Do you like good news? I like good news.
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.
Take a look at the chart below. Notice that the change isn’t a gradual one, but a seismic shift over the past year.
What caused such a dramatic shift in the most controversial issue of our day? This pro-life shift included Republicans and Moderates, Catholics and Protestants, and men and women. Only Democrats and liberals were untouched.
Gallup’s bottom line – the election of Barack Obama.
With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation’s policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans — and, in particular, Republicans — seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position. However, the retreat is evident among political moderates as well as conservatives.
It is possible that, through his abortion policies, Obama has pushed the public’s understanding of what it means to be “pro-choice” slightly to the left, politically. While Democrats may support that, as they generally support everything Obama is doing as president, it may be driving others in the opposite direction.
I think it’s comes down to the realization that all the warnings before the election about Barack Obama were actually true. It was eerie that in a midst of a supposed economic crisis only surpassed by the Great Depression, Obama reversed the Mexico City policy in his first week of office. (The first of his late Friday events). Followed by reversing Bush’s ban on federally funding embryonic stem cell research, China’s one child policy, and moving toward rescinding Bush’s policy of federal job protections for medical workers – American’s experienced the frontal assault of Barack’s new world. And although he has backed down from pushing FOCA now, he has never committed from not pursuing it in the future.
And even though it is heartbreaking that Notre Dame would have a pro-abortion President as a commencement speaker and grant him an honorary degree on top of it, I think good will come of it. The good will be everyday Catholics living out their Catholic faith and demanding that Catholic institutions do the same.
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Filed under: Culture of Life | Tagged: Abortion, Barack Obama, Culture of Life, Gallup Poll, Notre Dame University, Pro-life Issues
The sick thing is that they are working to federalize abortion and take individual states rights away. As it is we are now funding abortions worldwide. Even the most pro-choice leftist should question why our tax dollars are paying for abortions in Peru.
Abortion was the first thing on the table for this administration and my hope is that as the poll is bearing this out that Christians that voted for welfare entitlements as opposed to the Word of God got hit hard in the face with that act. Fundamentally no matter what spin you use this is wrong and evil and not of God. The only Abortion I support is a late term abortion of this ruling party coming in stages in each upcoming election.