Guest Author - Candance Gordon

Someone recently posted a link to an article in my forum about a Gallup poll that shows more people consider themselves pro-life than pro-choice for the first time since Gallup started asking this question in 1995. I contemplated deleting the link because my forum is for people who share the pro-choice point of view; it’s not the place to start the pro-life/pro-choice debate. But, I decided to leave it up because this new poll presents an interesting question: why, when we have a pro-choice president who is trying to restore many of the rights we lost in the previous eight years, would people suddenly start to move to the pro-life side of the issue?

The Gallup people think people are taking a pro-life stance because Obama’s policies may have pushed the public’s understanding of what it means to be pro-choice slightly to the left. They said Democrats may support the left-leaning meaning because they tend to support everything Obama does, but it’s pushing others in the opposite direction. Maybe that is the issue because the results do show people who generally vote Democrat and/or lean left, didn’t have a significant change in their numbers. The increase came from people who vote Republican and along religious lines.

According to the poll, the split is 51% pro-life to 42% pro-choice. Forty-nine percent of women consider themselves pro-life, up from 43% in 2008. The validity of these results is being questioned by some because the way the questions were posed might have been confusing, leading some people to answer they were both pro-life and pro-choice. Whether the results are accurate or not, it’s still a pretty sobering statistic. Like I’ve said on this page in the past, just because our president is pro-choice doesn’t mean our reproductive rights are guaranteed because a lot of people would like to see abortion made illegal in all instances, including rape, incest and when the mother’s life is in danger. If they truly are in the majority, they just might be able to make it happen.

The anti-choice groups are rejoicing over the Gallup poll results. It’s giving new life to their fight to end abortion in this country. I know the abortion debate will never go away, and I believe if someone doesn’t agree with the choices I make regarding my body, that’s their right. It’s also their right not to make those same choices and no one is going to force them to do so, so there’s no reason for them to try to take my right to choose away from me. If only it were that easy.