According to the latest Gallup Poll, 50% of Americans now consider themselves pro-life, up 5% from last year, and the numbers of those who call themselves pro-choice has dropped to a record low of 41%. Additionally, this increase in people identifying as pro-life is consistent among Republicans (up 4%), Democrats (up 7%), and independents (up 6%). However, the number of people who believe that abortion is immoral is unchanged from last year at 51%, and the percentage of people who believe that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances has remained mostly steady since 1975 and is currently at 2o%. These numbers indicate that while there has been a shift in how people identify themselves – pro-life or pro-choice – their actual opinions on abortion remain virtually the same.
Youth March for Life in Washington, D.C. Photo by Sal Guerrero.
It seems that while most of us believe that abortion is immoral, we don’t believe that it is bad enough to put a stop to. We are still allowing the pro-choice rhetoric to cloud our judgment while we stand by as children are murdered at the hands of their own mothers and greedy abortionists. Those age-old pro-choice slogans still echo in people’s minds and spill through their lips: “a woman’s body,” “a woman’s health,” “a baby incompatible with life.” And people still argue that we can’t go back to coat-hanger abortions,
that abortion has existed since the dawn of time, that fetuses aren’t people. But these twisted words and arguments aren’t anything that the pro-life movement can’t defeat.
Pro-aborts’ arguments in favor of abortion go hand-in-hand with the pro-slavery arguments for the United States to withhold the rights of African-Americans. Those arguments included the fact that the Dred Scott decision ruled that all African-Americans had no legal standing as persons, the fact that slavery had existed throughout history and was therefore part of the natural order of things, and the assumption that the end of legal slavery would bring about economic decline and bloodshed. Yet slavery was abolished, and this proves that abortion can be too.
Despite the fact that most of America still believes abortion should be legal under certain circumstances (52%), there is reason to celebrate. If 51% of Americans say that abortion is immoral, then it is only a matter of time before they all realize that it should also be illegal. With increased access to technology that shows us life inside the womb, and with a growing young generation of pro-lifers, these numbers are likely to change in favor of the rights of unborn people. It is a fickle time in America, and the perfect time to change hearts and save lives.
