God is in the details

Oh now this is downright depressing.

(CNN) -- Support for abortion rights has fallen sharply in the past year, with Americans now  split roughly 50-50 between those who back legal access to abortion and those who oppose it, according to a new survey.

The findings mark a dramatic shift in public opinion, supporters of abortion rights have outnumbered opponents for many years, with one brief exception, studies have shown.

But only 47 percent of Americans now feel abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a drop from 54 percent a year ago, according to the poll.

Meanwhile, 45 percent say it should be illegal in all or most cases. That's up from 41 percent a year ago.

Given the survey's margin of error, the two camps are statistically tied.

"These data suggest that a number of people have changed their minds in the past year," said Gregory Smith of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, one of the survey's authors.

<SNIP>

 "This is great news. This poll shows that the pro-life movement is winning hearts and minds.  Pro-lifers are making an effective case that all women deserve better than abortion and that every child deserves a chance to be born," said Cathy Ruse, the senior fellow for legal  studies at the anti-abortion Family Research Council in Washington.

The Rev. Flip Benham, a Dallas, Texas-based anti-abortion activist, said the survey reflected a change he had already seen taking place.

"It's something that we have known for a long, long time that's been beneath the radar," he said. "The heart of America is changing and only with time do the laws reflect that change."

"When the church will come out into the streets, we win the battle," said Benham, director of operations for Operation Save America.

"We have to return to the God of our founding fathers and our pilgrim fathers," he said.

Fathers this, and fathers that. Don't you just love how male religious leaders are always so keen on pushing women back?

Read the whole report here.

I only just had a fast look but I did pick out a few salient points:

While a teeny tiny majority still believe women should control their bodies and destinies, it's interesting to note where the slippage has come. I added the boldface.

The 2009 polls find that gender differences now exist among Democrats. Among
Democratic men, support for legal abortion has dropped nine percentage points from 2007/2008 to 2009 (62% to 53%) while support is unchanged among Democratic women (65% in 2007/2008 vs. 64% in 2009). This means that a significant gender gap over abortion now exists among Democrats, with Democratic women expressing more support for abortion rights than Democratic men (64% vs. 53%).

How did that happen? Was it all the talk of including abortion in healthcare reform? Did Democratic men suddenly start putting their wallets ahead of women's rights?

Among political groups, 53% of conservative Republicans say their attitudes are based primarily on their religious beliefs, compared with just 22% of moderate or liberal Republicans. More than a third of conservative or moderate Democrats (36%) and 17% of liberal Democrats single out the influence of their religious beliefs.

So let me understand this: Because a bunch of white guys suddenly found religion, women are supposed to give up their rights?

Seems so.

Which is exactly why I have been sounding alarm bells on the Christian right infiltrating Canadian government.

Let me tell you, there are some places where God doesn't belong -- and my lady parts are among them.

I think it's time to watch Pale's video again.

H/t to Ibis.

Comments

[Toe]

Jesus Murphy, this again. Remember - I don’t see men rushing to change societal expectations for maternal responsibility oncerning child rearing. I don’t see them demanding the right to be more responsible fathers or to play a more integral part in their children’s lives. In fact, if they did then they would be entitled to more say in the abortion issue. But why should they want things to change? They’ve got it made in the shade. If things changed, they’d have to pull their own weight, give up some of their own career pursuits, and go home at a decent hour to the child waiting for dinner and a caring hug.

In short, when men start choosing to be fathers, that’s when they will have the right
to pipe in on whether women can choose to be mothers. Until then men, your
opinion just doesn’t matter.

Not only that these idiotic and basically immature from birth to death male politicians everywhere in the world, who have affairs and then babies, have the MONEY not only to keep it quiet, but to see to a child's monetary support.

[Jim M]

If extreme right wing Christian ideology serves a purpose other than to feed an apparently urgent and purely visceral need to see how far willful ignorance can be taken, then of course I would like to know what that purpose is. Sorry if that sounds harsh, or if what I say next sounds even worse, but it seems to me that the Christian right is trying to turn the bible from a message of realistic hope for the future into something that sounds more like a global death wish.

My question is, how can any special interest group that is so decidedly anti-intellectual possibly win any propaganda war?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator,

"Among Democratic men, support for legal abortion has dropped nine percentage points from 2007/2008 to 2009 (62% to 53%) .... How did that happen? ..... So let me understand this: Because a bunch of white guys suddenly found religion, women are supposed to give up their rights?"

The answer is actually to be found elsewhere. Why automatically blame a "bunch of white guys"? Immigrants to the US tend to come from cultures not generally sympathetic to feminism and the gains that feminists thought they had made, and they tend to support the Democrats.

"Which is exactly why I have been sounding alarm bells on the Christian right infiltrating Canadian government."

Many more perceptive feminists have been doing the same about immigration in the US for years.

This trend may also be seen in Canada. Several years ago a certain prominent Toronto area MP won the LIBERAL
nomination, to the consternation of the candidate favoured by the leadership, by signing up masses of recent immigrants and having their priests emphasise his pro-life stance.

[deBeauxOs]

It means that more and more men, and some women are buying into the notion that women + no state control over their breeding capacity = Evil.

When we say to religious zealots of any stripe that God The Father has no authority over female juicy bits, they will twist that into an affirmation that women must be saved from damnation, over their dead bodies if necessary.

Bonjour Handmaid's Tale.

[SUZANNE]

The right to control your body is not a license to kill.

Fetuses are human beings. Abortion is murder. Women have responsibilities as well as rights.

[stellersjay]

No, Suzanne, fetuses are fetuses. The women who carry them are human beings, whose right to security of the person is guaranteed, just like mens', by the Charter. p.s. If you ever decide to get a life, do try to be sure it's your own.

[David Marniss]

"No, Suzanne, fetuses are fetuses. The women who carry them are human beings, whose right to security of the person is guaranteed, just like mens', by the Charter. p.s. If you ever decide to get a life, do try to be sure it's your own."

No, a fetus is a human being. Just like an adult is a human, and a child is a human, an adolescent is a human. They are all human, despite being in different stages of development. The value of human life is predicated on the fact that it's a 'human' life. A fetus is human. So it is valuable. Arguing semantics around this issue is a waste of time because ultimately, a fetus is human, and as such, it should be protected like every other human.

[Jim M]

Some time after seeing the short film featured in this post, it occurred to me that I had heard John Hagee’s voice in the film but could not remember seeing his face or name shown in words at any particular point. So, I watched the film again much later and still did not see Hagee’s name or face, but his voice is unmistakably heard almost throughout the whole painful experience of watching this film.

No discredit to the producer since you’ve gotta figure that busloads of people like the sound of Hagee’s voice, and I would not say the modest editing for effect of the audio in the film repeats or belabors Hagee’s talking points any more than he does without any help every Sunday.

However, the absence of Hagee’s face and name in the film seems intentional and therefore mysterious to me. Could it be that the producer left the void there so as to leave the job of introducing Hagee to Mick Jagger, who, in this case, I would have to agree does seem to have an introduction for John Hagee’s kind on file that cannot be outdone, not even on film. Of course, I am referring to the hit song by the Rolling Stones called Sympathy for the Devil.

[Luna]

Thing is, it doesn't matter if a fetus is human. No human has the right to the body of another. If I'm the only viable kidney donor for my teenage child, it is my choice whether I give it to her or not. Regardless if it means her death if I don't. It's still my choice. So even if you believe a fetus is a human, it's utterly irrelevant.