News-Record.com

The poll also shows that only 23% think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. A majority of the respondents said there are circumstances it should be legal, and some it should not be. I think the difference largely seems to be one of semantics. Asking someone to put themselves in one of two categories doesn't do a good job of capturing the complex public view on the issue. It's like asking if you believe the US should always use military force in a disagreement with another country or never use military force under any circumstances, even to defend against invasion. Very few would really believe either of those is sensible, but if asked they would choose the one that seems less crazy to them. The results would tell you very little about America's views on war.

Exactly. That's what leaders of both parties need to keep in mind rather than to give in to the extremist positions on either side.

Yup; I am pro-life, but I believe that abortion should not be illegal. I refuse to accept the warped definition, within the incredibly narrow context of the question of whether or not abortion should be legal, of "pro-life." "Pro-life" means "in favor of the life of the mother" or "opposed to capital punishment."

With the more accurate labels of "pro-choice" and "anti-choice," how differently do you think this poll would have come out?

Tony, don't you think everyone understands the standard terminology by now? We've been using it for about 40 years.

Sure, Doug, but that doesn't change the fact that there is meaning in these phrases beyond their semantic content and that meaning wasn't accidental but the result of calculation on the part of those opposed to keeping abortion legal.

If it *were* "pro-choice" and "anti-choice" I'll bet you lunch that there would have been a twenty-points difference in the results from the answers to that first question.

We can't say what the result might have been if the question had been phrased differently. But remember, this is Gallup, a very skilled and reliable polling outfit. They asked several questions that tended to get at respondents real attitudes: do they favor abotion in all circumstances, some circumstances or no circumstances. Whatever terminology is used, the answers to those questions determine public attitudes.

What was most remarkable about this poll was the large shift in opinion detected. I assume the same questions were used in previous polling.

Just to clarify, I'm not claiming Gallup used biased language in particular; they just used language that has, as you point out, come to be common in usage.

The point I'm making is that it has been biased and slanted all along, and that it wasn't accidental. The term "pro-life" didn't come into common usage until the early '80s when the right first ramped up its assault on Roe v. Wade. More often than not (many Catholics excepted), these people who dubbed *themselves* "pro-life" (with the complicity of the media) back in the early '80s were in favor of capital punishment, ironically.

Thanks for the good discussion, Tony.

Thanks to you, too, Doug; you, Allen and John each take your blog seriously and I appreciate the reasoned responses you almost always provide.

And if I really want to shout at crazy people, I can always go over to the comments threads at "Letters to the Editor."

:-)

Man, I stay out of there.