The Center for the Advancement of Women released a new study (pdf, 302k) a few days ago. (An aside: This organization was formerly named the Center for Gender Equality. Why change the name, I wonder? Perhaps the new name was intended to refocus the group's efforts on advancing women instead of achieving equality. If nothing else, at least they're honest. It's not like the old name was some 60's holdover: "The Center was founded in 1995...." )
And kudos to them for releasing it (especially the original report by the survey company, Princeton Survey Research Associates part 1 part 2) because the Center probably found the survey results on abortion rights to be very unpleasant. The detailed question information is on page 72 of part 1 of the complete survey, and the 2003 follow-up is on p.10 of part two. It's also included in the summary document. Here's the question:
18. Which one of the following four statements comes closest to your own view on abortion?And below are the responses (forced-choice) from 2001 and 2003:
(sorry, I don't know what's wrong with my stylesheet that creates this enormous gap)
| Response | 2001 | 2003 |
|---|---|---|
| Abortion should be generally available to those who want it | 34% | 30% |
| Abortion should be available but under stricter limits than it is now | 19% | 17% |
| Abortion should be against the law except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the women's life[sic], | 31% | 34% |
| Abortion should not be permitted at all? | 19% | 17% |
| Don't know/Refused | 2% | 2% |
Since this was a forced-choice survey, we'll never know how many women would have answered "Abortion should continue to be legal in the way it is now", which would probably skew the results. (Another aside: Don't any of these people understand conservative philosophy (in the Burkean sense)? Many people subscribe to the idea of not doing anything -- you could call it "active inertia" if you were trying to sell it.)
But that aside, it turns out in that in 2001, 64% of women surveyed support stricter limits on abortion and 45% would support a near-total ban. Two years later those numbers are 68% and 51%, at best a barely significant change (margin for detecting differences = 4%).
I recently heard the idea that the abortion issue would be solved if we simply put it to a vote of only women. After all, goes the argument, abortion is a women's issue. I reject that reasoning. I believe that abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia are "life issues" intimately connected to the definition of life and murder.
But if nothing else the survey above shows that abortion is an issue that divides women as much as it divides the nation as a whole. Further, it may show that keeping abortion legal depends on the support of those who benefit most from abortion. And yes, I do mean young unmarried men who would be fathers but for an abortion.
That's it for now -- gotta work.
This is not a pleasant way to wake up (link via den Beste). Best comments are the one by "J." (whose father was appointed to the French Legion of Honor) and the first comment on jkrank's weblog SofiaSideShow. (So it's an old joke -- so what?)
That was before my run this morning. On my run this morning, I saw a middle-aged Asian lady jogging in pajama pants (!) and holding a length of PVC pipe. As I passed her I realized that it wasn't (just) a PVC pipe, but some sort of sword, with a scabbard that appeared to be made of PVC pipe. We gave each other a wide berth.
Oh yes, Canada day today. I expect that we'll be working. Fireworks tonight.