re: #266 Decatur Deb

Non-negotiables are my favorite thing, right after banzai charges and kamikaze raids.

I got to wondering about what the polling numbers say on abortion. This Pew Research report seems to be the most in depth that I can find. 57% say legal in all or most cases and 40% say illegal in all or most cases (to break it out further: 25% say legal in all cases, 33% say legal in most cases, 24% say illegal in most cases, and just 16% say illegal in all cases). But this was interesting, among Democrats it’s 75-25 in legal in all/most cases. So 1 in 4 Democrats are “pro-life” (depending on what “in most cases” means, I suppose).

The legal in all/most cases drops to 60% among independents, and 25% among Republicans. And the real differences come based on religion, for those of us who are unaffiliated, 80% say legal in all/most cases. White evangelicals have that number almost reversed 29-70. Catholics and Black Protestants are in the mid-50s legal, while white mainline Protestants are in the low 60s.

I’m firmly in the “legal in all cases” camp, and pretty much always have been. But I suspect a lot of people have a very big grey area on this issue. That might be because they see it, at least partially, as a moral question; or it might be because they don’t have a lot of information about how/why/when women get abortions.