(h/t Valerie) Today marks a great victory for "the people of life and for life." Gallup issued the following article on their recent polling: A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995. […] The new results, obtained from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002. The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion. And here’s a fascinating tidbit for the Palin nation: Additionally, a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center recorded an eight percentage-point decline since last August in those saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, from 54% to 46%. The percentage saying abortion should be legal in only a few or no cases increased from 41% to 44% over the same period. A sharp decline since last August? Hmmm, what happened last August? Oh, yes. Hurricane Sarah happened. And she introduced the nation to her beautiful and perfect son Trig. Nothing is an accident. She said in her Evansville speech: There has been great purpose in what I went through this past year. Yes, there has. We don’t all have to agree on this issue. Many good people disagree. And many have come to see the issue differently because of Sarah Palin. I’d like to share a long comment that our reader "DB" (whose eloquence has been featured on this website before) left in today’s Open Thread: Several on this thread have commented about the new poll by Gallup which shows, for the first time since they’ve asked this question, the majority of Americans now identify them selves as pro-life. If true, this really is big news. It also seems to run counter to many of the recent political trends in the country such as the proliferation of states in which gay marriage has been adopted and, of course, the election of the most radically extreme pro-abortion president in the country’s history. If the Gallup poll is accurate, what has caused this sea change in public opinion? Why the return to a more traditional view on life now, despite other trends in the opposite direction? I can’t help but think Governor Palin may have something to do with this. In fact, I would go so far as to say that she and her rise to prominence has more to do with it than any other single factor. Allow me to explain why I believe this to be the case. I have always been from the Libertarian wing of conservatism. In other words, I look at every issue (and I do mean every issue), in a limited government context. Whichever side of an issue results in less government is the side of that issue I come down on. As a result, I have found myself on the side of Republicans on almost every issue ever since I first voted in the 1980 election, about 5 weeks after my 18th birthday (I voted for Reagan by the way). There is, however, one notable exception…abortion. Having said that, I never considered abortion to be a particularly salient issue so I’ve always voted Republican anyway. The ardent pro-choice crowd maintains they don’t want the government to intrude in the bedroom. I can’t argue with that. But, I could never support them because they are perfectly fine with having the government intrude on every other aspect of my life. As an aside, even as a generally pro-choice individual, I instinctively knew that Roe vs. Wade was a terrible decision. In Roe, the court manufactured a right to an abortion out of thin air based on some amorphous generalized right to privacy that was itself manufactured out of thin air in the Griswold case (I seem to recall taking a con law class in college). Although I’m not a lawyer, there certainly seems to be a gaping lack of intellectual vigor in that kind of logic (or illogic as the case may be). But I digress. Ronald Reagan is, by far, my favorite president for too many reasons to list. However, as much as I admired and respected him, my libertarian position on abortion never wavered, even when he spoke out on the issue. To be sure, during the 1980s I was in college and was consumed with more important issues such as wine, women, and song, to quote an old cliché. I was, however, paying enough attention to politics in the 1980s to know that Judge Bork was unfairly attacked by the liberals and I even felt compelled, notwithstanding my busy social calendar, to write a letter to the editor of my very liberal campus newspaper supporting Bork. Much to my surprise it was printed. So, despite my libertarian inclinations, I usually find myself on the same side as the pro-life voters, even if I didn’t consider myself pro-life per se. This I would sometimes ponder, but never to the point of resolution. Last October I was sitting at home, flipping through the channels on TV, not very hopeful that I would find anything sufficiently interesting to warrant my attention. Unfortunately, I assumed, I would have to go outside and fire up the leaf blower, something I had been putting off all morning. As I desperately used my...
↧