by Rod D. Martin
January 26, 2014

The latest Marist Poll finds that 50% of Americans consider themselves “Pro-Choice”, while 46% self-identify as “Pro-Life”.  But boy, does that ever hide the real findings of the poll.

You see,  the same poll finds that 84% of Americans believe abortion should be restricted to within the first three months of pregnancy, in cases of rape/incest or to save the life of the mother;  or never allowed at all.  74% of all Americans want abortion to be completely banned after 20 weeks, with saving the life of the mother the only exception. And regardless of the extent to which they think abortion should be legal or illegal, 62% of Americans think abortion is immoral.

Worse still for the Wendy Davis crowd?  49% of extreme pro-abortionists (“strongly support pro-choice”) want abortion allowed only during the first trimester.

Needless to say, this is not what you’ll hear from the Leftist Media.

But it’s also not what you’d think to be true from a decent number of conservatives, around half of libertarians, and virtually the entire Republican consultant class.  And that’s one of those things that makes you go “hmmm….”

Or to put that another way, why are a great many people who are so overwhelmingly opposed to abortion nevertheless content to call themselves “Pro-Choice”?

Well certainly some of it is that word “choice”:  most Americans believe in “choice” — including the right to choose your doctor, your health insurance company, your school, whether or not you own a gun, lots of things the left opposes — so clearly Democrats were smart to use this language.  Indeed, choosing to snuff out a young life, so that it may never make any choices at all, may be the only “choice” Democrats believe in today.

But really, isn’t the desire to call oneself “Pro-Choice” — especially when one manifestly is not — just a smokescreen?  A desire to blend in?  A wish to submerge principle for popularity in a country where the media pretends everyone is “Pro-Choice” and labels everyone who isn’t “extreme”?  A longing to seem “moderate”, “reasonable”?

In a word, cowardice?

Gandhi said “It seems to me clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.”  Why is it so unclear to some of you?  Who are you trying to impress?  And would you have tried to impress them in the same way 200 years ago, by being “neutral” or “Pro-Choice” on the issue of slavery?

The good news is, better is coming.  Millennials are overwhelmingly Pro-Life.  They ought to be.  How would you feel if you knew your parents had considered killing you, and had actually killed one of your siblings?

We Gen Xer’s and our Millennial siblings and children are the survivors of a holocaust.  And we will remove the stain of our Boomer parents yet.  But still, it would be nice if a few of them belatedly grew a conscience.  Or even just a spine.