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Gallup: More Americans Pro-Life Than Pro-Choice

By Philip Klein on 5.15.09 @ 10:18AM

For the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 1995, more Americans now identify themselves as pro-life than pro-choice, by a 51 percent to 42 percent margin. Certainly, there should be a note of caution about the survey since some people may define the term "pro-life" a lot differently than others. A minority of the population stakes out the absolutist positions, with 23 percent saying abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and 22 percent saying it should be legal in all circumstances; by contrast, 53 percent of those polled say that it should be allowed "only under certain circumstances." That leaves a wide range of possibilities. Does that mean they think abortions should be allowed during the first trimeste? Only in cases or rape/incest? Or only if the life of the mother is in danger?

With that said, this polling result does undercut the favored media narrative that the reason why the GOP is losing is that it's been captured by social conservatives who are overly obsessed with abortion.

View all comments (21) | Leave a comment

John Thacker| 5.15.09 @ 11:06AM

One of Gallup's possible explanation is that since President Obama's election has helped redefine "pro-choice" as "taxpayer money should go to fund abortions here and overseas," people don't agree with that as much. In other words, feelings may not have changed much, but impressions of the labels have.

John| 5.15.09 @ 11:55AM

If it weren't for the media (and Hollywood), the percentage of pro-lifers would be much higher. It's amazing how many people can be influenced by what they see on television and do not critically evaluate it.

Good thing that there are groups like CatholicVote who have been coming out with some excellent pro-life commercials as of late.

jim rice| 5.15.09 @ 12:02PM

I'm Pro-Life and Anti-The-Government-Can-Tell-You-What-To-Do.

If you want to have an abortion, then I don't care. But I would not choose it. Unless it was going to kill the mother to carry it to term. As long as "Conservatives" are putting their religious / social agenda on the forefront, I will never vote for them even though I am typically much more in agreement with true conservative political stances.

Tom Paine| 5.15.09 @ 12:10PM

It has long been known that these numbers jump around with a volatility unlike most other poll numbers.

Ask Americans if a fourteen year old girl who is raped by her uncle should be forced to have a baby if the pregnancy is known in the first week, and you don't have a majority of people saying abortion is absolutely always wrong. This is philosophically indefensible, but there you have it.

Ask Americans a more general question, and the numbers sway radically to the other side.

What does this prove? First, neither side can use their quoted majorities to make a good argument.

I earnestly hope Roe V Wade will fall. Politically, it will return this issue to the states where it belongs. Let each side produce arguments, and let the people decided.

Morally, it will remove an unjust law from the body of Constitutional law.

Roe is baffling illogical in some ways. (Someone explain to me how viability makes a person. It's ludicrous.) Unfortunately, it is brilliant in other ways: as much as conservatives say they hate the "penumbra" idea, it provides for great protection from state power in an age when we're going to need it.

The "penumbra" -- remember -- was first devised to say that the government cannot put you in jail for being in possession of a condom. The "penumbra" protects you and your spouse in your bedroom, if you choose to engage in acts a moral majority in your state has chosen to outlaw.

Frankly, I believe Roe is weakest on viability and on equal protection grounds.

It is also increasingly weak on from purely secular points of view. Just in the past ten years we've learned incredible amounts of information about fetus development. The more we learn, the more their humanity becomes harder to ignore. It's another means to convince people to rethink their stances on this issue.

Angel| 5.15.09 @ 12:32PM

Planned Parenthood would perform an illegal abortion on the the fourteen year old girl raped by her uncle even if she told the staff that she was only 14 years old and her 'boyfriend' was 31 years old. UCLA coed, Lila Rose, has conducted undercover investigations at various PP clinics around the country and has found that PP routinely facilitates this illegal activity. Planned Parenthood is a rogue organization protected by the rabid pro-abortion/pro-infanticide industry. Abortion is slavery--the subjugation of helpless human beings--it must be abolished.

Dan| 5.15.09 @ 12:44PM

Phil,

the imagery of the sonnigrams {sp?} is increasingly getting clearer, and it's driving the numbers.

And what's more, as the technology gets better, and as the imagery becomes ever more clearer, ----------------------- the pro-choicers are going to get tarred just as the pro-slavers were tarred.

JP| 5.15.09 @ 1:22PM

"Roe is baffling illogical in some ways. (Someone explain to me how viability makes a person. It's ludicrous.) Unfortunately, it is brilliant in other ways: as much as conservatives say they hate the "penumbra" idea, it provides for great protection from state power in an age when we're going to need it. "

Tom Paine,
You're confusing Griswald v Conneticut with Roe. Granted, Harry Blackmun justified his majority Roe opinion by citing Griswald and O'Douglas' famous Penumbra and emenations, but Griswald pertained to the sale of artificial contraception to married couples.

O'Douglas finding a "Right to Privacy" (in this case the privacy of married couples to buy and use birth control) where none previously existed still makes no constitutional sense. Both Bickel and Bork's devastating critiques focused on O'Douglas's creation out of thin air to constitutional right to birth control. They warned that Griswald would give birth to more "rights". The 2004 Lawrence vs Texas case, which the majority opinion found a constitutional right to sodomy cited Griswald. Polygamists have stated that they intend to do the same very soon.

JP| 5.15.09 @ 1:28PM

"As long as "Conservatives" are putting their religious / social agenda on the forefront,.."

Yes, like those damn Pilgrims who refused to follow Anglicanism, or Thomas Moore who refused to submit to his King, or those darn Abolishionists who demanded the slaves be freed.

If only religious people stopped being religious all of the GOP's problems, not to mention the world, would go away.

Tom Paine| 5.15.09 @ 2:03PM

JP --

I'm not "confusing" Griswald with Roe. The legal reasoning of Griswald, which served as the basis of some of Roe's legal reasoning, I'm arguing is sound.

The "penumbra" is not the creation of a new right. Rather, it is the logical extension of Constitutional rights. Without privacy, the thinking goes, there can be no "liberty." I generally accept this idea. Article 4 protections especially generate this "penumbra." There is no meaningful liberty without what we now would call a "right to privacy."

Tom Paine| 5.15.09 @ 2:08PM

Put it this way.

If your state passed a law saying you could only have sex with your spouse if your intent was to conceive a child, the only Constitutional remedy would be the "penumbra" defined by Griswald.

I find it difficult to imagine a definition of liberty that would include the ability of the state to dictate proper sexual relations between married persons. I'm happy to have the "penumbra" reasoning to turn to.

Tom Paine| 5.15.09 @ 2:08PM

Put it this way.

If your state passed a law saying you could only have sex with your spouse if your intent was to conceive a child, the only Constitutional remedy would be the "penumbra" defined by Griswald.

Yur Better| 5.15.09 @ 2:48PM

It's time to rejoice not equivocate.

Joe Embryo| 5.15.09 @ 2:49PM

Don't I get an entry into the debate?

jim rice| 5.15.09 @ 3:14PM

"Yes, like those damn Pilgrims who refused to follow Anglicanism, or Thomas Moore who refused to submit to his King, or those darn Abolishionists who demanded the slaves be freed."

yeah, b/c the abolition of slavery was a Christian movement and there weren't churches all over the South who advocated the illegitimacy of the black man's soul and the Catholic church didn't subjugate or murder thousands of indigenous people in South America for the same reason.

And Thomas More's problem was precisely that the King was attempting to coopt religion and turn it into his own political tool.

And if the politicians of the day had left religion out of things, the Pilgrims wouldn't have needed to run away.

Thank you for proving my point.

JP| 5.15.09 @ 3:35PM

Tom Paine,
Why even have amendments if the Constiution can say anything some justice says it could. The founders did not give the judiciary the right to create new rights. Madison went even as far as to say it was the least dangerou branch. There was nothing hidden in the Bill of Rights, nor in the specific clauses. It is absurd is to think otherwise. When people say privacy, what do they mean? Crimnals and degenerates of course love the idea of privacy.

Jim Rice,
You seem blissfully unaware of what liberal secularists have done, beginning with Napolean and ending with Pol Pot. The Church has given us everything from the notion of Man's individual Dignity, our university system, the nuclear family and its protections, to universal ideas concerning justice. The Church protected the classical antiquities of Greece and Rome, as well as thier philosophies.

In the US, it was both the Catholic and Protestant churches that provided the moral and civic underpinnings that we've enjoyed for 230 years. Go to Iran, India, and China and look at thier history. You will find something completely different.

And speaking of Thomas Moore, what King or modern despot doesn't wish to coopt religion for his own poltical ends? You have it backwards, and the framers had it correct. The 1st Amendment's prohibitions were not on the Church but on the State (Congress specifically).

Pkane| 5.15.09 @ 3:52PM

jim rice,

As long as "Conservatives" are putting their religious / social agenda on the forefront, I will never vote for them even though I am typically much more in agreement with true conservative political stances.

This position baffles me. So you'll sit back and accept higher taxes, regulations, and all manner of restrictive anti-choice economic policies that actually affect your every day life because you disagree with Republicans on one issue that elected officials have very little control over anyway?

The abortion issue is settled for now. Abortion is not going to become illegal anytime soon. Anyway, any serious change in abortion policy would only occur because of a staggering shift in public opinion that would have little to do with politicians. It would mean the overturning of Roe by the SCOTUS, a dramatic move that even conservative justices do not take lightly. THEN, that would only mean the states would be free to determine their own abortion policy, which is a federalist solution that I would think even a pro-choice conservative could accept.

Now, compare that process to how major economic choices can be wipe away on a daily basic with little or no debate?