the figure was 22.4 percent.

Pro-choice groups say women are having fewer abortions only because abortion clinics are growing scarcer. But abortion clinics may be growing scarcer because of a decline in demand for their services and a public opinion climate that has gotten more inhospitable.

This growing aversion to abortion may be traced to better information. When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, most people had little understanding of fetal development. But the proliferation of ultrasound images from the womb, combined with the dissemination of facts by pro-life groups, has lifted the veil.

In the new comedy Juno, a pregnant 16-year-old heads for an abortion clinic, only to change her mind after a teenage protester tells her, "Your baby probably has a beating heart, you know. It can feel pain. And it has fingernails."

Juno has been faulted as a "fairy tale" that sugarcoats the realities of teen pregnancy. But if it's a fairy tale, that tells something about how abortion violates our most heartfelt ideals—and those of our adolescent children. Try to imagine a fairy tale in which the heroine has an abortion and lives happily ever after.

The prevailing view used to be: Abortion may be evil, but it's necessary. Increasingly, the sentiment is: [b]Abortion may be necessary, but it's evil.[/b]

[prose]

[quote]In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found
34 percent of Americans thought abortion "should be legal under any circumstances," with
13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only
26 percent said it should always be allowed, with
18 percent saying it should never be permitted.[/quote]

Do these numbers seem right to you?

26 say it is should allowed but not permitted?? What does that mean?

or are they saying 13 percent say it should be illegal and 18 percent say it should not be permitted?

I am confused by this paragraph.

Good article though.

[HomeTeamFamily]

I think there is a difference in something being allowed and it being illegal. It begs the question of morality vs. legality. If something is allowed, that speaks to its morality, while if something is illegal, obviously it speaks to the legality of it.

[Nathan]

Just an aside: a lot of pro-choicers today are running around at pro-life rallies and asking pro-lifers what they think [i]should[/i] happen to women to have abortions. For instance, "What should be the punishment for a woman who has an abortion?" A lot of pro-lifers, especially women, seem to be having trouble answering this. Many say "Nothing should happen to them." In turn, many pro-choicers (especially those associated with Planned Parenthood) are using this as a way of indicating that many pro-lifers don't really think that abortion should be illegal. After all, if there's not supposed to be any punishment, why make it illegal? What would be the difference?

There is a correct answer, however, which takes into account both the abortionist and the woman having the abortion, as well as those who may have conspired with her to procure the abortion. Now, if abortion is to be considered murder -- which pro-lifers assert -- then the punishment for abortion should be no different than for murder. The investigation for the crime of abortion should be no different than for any other murder investigation. Depending on the circumstances, which vary in any murder case, the abortionist might be charged with first-degree murder, the woman second-degree, and her co-consirators second-degree, third-degree, or conspiracy to murder. Or it could have another result, depending on the circumstances of this particular murder. But the assertion remains: abortion is murder, and therefore should be handled as murder in a court of law.

Anything less from the mouths of pro-lifers is just being logically inconsistent and overly "sympathetic." Yes, it is true that women who have abortions are also victims. But this does not change the fact that we assert that abortion is murder, and murder is a crime which has consequences.

[Didacus]

[quote]Try to imagine a fairy tale in which the heroine has an abortion and lives happily ever after.[/quote]

I like that, good to use on kids who might be too young to understand the realities of adult life.
Good article, thanks for posting. Baby-steps, just winning the battle using baby-steps but winning nonetheless.

[Autumn Dusk]

I have an atheist friend who's anti abortion. She realized the biological indication of when a human is created. We now have science on our side, when students learn the correct truths then we have a better chance of succeeding.

[MissScripture]

[quote name='prose' post='1448952' date='Jan 21 2008, 12:59 PM']Do these numbers seem right to you?

26 say it is should allowed but not permitted?? What does that mean?

or are they saying 13 percent say it should be illegal and 18 percent say it should not be permitted?

I am confused by this paragraph.

Good article though.[/quote]

I think it's saying that in 1992, 34 percent of Americans thought abortion should be legal under any circumstance, and 13 percent of Americans thought it should always be illegal.

Then, last year, 26 percent of Americans thought abortion should be legal under any circumstance, and 18 percent thought it should always be illegal.

[CatherineM]

I heard someone say that part of what is going on is that the pro-life people are the ones having the most children, and that eventually there will be a generational shift on how it is viewed because of that.

I dislike politics in the extreme, and didn't want to be a Republican because they were pro-death penalty, or a Democrat because they were pro-choice. I ended up in the Green party because they were against the death penalty, and said that their stance on abortion was to work for a time when it wasn't viewed as necessary.

[Nathan]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1449012' date='Jan 21 2008, 05:06 PM']I ended up in the Green party because they were against the death penalty, and said that their stance on abortion was to work for a time when it wasn't viewed as necessary.[/quote]

Yeah, right. More like work for a time when [i]opposition[/i] to abortion isn't viewed as necessary. You, Miss, have been had by political party double-speak. If 99.9% of all Green Party members aren't pro-choice, then I'll eat my shoe.

[Alycin]

This article makes me happy.

[Justin86]

[quote name='Lil Red' post='1448948' date='Jan 22 2008, 03:43 AM']the pro-choice author Naomi Wolf, writing in The New Republic magazine, declared that "the death of a fetus is a real death." She went on: "By refusing to look at abortion within a moral framework, we lose the millions of Americans who want to support abortion as a legal right but still need to condemn it as a moral iniquity."[/quote]
I'm sorry, but that quote made me want to throw up.

I get how you could view it as positive, but to me its even more disgusting to have pro-choicers admit they're murders and still manage to get people on their side, than back when they were getting people to view a fetus as "a clump of cells". I don't view this as a positive development at all.

[CatherineM]

Nathan-Thanks, I haven't been called "miss" in many years. I usually get, "ma'am do you realize you are making a scene?" The first president I voted for was Regan.

[Deb]

I think that part of the reason there are more people saying abortion should be illegal is that millions of women who had abortions back in the 70's and 80's have now matured, may or may not have kids and have awoken to the lies of the "just a bunch of cells" carp they were fed back then. They are trying to live with their sins and to also stop future women from committing them.

Edited January 22, 2008 by Deb

[cmotherofpirl]

I think TV is helping us. Did anyone catch "notes from the underbelly" last night. They showed the baby with a 3D sonagram, and it was amazing. A little hard to call it a clump of cells after seeing that.

[Didacus]

Here's another article showing both sides:

[url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080122/us_time/whyhaveabortionratesfallen"]Abortion Drop in the US - 35 years after Roevs Wade[/url]