Recent polling data on U.S. attitudes about abortion may be leaving many people confused about what Americans really believe. This is unsurprising, given the media’s spin on this data, and the fact that the numbers themselves often seem paradoxical.
A recent poll published by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP/NORC) provides a fitting example of both media spin and seemingly contradictory data. The poll’s headline states, “Support for legal abortion increased since Roe v. Wade was overturned” — and this angle seems to be what many media outlets, including PBS, CBS, and various local news affiliates, have chosen to focus on. However, the sub-heading under the title alludes to the internal inconsistencies in the poll’s results. It states: “Sixty-one percent of adults want their state to allow abortion for any reason, up from 49% before the Supreme Court decision. But there is support for some restrictions.”
These two statements seem plainly contradictory – how can the majority of people say abortion for any reason should be allowed, while at the same time, a majority also feels there should be laws restricting various aspects of abortion?
For example, 54% of those polled indicated they would support laws mandating parental notification for abortions committed on minors; similarly, only a small percentage (30%) of respondents felt abortion should be legal at 24 weeks.
To be fair, this is nothing new. Multiple other polls have reported similarly puzzling findings, indicating that the broad labels of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in their purest senses rarely apply to individual Americans – self-described “pro-life” people may want exceptions to permit abortion under certain circumstances, while self-described “pro-choice” people often want to limit the legality of abortion and/or regulate it in various ways.
In short, Americans’ views on abortion are all over the map and are often inconsistent or even incoherent.
Why is that?
The AP/NORC poll actually hints at one likely influencing factor.
AP/NORC asked people about their levels of support for a variety of hypothetical laws, including laws “protecting access to abortions for patients who are experiencing miscarriages or other pregnancy-related emergencies.” In other words, AP/NORC deliberately conflated abortion with miscarriage care – even though an induced abortion, by definition, can only be committed on a living child, whereas miscarriage care can only be provided when the preborn child has already died.
READ: There’s a difference between miscarriage and abortion, and learning the truth matters
Similarly, AP/NORC’s question implied that abortion is a standard treatment in pregnancy emergencies – even though it isn’t. As Live Action News previously reported:
Induced abortion is not the standard of care or “appropriate medical care” for any medical emergency during pregnancy, and the procedures and treatments that are standard of care are not prohibited by pro-life laws. Abortion is not the standard of care for the preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), preeclampsia, placenta accreta, placenta percreta, placenta increta, placenta previa, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, cervical insufficiency, or infection. While some of these conditions may require an early delivery of the baby, or a procedure to remove a deceased baby, these are not the same as intentionally killing the preborn child.
Because media outlets and even so-called health care organizations have misled the public by blurring the lines between these very different procedures, individual Americans’ conflicting opinions on abortion are very likely at least partially attributable to plain, old-fashioned confusion and ignorance.
Sadly, there are consequences for this confusion and ignorance. When decisions regarding the permissibility of killing are made by popular vote, and the people casting those votes have poor comprehension of the issue being decided, the end result is that rights are violated and lives are unjustly taken.
