Voters More Pro-Choice in 2012? It Doesn’t Add Up!

Posted by Eric Scheidler (November 30, 2012 at 10:00 am)

Note: Stand Up Rally co-director Eric Scheidler published this article on the Pro-Life Action League website shortly after the 2012 election. Since the pro-life and religious freedom movements are so closely allied, readers of this site may be interested in Eric’s remarks.

Several liberal commentators and even a few conservatives are gleefully reporting exit polls for last week’s election showing 59% of voters say they believe abortion should be legal in “most or all cases,” a sure sign that the pro-life movement is losing and that the advantage on social issues has swung to Democrats.

That’s one way to add up the numbers, recruiting the 30% of voters who say abortion should be legal in most cases to legitimize the more hard-core pro-choice position that there should be legal in all cases, as 29% of voters polled believe.

But here’s another way to do the math: add that 30% who believe abortion should be legal in most (but not all) cases to the 24% who believe it should be illegal in most cases and the 13% who believe it should always be illegal, and you find that 66% of voters believe abortion should be illegal in at least some cases.

In other words, fully two-thirds of thirds of the electorate holds a position on abortion contrary to that espoused by either President Obama or Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, who will not name a single case in which abortion should not be a woman’s choice.

Most voters actually disagree with Obama on abortion

There are in fact few voters who hold so radical a pro-choice—really pro-abortion—position as Barack Obama.

Among that 29% who say abortion should be legal in “all cases,” how many would say there should be no legal restrictions at all on how abortion facilities operate? Barack Obama doesn’t even want to see Planned Parenthood held accountable for obeying local zoning regulations!

And in exactly what case (or cases) do the 30% who say abortion should be legal only in “most cases” think it shouldn’t be?

We heard a lot this election about abortion in the case of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother—three cases. Throw in cases when the mother is extremely young or in abject poverty, or when the unborn child has some kind of disability—the cases most commonly cited to justify legal abortion—and you’re still not hitting a majority of abortions.

That 30% might actually oppose a majority of the 1.2 million abortions taking place every year in the United States, if only they had the facts.

Speculation aside, we know some of the cases in which 
majorities believe abortion should be illegal:

• When the patient is a minor whose parents have not been informed of or involved in the decision to abort: 71%
• When the abortionist does not give a woman 24 hours to reconsider her choice before she goes through with it: 69%
• When the abortionist does not accurately inform a woman about abortion risks and how abortions are performed: 87%
• Whenever performed using the D & X or “partial birth abortion” procedure: 64%

On top of that, solid majorities believe that abortion should be illegal after the twelfth week of pregnancy—when about 11% of abortions, or over 144,000, are performed.

Again: Barack Obama believes abortion should never be illegal.

Yet 50.6% of voters chose to elected President Obama to a second term.

Voters left in the dark about Obama and abortion

The conclusion to draw, then, is not that voters are becoming more pro-choice, but that they simply do not know how radical President Obama’s position on abortion really is.

And no wonder. Voters were barraged with propaganda from both Planned Parenthood and the Obama campaign calculated to make their radical position appear moderate in contrast with the army of Republican straw men waging a “war on women.”

They pretended that employers opposed to paying for someone else’s contraceptives were trying to entirely block access to contraceptives for everyone.

They answered the charge that Planned Parenthood should lose its government subsidies because of its well-documented pattern of dishonesty and lawlessness and its outsized role in the abortion business and abortion politics with the falsehood that women rely on Planned Parenthood for mammograms.

And in answer to all of that, Mitt Romney had little to say about abortion other than endorsing the “rape, incest or life of the mother” trio of exceptions.

Stage set for pro-life victory—if we make our case

There’s every reason to believe that, had voters really known where Obama and other pro-choice candidates stand, the elections might have turned out quite differently.

Which means that, far from abandoning social issues like abortion, pro-life politicians of both parties should take advantage of what the 2012 exit polls really say about voters and abortion, and speak to that 66% of voters who think abortion should be be illegal at least some of the time.

Our elected officials should be confidently advocating for measures that will accomplish the goal of withdrawing legal sanction from such an unconscionably large number of abortions as are performed every year in the United States.

And as for the pro-life movement, we need to work harder to show our pro-choice friends and neighbors that their views are actually a lot closer to ours than they are to the extreme position espoused by Barack Obama and Cecile Richards.

With the truth on our side and voters real attitudes on abortion predisposing them to be receptive, it’s time to make our case against legal abortion and share the pro-life message at every opportunity.

Related Links

• Poll: Abortion Didn’t Cost GOP Election, More Americans Still Pro-Life—Lifenews.com, by David O’Steen
• Romney’s Abandonment of Social Issues Contributed to his Defeat—Crisis Magazine, by Austin Ruse

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