Abortion, from its legal inception, was never from women or for women. It was forced on Americans by pro-abortion men using fabricated statistics who eventually co-opted the women’s movement of the 1960’s. The media played a willing role by headlining articles to make it appear as if the public — and specifically women — favored legalization when polls showed otherwise.
Percentages of women opposed to abortion higher than percentage of men
A 1965 National Opinion Research Center survey found that while a majority of Americans favored abortion in certain instances, 77 percent said no to abortion even if the family could not afford more children, 80 percent said no even if the mother was unmarried and did not want to marry the child’s father, and 83 percent said no even if the woman was married and did not want any more children. The January 15, 1968, report by the Southern Illinoisan did not say how this polling broke down by gender.
Then, in 1969, shortly after California liberalized abortion, a poll of men and women which indicated support for abortion for financial and health reasons, actually showed men and women alike overwhelmingly disapproved of abortion for any reason the mother chooses.
Two years prior to Roe, a Minnesota poll conducted by Senator Eugene Mammenga asked voters if they were “in favor of a more liberal abortion law.” Out of the signed responses, the Daily Pioneer reported that, nearly 60 percent of those who approved of legalizing abortion were men.
In more conservative Ada, Oklahoma, results were similar. When asked in 1971 to respond to the statement, “A married couple should be able to obtain a legal abortion from a physician if they both want it and the physician agrees,” the response most often chosen by females was “strongly disagree.”
On the statement, “Any woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion from her physician on demand,” 40 percent of males disagreed but an overwhelming 56 percent of females disagreed. In 1972, a year prior to Roe, a statewide poll conducted in West Virginia showed that overall, the population did not favor legalizing abortion.
According to a report by the Charleston Gazette, voters in 12 counties were asked to respond “yes” or “no” to the statement, “Abortion should be legalized in West Virginia.” 63.2 percent said no, while 34.3 percent said yes, with women expressing even more opposition than men. An overwhelming 68.9 percent of women opposed legalizing abortion in the state.
READ: If you’re against New York’s abortion law, then you’re against Roe v. Wade
1972 Virginia State Poll
“Sexually progressive men” were the ones pushing for legalized abortion
In 2012, Washington Examiner journalist Stella Morabito noted that “[s]exually progressive men have always been the main players dictating the sexual revolution. Their feminist counterparts were propelled and shadowed by them. Together, they seek to impose a radical agenda that includes mandating taxpayer funded contraceptives, trashing all forms of abstinence education, undermining marriage, standardizing third-trimester abortion, encouraging single motherhood, enacting population controls that erode a woman’s choice to have a child, and ultimately enforcing eugenics.”
Morabito added:
Elitist men have always been the demographic most strongly in support of unrestricted abortion, though they needed vocal women to do their bidding. Note this conclusion of demographer Judith Blake in her study, “Abortion and Public Opinion: The 1960-1970 Decade” in Science magazine in 1971:
“Legalized abortion is supported most strongly by the non-Catholic, male, well-educated ‘establishment.'” She urged abortion proponents to look to them for legalization “in spite of conservative opinions among important subgroups such as the lower classes and women.”
Blake added: “Upper-class men have much to gain and very little to lose by an easing of legal restrictions against abortion.”
Blake was chairman of the Department of Demography at Berkeley when she reviewed years of polling of white Americans’ views on abortion, and found a significant opposition to elective abortion.
On March 1, 1971, the Daily Democrat keyed in on one surprising trend: “Well educated, upper middle class, non Catholic men take the most liberal view on all questions although even a majority of that group still clings to a non-permissive stance on elective, ‘selfish’ abortions.”
While Blake claimed to find that a majority of Americans at that time favored some form of legalization for health reasons, most also wanted some form of regulation. But, when pushed on the issue, Blake said she found that “[b]y the time you got through some wanting restrictions one way, some another, the setting up of agencies for decisions and spending of millions in public funds, I think the answer you’d get from people is, ‘forget it. Leave it lay. It’s not that important to me.'”
The general public — and especially women — disapproved of abortion
In 1978, Independent Journal columnist Michael Novak quoted Blake from a study she published in March 1977 on abortion polling in the Population and Development Review, writing, “‘Regardless of the data base,’ she writes, ‘none of the results show as many as 50 percent respondents approving, and most surveys indicate levels of approval for abortion that are well below 50 percent.'”
He continues, “The Gallup poll of 1977 shows only 30 percent approval; The NORC poll shows only 44 percent approval; The National Fertility Study of 1970 shows only 21 percent approval. Resistance, [Blake] notes, seems to have stabilized and hardened.”
READ: Exposing the six lies of Roe v. Wade that led to legal abortion
Michael Novak on Blake study
Novak keyed in on polling results Blake reported on women, writing:
Blake shows that 52 percent of non catholic women believe that life begins at conception and another 17 percent believe that life begins at quickening…
Only 11 percent of women believe that abortion should be legal at anytime in pregnancy…. A further 5 percent would permit it only before 5 months. Another 8 percent would permit it before 4 months…
A vast majority “regards the fetus as a human life or a human person very early in the gestational period,” professor Blake records.
Today, after 46 years of legalization, many women are speaking out about abortion’s negative effects and coming forward to reveal the truth of what it does to preborn children. Abortion was built on lies, but it will be truth that wins in the long run.
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