Fancy this. I'm at the website for TIME magazine yesterday, drawn to its musings about whom the magazine will choose as its "Person of the Year." Nestled among a ton of minutiae ("What's Wrong With Hillary's Wardrobe?"), you find an important nugget.

TIME commissioned SRBI Public Affairs to do a poll last month on abortion, and its results are intriguing. Not that you would know it, unless you probe beneath the surface of what the company found in telephone interviews with 1,503 registered voters, conducted from November 12 to November 19.

For example, 42% of the respondents said, "A woman should be able to get an abortion is she wants one, no matter what the reason, up until the time the fetus is viable, that is, live on its own." This is preposterous on its face, but rather than get bogged down, let's move on to the next finding.

An even larger number--46%--said "Abortion should only be legal in certain circumstances, such as when a woman's health is endangered or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest." Another 9% said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

Put another way, 55% (46% plus 9%) oppose abortions for the reasons offered by women that account for all but a tiny percentage of the annual 1.3 million abortions--or oppose all abortions.

This is not just us talking. Consider: The Alan Guttmacher Institute is Planned Parenthood's in-house think tank. One would never expect them to underestimate the percentage of abortions performed for "hard cases."

Its 2004 study, which appeared in the September 2005 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (formerly Family Planning Perspectives), surveyed 1,209 abortion patients at 11 large abortion centers across the country. The survey was then followed up with in-depth interviews with 38 women at four centers.

Even with creative merging of categories, the primary reason 92% of the abortions were performed were for reasons that can properly be called social reasons, i.e., as a method of birth control. Notably, only 4% cited a "physical problem with my health" as the main factor in their abortions, while 3% identified "possible problems affecting the health of the fetus" as the most important reason behind their decisions. Less than 1% cited rape or incest as the reason.

(For a full examination of the report, go to http://www.nrlc.org/news/2005/NRL10/NewStudy.html)

I bring this to your attention because in short order we will be the midst of the real contest for the 2008 presidency, not the preliminaries which began the day after the 2006 off-year elections. What that means is that the American public will be inundated with hyper-inflated abortion numbers and hyper-distorted rhetoric.

At some times, it's important to know the truth that even Planned Parenthood grudgingly concedes.

Please send any comments to daveandrusko@hotmail.com. 

Part Two