The latest Fox News poll reflects a pro-life trend that has been growing for years. In a poll completed just before Politico announced the leak of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Monday, Fox reported that a majority thinks abortion should be illegal “all (11%) or most of the time (43%).” Those who think abortion should be legal “is [at] a record low and it’s also the first time the portion saying ‘illegal’ has been above 50% on a Fox News poll.”
The trend favoring the pro-life position has been apparent for years. Back in 1998, Gallup asked, “Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?” At the time, 15 percent said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Ten years later, that percentage was 18 percent, and since then it has moved higher, to nearly 20 percent.
According to the Pew Research Center’s latest polling results, 39 percent say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
Last June, Gallup found that 52 percent of Americans take a pro-life position on abortion, wanting all (19 percent) or almost all (33 percent) abortions made illegal. That same poll found that only 32 percent of those polled think abortions should be legal up to the moment of birth.
A January 2021, a Marist poll found a majority of those polled were pro-life and oppose all or nearly all abortions. A poll conducted later that year by CBS News reported that 55 percent of Americans say abortion should either be more limited or should not be permitted at all.
A Morning Consult poll conducted last year found that a majority of those polled want abortions to be made illegal either in all cases or only legal in very rare cases such as rape or incest, or when the pregnancy directly affects the life of the mother. Those exceptions constitute less than two or three percent of all abortions, which means, as Steven Ertelt of Life News put it, “Most Americans support making virtually all abortions illegal.”
Another measure of growing opposition to abortion comes from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which reported that since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, states have imposed more than 1,300 restrictions on the procedure, including more than 100 last year alone.
At least one of them — Texas SB 8, the “Heartbeat Law” — made headline news, especially as other states such as Oklahoma and Idaho passed nearly identical laws.
In commenting on the Texas law, former Texas congressman Dr. Ron Paul pointed out that
It is no coincidence that Roe v. Wade came at a time when respect for natural rights of life, liberty, and property, was on the decline.
Roe contributed to the decline….
The ultimate solution, Dr. Paul wrote, was to reverse the trend by recognizing that abortion is the taking of an innocent life:
The way to reverse these developments is to restore respect for the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, of all human beings, both born and unborn.
The cause of life is inseparable from the cause of liberty.
It’s taken 50 years, but the trend, and the momentum, is unmistakable. The Supreme Court “leak” is now propelling forward the conversation that states and their citizens must have on the issue. And they’re increasingly moving back to the Declaration of Independence’s crystal-clear statement:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
