In the battle of the so-called “right to abortion,” the mainstream media and abortion industry have declared that women want abortion to be legal and accessible. Abortion has been deemed a women’s health care issue and it has been implied that women vote for politicians based on their support for abortion. Meanwhile, men have been told they are not allowed to voice an opinion unless they support abortion. But as it turns out, men are actually more supportive of expanding abortion than women are — and men played a large part in its legalization.
Statistics show women are more pro-life than men
According to a 2017 Marist poll, the majority of American women are in favor of abortion restrictions and do not want it to be funded by the government. That poll found that 83% of women favored laws prohibiting the funding of overseas abortions, though President Joe Biden rescinded the policy that ensured this almost immediately after he took office.
In addition, 77% of women in the Marist poll said they want abortion limited to the first trimester — in line with the overall 74% of Americans who agree. In addition, 61% of women said it is vital for the government to restrict abortion. According to the poll, 59% of women believe abortion is morally wrong and 51% say abortion harms women in the long run. After over four decades of legalized abortion, it is now well known that abortion leads to an increased risk of depression, drug and alcohol use, and suicidal thoughts.
A 2018 CBS/Refinery 29 poll found that only 28% of women aged 18-35 wanted abortion “legal in all cases.” According to a previous Live Action News article, “Other results included: 34% want abortion ‘legal in most cases,’ 25% want abortion ‘illegal in most cases,’ and 13% want abortion ‘illegal in all cases.'” That means that overall, “72% are likely in favor of some kind of abortion restriction” despite 69% thinking Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.
READ: New poll: More than half of Americans disagree with Roe v Wade
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll published in 2019 found that women were more likely than men to favor funding Planned Parenthood facilities that provided services that did not include abortion, but that gender gap reportedly “disappeared” when those services included abortions or abortion referrals. At Slate, William Saletan wrote of these results:
The Harvard poll found the same pattern: Women were more likely than men to support funding of Planned Parenthood, but not more likely to support Medicaid coverage of abortions…
Why would the gender gap on reproductive health care dissolve when the question turns to abortion? Apparently, something about abortion bothers a lot of women in a way that birth control and STD treatments don’t.
But these polling statistics are not new. In 2013, when the GOP was pushing for a 20-week abortion ban, polling showed that women were more likely to support the ban than men were. A Quinnipiac poll found that 60% of women favor restricting abortion to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy while only 50% of men do. In addition, just 25% of women oppose a 20-week abortion ban.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll in 2013 had similar findings. It revealed, according to The Washington Post, that 60% of women supported the 20-week abortion ban. Polling from NBC/Wall Street Journal and the National Journal also found that more women supported a 20-week ban on abortion than those that opposed it.
Around the same time, across the pond in the UK, the University of Lancaster found that 26% of men supported restrictions on abortion compared to 43% of women. According to The Guardian, all polling shows a consistent gender gap in support for abortion restrictions of about 20 percentage points. It reported that 24-35% of men want more restrictions on abortion versus 43-59% of women.
A year earlier, in 2012, UKPollingReport had already found that these gender differences regarding abortion restrictions were similar across varying polls, stating:
Polls consistently show … that women are more likely than men to support a reduction on the abortion limit. In the 2011 YouGov poll 28% of men supported a reduction, 46% of women did. In the 2012 YouGov poll 24% of men supported a reduction, 49% of women did. In the Angus Reid poll 35% of men supported a reduction in the limit, 59% of women did. In the ICM poll 45% of men supported a reduction to 20 weeks, 59% of women did.
Even prior to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 all-male Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States, more women were opposed to abortion than men. As previously reported by Live Action News, a Minnesota poll conducted in 1971 found that nearly 60% of those who wanted abortion to be legalized were men, not women. And it was men who pushed the women’s movement to adopt a pro-abortion agenda and caused a divide in the women’s movement that has lasted nearly five decades.
Historically, men have been the catalysts for abortion-on-demand
In 1989, Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women known as the “mother of the women’s movement,” admitted that men pressured her to take a pro-abortion stance. “I remember that there were some men… that had been trying to reform these criminal abortion laws,” she said. “And they got a sense somehow that the women’s movement might make everything different… They kept nagging at me… to try and do something… ‘We need some organization to take up…abortion rights.'”
Later, she teamed up with two of those men, Dr. Bernard Nathanson (who later became pro-life) and Larry Lader, to form NARAL, then known as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. Today NARAL is better known as NARAL Pro-Choice America.
READ: Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand… and Americans don’t support that
“Sexually progressive men have always been the main players dictating the sexual revolution,” said Washington Examiner journalist Stella Morabito in 2012. “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.”
She wrote that “elitist men” are the ones pushing for unrestricted abortion but they need women to be the face of their agenda. Powerful men, she believed, have a lot to gain from the legalization of abortion-on-demand.
“A male activist advocating for abortion at a UN conference summed it up best,” wrote Morabito. She quoted him as saying, “Let’s stop fooling around here. What we’re talking about is our right to f–k whoever we want, however we want, whenever we want.”
The pro-life movement has never been about restricting women’s rights but ensuring that women are protected from the pain of abortion and from the men who so often coerce them into abortion, as well as restoring the right to life for preborn human beings. Women are pro-life, and pro-lifers are pro-women.
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