Shift In Public Opinion On Abortion May Impact Elections

Tight margins among the candidates campaigning for their political party’s nomination for president will encourage voters to seek out issues that elevate one candidate above the others. The issue in 2008 might wind up being abortion.

In the 1980 presidential election Ronald Reagan forthrightly campaigned as a pro-life candidate and abortion has been a campaign issue ever since.  This has been especially meaningful for Republican candidates because it brought millions of evangelicals and Catholics from political apathy into political activism.  In Reagan’s case pro-life Democrats crossed party lines to support his candidacy.

During the 1980s and 1990s pro-life voters were generally considered a minority segment of the voting population. Public opinion polls from those two decades show that a clear majority of Americans supported abortion. In the mid-1990s 56 percent of the American public identified themselves as pro-choice while only 33 percent considered themselves to be pro-life.

But public opinion has changed. Currently about an equal percentage of Americans consider themselves pro-life as opposed to pro-choice.

In May 2007 a CNN/Gallup poll found that more people considered themselves pro-life (50 percent) than pro-choice (45 percent). CNN/Gallup did another poll one week later and found the numbers reversed with 45 percent identifying as pro-life and 49 percent as pro-choice. Regardless of which poll you believe is the most reliable the fact is that in the last decade there has been major shift of 19 – 28 percentage points in public opinion on the issue of abortion.

Polls are not the only evidence that attitudes about abortion have changed. The Guttmacher Institute originally founded by Planned Parenthood and still receiving funding from them recently reported that the number of abortions carried out in the United States in 2005 the latest year of available data has declined to the lowest level since 1976.

Even with a doubling of the number of chemically-induced abortions the overall number of children being aborted continues a downward decline that began in the 1990s. While the Guttmacher report offers no conclusive explanation for the decline it may be reflective of the shift in public opinion as more women choose life for their children.

It would be reasonable to conclude that the decline in the number of abortions is a result of the shift in public opinion regarding abortion-on-demand. What remains to be seen is whether or not the shift will have any impact on public policy or politics.

A report entitled Turnaround on Abortion published by Overbrook Research an Illinois-based public opinion research firm offers some interesting insights into what they believe is the major contributing factor to the shift in public opinion on abortion.

According to the authors the shift has been tremendously influenced by the debate over the practice of partial-birth abortion. As most people now know partial-birth abortions involve delivering a viable or even full-term baby feet first from its mother’s womb with only its head not fully delivered. The baby within inches of being considered a “live birth” is killed by the abortionist in a gruesome procedure that results in the collapse of the baby’s skull.

Partial-birth abortion exploded into the public’s consciousness in 1996 and 1997 when the Republican majority in Congress passed laws banning this abhorrent practice only to have both bills vetoed by President Bill Clinton. Attempts to override Clinton’s veto failed but as a result of the massive media coverage of the Congressional debate the public’s view of the liberal commitment to abortion-on-demand began to change. Finally in 2003 the Republican majority in Congress passed another partial-birth abortion ban that was signed into law by President George W. Bush. 

Despite the fact that public opinion polls showed overwhelming support for the bill thirty Democrats and three Republican senators voted against the ban which is indicative of how totally committed these senators are to abortion-on-demand regardless of how appalling the procedure might be. Abortion rights activists immediately challenged the ban and in April 2007 by a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the law. 

So just how does the abortion issue factor into choosing a presidential candidate? The top candidates in Republican and Democrat presidential primaries are running close races. The outcome of the primaries and the 2008 general election may be decided by public perception of where candidates stand on one or two issues.

Given the tremendous swing in public opinion abortion just might be one of those issues.

Gary Palmer is president of the Alabama Policy Institute a non-partisan non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets limited government and strong families which are indispensable to a prosperous society.