OPINION:
Abortion is one of those incredibly rare and complex issues for which both sides of the ever-contentious divide will passionately argue that the statistics and polls are on their side.
And to a degree, both flanks are right. Americans tend to consistently support access to early-term abortions, while simultaneously wanting to see the procedure regulated or even banned at later gestational periods.
Putting the tragic moral implications of abortion to the side, the complexity of the issue when it comes to the public’s views on policy cannot be understated.
Yet the pro-choice brigade often refuses to admit or even intentionally obscures the reality that most Americans want abortion restrictions. This fact reared its head once again in a recent survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
About four paragraphs into an article discussing the results titled, in part, “Few U.S. adults support full abortion bans, even in states that have them,” readers will discover the following line: “By 24 weeks of pregnancy, most Americans think their state should generally not allow abortions.”
Talk about burying the lede. That’s a pretty startling finding.
Of course, most media lead with the pro-abortion mantras and data showing Americans don’t want to see the procedure banned — a fact further complicated and fueled by the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide.
Sure, polls do show that most Americans don’t like abortion bans. The AP-NORC poll found 73% believe abortions should be permitted at six weeks of pregnancy.
The media generally love to parrot and hammer home such statistics and often slip in the more compelling facts about the majority also wanting caps somewhere deep into the abyss of their coverage. Activists go even further, acting as though their narrative creates a complete story.
It doesn’t.
There’s no hiding the reality that the further along a pregnancy goes, the more unpalatable abortion becomes. The 73% who want to make abortion legal six weeks into a pregnancy dwindles to 51% at the 15-week mark.
And it shrinks even further to 27% at the 24-week mark, with 68% saying abortion should not be legally allowed at that point.
Democrats, without a doubt, are most likely to support abortion later in pregnancy. A whopping 75% believe abortions should be allowed at 15 weeks and a sobering 43% believe it should be permitted 24 weeks into a pregnancy.
In both instances, Democrats are out of step with the public at large — another fact often ignored and obscured in the media. In the “shout your abortion era,” most Americans still want to see restrictions and caps on the procedure, and there’s a compelling reason.
Most people recognize there’s life inside the womb. Tragically, some see the unborn as being of lesser or no value, but the further a baby’s development progresses, the harder it is to deny what’s ostensibly right in front of our faces: The unborn are human beings, not mere matter.
This is a truth that one side of the aisle seems to understand more clearly than the other. While 54% of Americans believe abortions should be permitted when a person “does not want to be pregnant for any reason,” this proportion swells to 79% among Democrats.
It’s hard to see those statistics and not lament the lack of respect for life, particularly among progressives. Beyond that, despite the media narrative favoring the pro-abortion side, liberals’ views on the issue aren’t on the right or winning side — and that’s worth noting.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America, recently told me why she believes the pro-choice side’s increased push for no abortion restrictions isn’t only wrong morally, but also politically.
“They’re rallying around a 10% issue that now would be real late-term abortion — all abortion up into the end, paid for by taxpayers,” she said, calling it a losing issue. “Passing a federal law to establish that and knock down all of our laws — that’s their goal.”
In the end, while the politics certainly matter, the bigger issue of import is driving home the reality that human lives in the womb deserve dignity and protection.
Most Americans seem to already understand this at some point in the gestational journey. Now it’s time for the pro-life movement to expound on that reality, appeal to humanity and break past the evils attempting to conceal these truths.
• Billy Hallowell is a digital TV host and interviewer for Faithwire and CBN News and the co-host of CBN’s “Quick Start Podcast.” He is the author of four books.
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