8mm
Posted on 05/16/2007 4:24:38 PM PDT by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- They say that the wording of a poll can lead to any desired result and previous media polls on whether Americans want the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision have been biased. They've said the case allowed abortions only in the first trimester of pregnancy.
But when the breadth of the decision is explained -- that it and a companion case led to virtually unlimited abortions -- a new survey shows that Americans are more likely to favor overturning it.
The Judicial Confirmation Network and the Ethics and Public Policy Center were curious to find out what the public thinks about Roe if educated about the facts of the case.
They commissioned the highly respected national public-affairs research firm Ayres, McHenry & Associates to conduct a national survey of registered voters on abortion issues.
The survey first asked Americans a generic question about whether they wanted Roe overturned and found the public opposes that by a 55 to 34 percent margin.
The polling firm then told respondents that Roe prohibits states from limiting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy and that, if Roe is overturned, states could make abortion policies that would permit abortion for some reasons and bar it for others.
The percentage changes to just 48 to 43 against overturning Roe -- almost within the margin of error -- when they get more information about what it does and doesn't do. It represents a huge shift of 16 percentage points in terms of the public attitude on the case.
In a joint statement, the heads of the groups sponsoring the poll say the results mean that a prolonged national education campaign on Roe could dramatically shift public opinion on it.
"In the face of more than three decades of media misrepresentation about what Roe means and what overturning it would mean, this swing is very striking," they said. "Compared to the brief comments of an anonymous surveyor, consider what a sustained public education campaign on these matters could achieve."
The groups also said that it's worth noting that the survey understated how radical the Roe regime is, as the surveyors avoided the complication of explaining that the "health" exception is so expansive that abortion is, for all practical purposes, available for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy.
The poll found that Republicans initially favored the overturning of Roe by 60 to 32 percent. By the end of the survey, that already whopping margin had increased to 67 to 29 percent.
The swing among Democratic voters was especially marked: 26 points in the direction of favoring a reversal of Roe.
Voters in red states initially opposed the overturning of Roe by 50 to 39 percent. By the end of the survey, they favored the overturning of Roe by 47 to 44 percent.
The poll also asked Americans if they thought abortion should be legal or illegal in a variety of circumstances and found that 60 percent believe that abortions should be legal in 90 percent of the cases in which they're done.
"For all who care about pro-family and pro-life issues, as well as the proper role of the Supreme Court in our system of government, it is imperative that the American people understand how extreme Roe really is," the groups concluded.
"It is equally imperative that they learn that the reversal of Roe would merely restore to the American people their ability to make abortion policies through their elected representatives, instead of having abortion law made by unelected judges."
Which means that a pro-life GOP presidential candidate who can articulate his beliefs can easily win.
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The value of individual life has been ‘lessened’.
Sonograms.
They work.
All states should require a sonogram to show the living breathing human being that the woman is about to murder.
When my brother’s wife was pregnant, they had one of the new 3-D ultrasounds done (not because they were considering abortion, my brother is really into state-of-the-art stuff and he wanted to see it) and the pictures were amazing. When my nephew was born, he looked like the ultrasound pictures.
From 1973 to 1991, which Operation Rescue began getting media coverage, there was non-stop biased media favoring abortion, not only on the nightly news programs, but also in TV programming on both comedy and drama series.
It was amazing to see the shift in public perception when folks started seeing Operation Rescue sit-ins on the nightly news programs, folks protesting abortion who were not what they had been led to believe. Until that point, the pro-abortion media gave everyone the idea that the only people who were against abortion were men who wanted to keep women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen baking apple pies. Instead, they were seeing women and men, young and old, protesting this heinous act, and they realized they'd been lied to by the media.
:
“Which means that a pro-life GOP presidential candidate who can articulate his beliefs can easily win.”
Like the soon-to-be pro-life candidate Fred Thompson?
I can’t wait to see the coniption fit from the Left.
If Roe is reversed, then the decision will revert to the states.
That doesn’t mean that the battle will end there, however. Abortion was universally illegal until a few years before Roe v. Wade was passed, and at the time it was passed limited abortion was available in only a few states. And THAT was the result of a campaign of disinformation by the same liberals—Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the Rockefeller Foundation, a small group of politicians and lawyers—who then pushed Roe v. Wade on us.
For instance, Ronald Reagan approved a modest abortion bill which he thought would preserve the life and health of the mother. What he didn’t know was that “health” would instantly be interpreted by liberal judges as convenience or any other reason, under the pretext that the mother’s “mental health” might be disturbed if anyone prevented her from having an abortion at any stage for any reason or for no reason.
But if Roe is reversed, it means that we will be back on track toward constitutional government and the ability of the people to vote on such matters rather than have them arbitrarily and unconstitutionally imposed on them by unelected judges. Then it will be fought out at the state level, for a while at least.
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