Republicans better get their act together on abortion or they'll get wiped out again in 2024
The opposition has persuaded just about everyone that most Americans are "pro-choice," but when you get into the numbers, Democrats are in the minority.
Some time ago I heard a host on a left-wing cable network say that 60 percent of Americans support abortion. He predicted that come 2024 most Americans will vote that way, resulting in another defeat like in 2020 when the GOP failed to live up to expectations by long shot.
But when you look at the details in public opinion polls, most Americans are not in favor—by a long shot—of what we hear from Democratic candidates. Their campaign talking points assert that Democrats are moderate on abortion and Republicans are extreme. That’s exactly wrong.
To back this up, I’m using Gallup’s “Where Do Americans Stand on Abortion?” because the group has been measuring public opinion on abortion for decades, with few, if any, challenges from either.
To start, here are the basic numbers, according to Gallup:
In a way, the pro-abortion commentator was right. If you combine all those who support abortion in one form or another, it’s a 85 percent majority who are “pro-choice.” But notice that 34 percent that are in favor of “legal under any circumstance.” Let’s be clear, that means abortion “up to the moment of birth” and without any restrictions.
Such as saying that minors must be able to get an abortion without getting permission from parents, or even notifying parents. By their silence one this, Democrats have adopted this wild idea.
What does the data say about who is most extreme: those who oppose abortion under any circumstance or those who want to legalize abortion for whatever and whenever reason? Clearly the “extremists” are those on the left, who would give absolute authority to “terminate” a life without qualification.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
The percentages on both ends of the spectrum remain the same: 34 percent and 13 percent. But you can fog up the differences even more if you combine “any circumstance,” “most circumstances,” and “a few circumstances.” That totals 83 percent. If you’re dishonest, you can claim that 83 percent of Americans “favor abortion.” But, again, they fail to point out important nuances. And the press lets them get away with it by not asking candidates where they standard on which restrictions should he imposed and which not.
In my years of covering this story, here are a few of the rabid demands:
Abortion clinics must not be subject to the laws, rules and regulations imposed on other health care providers and their clinics. This rabid extreme, for example, opposed a requirement that doorways be wide enough to accommodate EMT stretchers. Favoring doorways wide enough to accommodate emergency aid was labeled an extremist anti-abortion effort to reduce the number of abortions. (That may be true, but should we ignore every woman who needs to be rushed to a hospital because of, say, fatal bleeding?) Proving the need for abortion clinic health standards was well illustrated decades ago by a Chicago Sun-Times investigative series, “Abortion Profiters.” It’s must reading for anyone how thinks that the abortion industry is clean as clean.1
A case of a girl, even as young as 14, who was impregnated by an adult (father, brother, boyfriend, sex pervert, etc.) should not be reported to the state as child sexual assault. Even though it is apparent that the man accompanying the child is forcing the abortion on her. Not investigating a minor’s need for an abortion should be a felony for hiding child sexual abuse.
Mandatory ultrasounds, to show exactly what is being killed, must be verboten. Best not to know a minor is a victim, I guess. Is there a plank in the Democratic platform advocating ignorance?
“Born alive” laws that require life-giving and comforting steps be taken to protect infants who were born alive when they were supposed to have died from abortion also are opposed by the abortion industry. But this infanticide happens. A nurse at a Chicago-area hospital described how such a child was consigned to a linen closet, left to die. (See “They Are Real: Meet Born-Alive Abortion Survivors”. Also see below an op-ed I wrote for the Sun-Times, “A New Low in Heartlessness.”2) Barack Obama voted against such a law when he was in the Illinois State Legislature, revealing at an early stage that he would toe the line to further his ambitious political career.
There’s more, but I need room for more Gallup findings. You can get a deeper understanding of the demographics from the below chart. You’ll noted that the bulk of public opinion is found in the middle.
My Sun-Times op-ed decades ago delved into the complexity of the issue, using similar Gallup data. An angry pro-choice activist called to accuse me of making up the data. I sent him a copy of the research and never heard back from him again.
So, Republicans should emphasize this. Keep hammering away that the bigger extreme is on the pro-choice and left side. The Democratic position fails to recognize that there’s any humanity in the fetus until it is born. That’s a ghastly and raw view of our fellow humans, reveling a troubling streak of ultra-individualism.
Many prolife crisis pregnancy clinics that don’t recommend or provide abortions recognize this. But rabid prochoicers are trying to shut them down. (Here.)
A new low in heartlessness
September 29, 1999 | Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Author/Byline: Dennis Byrne | Page: 49 | Section: EDITORIAL
642 Words
The argument that abortion doesn't kill a "person" centers on the assertion that a fetus isn't a person until it is born.
So what do you call an abortion procedure in which the fetus is born alive, then is left to die without medical care? Infanticide? Murder?
Most people would recoil at just the thought of such a gruesome, uncaring procedure, but it is practiced at at least one Chicago suburban hospital. When I called Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, I frankly expected a denial that it uses the procedure, but instead a spokeswoman explained it is used for "a variety of second-trimester" abortions when the fetus has not yet reached viability. That's up to 23 weeks of life, when a fetus is considered not yet developed enoughtosurviveon its own.
Instead of medical care, the child is provided "comfort care," wrapped in a blanket and held when possible. The procedure is chosen by parents and doctors instead of another method in which the fetus is "terminated" within the womb by, for example, injection with a chemical that stops the heart. Under Christ Hospital's procedure, which the spokeswoman said is used at some other area hospitals, the abortion is induced with prostaglandin, a drug that relaxes the cervix and allowsforthefetusto be born.
Pro-life advocates have reacted with incredulity, calling the procedure "live birth abortions." They wonder why, if a death certificate is required, a birth certificate isn't. They wonder how such a brutal procedure can be used at a faith-based hospital named after Christ. One hospital nurse has complained that babies are sometimes are left to struggle on their own for up six or seven hours until death frees them from their torment.
She said a newborn, with no one around to hold it, once was left to die in a soiled linen closet_a charge the hospital denies. The hospital says none of the abortions are "elective," but are done only to protect the life or health of the mother or when the fetus is nonviable due to extreme prematurity or lethal abnormalities. The nurse, Jill Stanek, says she has seen some elective abortions done on newborns whose physical or mental defects are deemed incompatible only with "quality of life."
Pro-life advocates have picketed the hospital. Karen Hayes, Illinois state director of Concerned Women for America, has asked Attorney General Jim Ryan to determine whether the practice violates the Illinois Hospital Licensing Act and the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act. Ryan in turn asked the Department of Public Health to conduct an inquiry into the practice. A Health Department spokesman said the law prohibits them from discussing the matter until a new law takeseffectJan.1.
Frankly, I wonder whether the procedure is any more brutal than other abortion procedures, involving the cutting or poisoning of the fetus before it is born. The fetus, according to studies, can feel pain. Those who consider themselves compassionate ought to be appalled at the idea that any death_inside or outside the womb_is a suitable, civilized solution.
But the procedure itself raises deeper questions. First, there's the legality. It should be up to the attorney general and state's attorney to determine whether the procedure is infanticide. Read Roe v. Wade upside down and sideways, and I find nothing in it that legitimizes the killing of a born child. If the law is unclear, the Legislature should make it clear.
Looming larger is the moral question. Partial-birth abortions supposedly are acceptable because a small part of the child still remains in the birth canal, and thus is considered unborn when it is killed. The Christ Hospital case now makes it clear that legal rights and protections don't even begin with birth, as many pro-choice advocates have staunchly argued. That even a live, bornhuman being has no right to life because someone else has decided its chances at life are slim. Orthatitslifewon't be worth living.
My only question to them is: To what hell is this leading us?