WSJ/NBC poll: Majority once again thinks abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances

Blogworthy not just because it complements the Gosnell coverage but because this old post kicked off two days of arguments in the comments about whether Americans really were becoming more pro-abortion over time. That trend fit with various other trends towards social liberalization, starting with gay marriage, and with post-election claims that the long-touted Democratic realignment had arrived.

Good news and bad news there for pro-lifers. The bad news: The new numbers are in line with most of the other data over the last 10 years. Americans aren’t becoming more pro-choice but they’re not really becoming more pro-life either. (If the Gosnell story breaks out in a big way, that may change in the next round of polling.) The good news: The January numbers showing 54 percent in favor of legal abortion in most or all circumstances looks like an outlier. Either it’s statistical noise or the Akin/Mourdock backlash from last summer finally faded and left pollsters with the pre-2012 status quo. At the very least, you can take the new numbers as a sign that Republicans’ efforts to limit abortion at the state level aren’t generating a backlash (yet).

Still, though, 45 percent support abortion rights in most or all circumstances. What does that mean specifically? WaPo answers:

You can see vividly in that second column why Akin and Mourdock were such a liability for the GOP. There’s good news and bad news in this data too, of course. The good news is that abortions for reasons of personal convenience draw majority opposition, even in cases where the mother says she can’t afford the child. The bad news is that there’s more than 40 percent support for abortion under every circumstance here, even when you phrase it as blithely as “for any reason.” (Oddly, “for any reason” appears to have more support than “Don’t want to marry the man,” which I would think falls under”any reason.”) I often hear pro-lifers say that future generations will look back in horror at what America permitted over the last 40 years in the name of “women’s health”; I wish that were true, but I’m not sure what they expect to see happen between now and, say, 2050 to move these numbers dramatically. You’ve got 40 percent of the public, and probably 80 percent of the media, willing to bless fetal neck-snipping on demand as some sort of civil-libertarian triumph. What’s going to dissolve those numbers? If the facts of the Gosnell case don’t do it, what?

That is changing as states start to realize their power I’m seeing votes moving towards defining life, if we go slowly enough we will sway and reeducate the state population into seeing abortion as just anther form of murder as well.

The key is making exception to murder for the life of the mother, and possibly rape & defect.
If we do that first then in 20 years as people accept that abortion is murder those exceptions might become more controversial.

“It defies reason because it is a liberal invention. America has sunk to the depths of depravity and deserves an Old Testament judgement.”

I don't know about that, I think this is quite encouraging.

Look at the three exceptions life, rape, and defect. Theses would all be perfectly acceptable exceptions as apposes to what is currently going on. (mere leisure.)

We need to capitalize on theses 3 exceptions and define abortion as murder with theses 3 exceptions to said murder.

Then in time we can start working on diswadeing people against theses exception.

We can work with these exceptiosn ONCE we have firmly defined abortion as murder in law with theses 3 exceptions. Then its quite simplely campaining on the moral question of:

1: Is it right to kill someone simply because their defective? (against the birth defect exception).

2: Is it right to kill someone because of the crime of a 3rd person? (Against the Rape exception).

I don't think we can ever fight against the health exception because if the mother dies then so too does the child, and if we have to choose between the two of them. The Mother having had 15 to 40 years invested in her is clearly more valuable. Frankly I agree with the health exception provided the health risk is serous.

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