On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its
Roe v. Wade decision, creating a constitutional right to
abortion and legalizing most abortions nationally.
Later that year, the board of trustees of the
American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify
homosexuality as a mental disorder.
These landmark decisions helped to catapult abortion and
homosexuality to the forefront of the culture wars, where they have
remained for four decades.
Interestingly, the public’s views on abortion and homosexuality
have diverged significantly over the last 40 years — and that
divergence is being driven by the changing views of young
Americans.
In 1977, American public opinion was divided evenly on the
question of whether gay sex should be criminalized, with about 43%
of the country believing it should legal and 43% believing it
should be illegal, according
to Gallup.
By the mid-’80s, Americans had actually grown more conservative
on homosexuality, probably in part due to the belief that the
emerging AIDS epidemic was caused by gay sex. In 1986, 57% of
Americans felt homosexual relations should be illegal, while only
32% felt they should be legal.
Americans’ views slowly changed over the next quarter century.
And by 2011, 64% of Americans believed gay sex should be legal.
On gay marriage, the change in public opinion has been more
dramatic. In 1996, the first year Gallup began polling the
question, 27% of respondents said same-sex marriage should be
legal, while 68% said it should not. By 2012, 50% of respondents
supported same-sex marriage, while 46% opposed it.
The near-doubling of support for same-sex marriage has been
driven by young people.
A 2011 Public Religion Research Institute poll found
that while only 31% of Americans over age 65 supported gay
marriage, twice as many, 62%, of Americans under 30 supported
it.
Even young Republicans have become more supportive of same-sex
marriage. A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll
found that the share of Republicans age 18-to-29 that supports
same-sex marriage grew to 37% in 2012, from 28% eight years
earlier.
America has shifted left on many cultural issues — not just on
homosexuality and gay marriage but also on the acceptability of
contraception, pre- and extra-marital sex, divorce and
out-of-wedlock birth. But on abortion America remains stubbornly
ambivalent.
In 1995, Gallup
found that 56% of Americans identified as pro-choice, while
just a third called themselves pro-life.
But at the moment Americans began to become more accepting of
same-sex marriage, they were also becoming more pro-life — and,
again, that change in sentiment was due to the changing views of
young people.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, most polls showed young Americans were
the least pro-life of any age cohort.
The General Social Survey shows that young Americans became the
most pro-life group around the year 2000, and that they’ve become
more pro-life since.
According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 46 percent of 18-to-34 years
olds are pro-choice, while 44 percent are pro-life.
Young Americans are also the most likely to hold the no
exceptions pro-life position. Gallup
noted in 2010 that, “support for making abortion broadly
illegal [is] growing fastest among young adults…. Young adults were
slightly more likely than all other age groups, including seniors,
to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.”
Indeed, 24% of 18-to-34 year olds believe all abortions should be
illegal.
Other polls tell a similar story. A 2011 Reuters poll
found that two-thirds of Americans under 35 years old feel
abortion is wrong, compared to 59% of Americans generally.
Abortion rights advocates have noticed the pro-life shift. A
2010 NARAL Pro-Choice America report fretted about the deep
“intensity gap” on abortion. Citing the findings of an opinion
survey it conducted, NARAL noted that while more than half (51%) of
pro-life voters under 30 years old called their opposition to
abortion a “very important” voting issue, just 26% of abortion
advocates under 30 felt that the issue was “very important” to
their vote.
The divergence among millennials on homosexuality and abortion
is stark. A 2012 Gallup poll found that 53% of 18-to-34 year olds
felt abortion is morally wrong. It was the age group most likely to
feel that way. But at 70%, millennials were also the age group most
likely to support same-sex marriage.
This divergence is evident even among evangelical Christians.
According to the Pew Religion Forum, 69% of white evangelicals
under 30 identify as pro-life, while just 55% of them believe
homosexuality should be discouraged.
Barna Research has
found that 69% of 18-to-21 year-old born-again Christians
believe abortion is a “major problem,” while just 35% of them think
homosexuality is a “major problem.”
How can we explain these divergent views on homosexuality and
abortion?
Both gay rights and pro-life advocates have adopted the language
of civil rights. And both have convinced many Americans that their
causes aim to extend natural rights to more people, a goal that
speaks to young Americans’ sense of social justice.
Young Americans grow up in an environment in which homosexuality
is portrayed sympathetically, on television and in movies, in
schools and in the culture generally. This has helped to humanize
gays, and reveal them to be more like their neighbors than like
sex-crazed participants in gay pride parades.
On abortion, sonogram technology and other advances have helped
to humanize unborn children, revealing them to be the living,
feeling, learning human beings they are.
What’s more, abortion is by definition a sad event, a sign that
something has gone wrong. As the saying goes, nobody ever says
“thank you” to an abortionist. The best even abortion advocates can
claim is that abortion is the lesser of two evils.
The birth of a child, meanwhile, is always seen as a reason to
celebrate. And that’s what millennials appear to prize most —
celebrating the human experience and its expansion to more
people.
