As all pro-lifers know, whenever there is a case headed to the Supreme Case (as is with the Mississippi Gestational Age Act) or a big pro-life victory (Texas’s SB 8 went into effect at midnight), the “media” will crank out a poll telling us how much in the minority we are. It’s as regular as swallows returning to Capistrano.
Enter today’s “NBC News poll shows nation’s demographic divides on abortion.” We’ll deal with the numbers in one minute.
But first let’s mention the 100% predictable ending to the analysis: Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Ben Kamisar tell us that now that Texas has passed its law and the justices have agreed to take up Mississippi’s law prohibiting abortions after the 15th week, the chickens are going to come to roost for pro-life Republicans.
Or, to use their metaphor, “the GOP sure looks like the dog that finally caught up to the car when it comes to abortion.”
Of course. It must be, if Chuck Todd says so.
Pro-life Republicans will pay the electoral price, unlike pro-abortion Democrats who believe in abortion up until birth (paid for by the taxpayer) and who are, at best, agnostic on passive infanticide for abortion survivors. It helps Democrats when you can rest assured that neither of those extremist positions—abortion on demand through the ninth month on the taxpayer’s dime and failing to treat a baby who survives an abortion—will ever be asked in a NBC News poll.
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A cursory glance tells us the slant instantly: “New numbers from our most recent NBC poll show a majority of Americans — 54 percent — believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” (Of course, the story is front-loaded with numbers to suggest that support for abortion is sweeping the nation, but we’ll get to that in a moment.)
Really? Let’s dig a little deeper.
#1. Only “8 percent say it [abortion] should be illegal ‘without any exceptions.’” This is a ridiculously low figure, on its face, and also misses that many will oppose all abortions except to save the mother’s life. But…
#2. ”Much of the country appears to be in the middle on abortion, with our poll finding 23 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal ‘most of the time,’ and another 34 percent saying it should be illegal ‘with exceptions.’” The story itself doesn’t spell out what the exceptions are, but the poll does: “rape, incest and to save the mother’s life.”
So we’re already at 8% +34%. +42%. As compared to
#3. “31 percent believe abortion should ‘always’ be legal, and 8 percent say it should be illegal ‘without any exceptions.’”
31% + 8%=39%.
A final note. We have explained countless times how Gallup is the lone big time pollster that goes beneath the surface to find the truth below.
And Gallup finds, year after year, that a majority of the public already would either make all abortions illegal (20%) or says abortion should be legal “in only a few circumstances” (35%)—55%.
What those “few circumstances” are is, as far as I can tell, never spelled out. However, likely as not they are the aforementioned instances of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life, a very, very small percentage of the nearly 900,000 abortions performed each year.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
