How do I know, with near-scientific certainty, that a recent Gallup poll on American attitudes toward abortion is good news for pro-lifers?
Because the major media—newspapers, television, radio—reported it as such? On the contrary, it’s because the poll was virtually ignored by the Fourth Estate that I know its results bode well for our side and not for the pro-abort side.
Had it been otherwise, the poll would have enjoyed the same breathless, front-page, top-o’-the-hour treatment normally reserved for surveys that favor the liberal point of view.
So what did the poll show? That, for the first time in the 24 years that the Gallup organization has been conducting this particular survey on the issue, nearly as many Americans identify themselves as pro-life (42 percent) as “pro-choice” (48 percent).
That’s quite a change from just six years ago, when 56 percent went with the “pro-choice” label and 33 percent with pro-life.
Once you take into account the fact that what the Gallup people call “intensity on the issue” favors us, you wind up with a dead heat. “Two-thirds of those who hold the pro-life view say they feel very strongly about it, compared to just over half of pro-choice adherents,” they report.
Almost 30 percent say they’re “very strongly pro-life,” compared to 26 percent who report being “very strongly pro-choice.” And while 16 percent of the pro-aborts say abortion is a critical issue for them in deciding which political candidates to support, 24 percent of pro-lifers say the same.
Some things never change, though: Democrats and independents tend to be pro-abort, while Republicans identify themselves far more often as pro-lifers. And you can imagine where most of those who consider religion “very important” in their lives come down on the issue.
Now, I must admit at this point that I don’t place a lot of stock in polls and surveys. Don’t get me wrong—like anyone, I enjoy those relatively rare times when I see my point of view reflected among my fellow citizens. But you have to take such polls, as a writer on National Review’s website recently noted, with a large grain of salt.
For one thing, the reliability of many polls is shaky, at best. Much depends on how a question is phrased and how representative a sample truly is. If, for example, I ask a cohort of single women who live in a big city if they support “a woman’s right to choose,” I’ll get one result. If I ask a few dozen families in the suburbs if they think “a woman should be able to abort her unborn child,” I’ll get another.
Then there’s the tendency of polls and surveys to enforce (albeit subtly) the all-too-fashionable notion that truth is relative. The fact that abortion is wrong isn’t determined by how many people recognize it as such. It’s either wrong and should be outlawed no matter how many favor it, or it’s right and should be protected no matter how many disagree with it.
That said, I think we can safely treat this poll a bit differently. Not because it yields a result we like but because it’s a survey that’s been conducted consistently over a period of years, giving us the ability to track changes in opinion. And while there won’t be much to cheer about until the number of people who say they’re “pro-choice” is reduced even more, at least things seem to be shifting the right way.
Of course, if you worked for the National Organization for Women, you would have a different take. Sometimes, the group notes on its website, “information is muddled … because many journalists don’t understand the intricacies of polling. In fact, questions that include such labels as pro-choice or pro-life often fail to elicit accurate, meaningful answers.”
Yes, NOW doesn’t like to hear how, according to Gallup, the “graphic nature” of the congressional debate over partial-birth abortion has affected the way people view abortion. Nor can it be happy to learn that the poll has prompted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to unveil a new pro-life advertising campaign—one that will include newspaper ads, radio spots and billboards in Philadelphia and other cities.
Sounds like “meaningful answers” to me.
Paul Gallagher, a father of five, is a freelance writer living near Washington, D.C.
(This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International. It first appeared in the October 2001 issue.)
