America is Pro-Choice, Any Questions?

In support of a woman's right to choose:

'According to a recent Gallup poll, we are in the majority by a long shot'
By DarkSyde / August 23, 2008

Is anyone still unsure where We the People stand on choice? That right-wing noise machine is effective, listening to the mighty roar of Fake News and tut-tutting talking heads, it's easy to think reproductive choice is a shrinking minority. But according to a recent Gallup poll, we are in the majority by a long shot, and have been since the poll was founded over ten years ago. A few tidbits:

Most Americans oppose the idea of passing laws to outlaw abortion and they soundly reject the idea of overturning Roe. v. Wade.

More broadly, a majority of Americans favor keeping abortion legal in the first trimester but would make it illegal in the second and third trimesters.

Only about 20% or less of those polled over the last decade feel abortion should be illegal in all cases -- the only possible, rational conclusion for anyone who truly believes that a viable embryo at any stage of development is a person with full Constitutional Rights. Almost two thirds of the sample want restrictions to remain the same or be further loosened. A little over half of those polled do not want to see Roe V. Wade overturned while less than a third want it overturned.

The data goes on and on like this. And what's remarkable about these numbers is how consistent they've remained for more than a decade of polling. Anti-choice talking points have been liberally poured into the nation's conscious for twenty or thirty years, backed by almost limitless political, religious, and financial resources. The net result of all that right-wing effort is at best maybe a few, scattered points here and there on the margins.

That explains why the most extreme right-wing control freaks in almost a century were notably less than eager to eliminate choice. Tax breaks for billionaires, sweetheart deals for Big Oil, protection for communist sweat shop owners, all sailed through Tom DeLay's House of Horrors and Bill Frist's Senate as fast as American jobs sailed overseas. But that same crew of sanctimonious blowhards didn’t even try to put up anything other than a token effort to end what they referred to as mass infanticide, they didn’t try even when they had control of both branches of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House. They know damn well it was 1) unpopular, and 2) too useful an issue politically to risk losing. Whatever else we disagree with the grass roots socially conservative right on, and it's quite a long list, this is one thing we can recognize: they got royally screwed by the Republicans. The question is, do they finally recognize it, and if so, what are they going to do about it?

Source / Daily Kos

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