About 25 years ago, I had the privilege to sit down to interview the late George Gallup, Jr., the esteemed pollster whose father founded Gallup Polls.
One of the things Gallup, Jr. said that I’ve never forgotten was his response to my question: Is America pro-abortion rights or pro-life?
He said 20% of Americans are strongly pro-choice. 20% are strongly pro-life. And the other 60% are in the “mushy middle,” and they can go either way depending upon what you ask and how you ask. I imagine that is still roughly the case.
Fast forward to this election season, and abortion is on the ballot again, directly or indirectly.
Obviously, the key presidential candidates and their teams differ greatly on this, as do others running for office. But abortion is more directly on the ballot in 11 states that have referenda dealing with the issue. One of those is Florida, generally a pro-life state.
Since Roe was overturned, some states have voted to allow even more abortions than would have been accepted before. Is Ohio pro-life? If so, why did they vote for abortion up to the moment of birth last year?
Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, remarks that if given a choice between two extremes: either zero abortions allowed or abortion without any restrictions, Americans will choose the latter not the former.
Dr. Chris Leader of Vote Your Faith has studied the ballot initiatives on abortion. As noted, Florida has Amendment #4 on the ballot. A vote “yes” on that referendum is a vote for abortion up to the moment of birth.
Surprisingly, some polls find Americans far less pro-abortion than the mainstream media would have us believe.
I interviewed Dr. Leader for a radio segment on this recently. He told our listeners: “What we found at the America First Policy Institute through a Rasmussen poll that we commissioned is that 73% of Americans now believe that there are two lives involved in any abortion, the life of the mother and the life of the baby.”
He noted that that finding is very different than polls conducted in the 1990s, where it was hard to get people to recognize the life of the baby. So, this new shift in thinking is a great improvement to the pro-life cause.
Furthermore, Leader said that their polling also found that 92% of Americans oppose late-term abortion, up to the moment of birth----or even after birth. Thus, the left’s hardcore position is out of step with majority of Americans on this point.
Leader also said that 71% of Americans believe there should be some legal limits to abortion. However, he hastens to add that we disagree as to what those limits should be. Nonetheless, it is significant that the position taken by many on the hard left---abortion without limits---is not a position held by the majority of Americans.
If you support abortion, do you know what you are actually supporting? In testimony before Congress, Dr. Anthony Levatino, an OB/GYN, explains a common abortion procedure---what they actually do in second trimester abortions (not the majority of abortions, but there are thousands of them in America every year).
Here is a recent article about Dr. Levatino and some of his testimony before Congress on how they do abortions---and the left's attempt to ignore him.
Levatino used to do abortions (having performed more than 1200), but then he became pro-life. How? “One day, after completing one of those abortions, I looked at the remains of a preborn child whose life I had ended, and all I could see was someone’s son or daughter. I came to realize that killing a baby at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason, is wrong,” he said.
But what about first trimester abortions? Surely, they are justified, argue some. But Lila Rose’s organization, Live Action.org, shows this too is a lie. And then there are third trimester abortions.
Meanwhile, abortion is sold in the name of “choice,” but Dr. Ingrid Skop, OB-GYN, notes that many women feel they were forced to abort. She writes, “Some 20-60 percent of women obtaining abortions may desire their pregnancy but experience pressure or coercion to terminate.”
Our Declaration of Independence, our nation’s birth certificate, says that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights---the first one being, the right to life. But abortion undermines those rights.
If we continue down this pro-abortion path, I believe that future generations will look at us with horror---the way we look at previous Americans who blithely accepted human slavery as the norm.
One day God will hold us all accountable for these things, including how we vote on these matters. May God send a true revival, leading to a culture of life.
Dr. Jerry Newcombe is the executive director of Providence Forum, a division of Coral Ridge Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air contributor. He has written/co-written 33 books, including (with D. James Kennedy), What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? and (with Dr. Peter Lillback), George Washington’s Sacred Fire.