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Jewish World Review May 1, 2000 / 26 Nissan, 5760
Chris Matthews
According to a Gallup Poll out last week, a narrow
majority of us (51 percent) believe that abortion should
be legal "only under certain circumstances." A smaller
number (28 percent) want it legal under "any"
circumstance, with an even smaller number (19 percent)
believing it should be "illegal" all the time.
Of that robust crowd of 51 percent who believe abortion
should be "legal only under certain circumstances," 38
percent say they mean only in "a few" circumstances. Just
11 percent say they mean under "most" circumstances.
Playing with such numbers can be dangerously
misleading. Add that 38 percent who told the pollsters
they only want abortion rights in "a few" cases to the 19
percent who want to outlaw abortion altogether, and you
get more than half the country (57 percent) saying they
want to keep abortion legal in "a few" cases or not at all.
I don't believe that number. I believe it's a case where
people are telling pollsters (and perhaps themselves) what
they think they want to hear.
Consider that tricky word, "circumstances."
You have to wonder how people openly answering questions about abortion
rights apply that term ever so quietly to themselves. Are those who say they
back abortion rights only in "a few" cases thinking, perhaps incorrectly, that
they can't imagine any "circumstances" where they'd desire to have an abortion?
Are those who say they back abortion rights in "most" circumstances simply
more ready to imagine — or recall — themselves being in precisely such
"circumstances" as any other woman wanting an abortion?
People seem to have very clear positions, as you might expect, on how late a
woman should be permitted to have an abortion. Again, don't be fooled by the
numbers.
Sixty-five percent say abortion rights are generally OK for the first three
months of pregnancy. Just 24 percent generally approve the choice of an
abortion in the fourth, fifth or sixth month. Only 8 percent generally support
abortion rights in the last three months of pregnancy.
But when people are asked what health reasons should legally justify getting an
abortion, the numbers shoot to the sky: Eighty-four percent say when the
woman's life is endangered; 81 percent say when a woman's physical health is
endangered; 64 percent when a woman's mental health is endangered; 53
percent when the baby may be born with a physical impairment; 53 percent
when the baby may be born with a mental impairment.
But the cold, tragic fact is that most such health information is not available to
the pregnant woman in the first three months. It is later when she gets the test
results, later when she must answer those brutal questions of life and morality. It
is then that she must speak — not to a pollster or politician — but to her own
04/28/00: Bill Russell and American racism
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