Roe v. Wade: Partial Truths and Polls

A high school student wishing to inform herself on the legal status of abortion might reach for the 2001 New York Times Almanac. In the "U.S. Health and Medicine - Abortion" section (page 370) she would find this: "The deliberate termination of a pregnancy before the fetus is capable of living outside the womb has generally been legal in the United States since 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled (in Roe v. Wade) that abortions cannot be prohibited during the first three months of pregnancy."

This high school student would not find in the almanac a reference to a 1983 report from a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee concluding that "no significant legal barriers of any kind whatsoever exist today in the United States for a woman to obtain an abortion for any reason during any stage of her pregnancy."

In fairness to the New York Times, I should point out that its editorial news policy on the description of Roe has changed. Responding to a letter from our legislative director, Douglas Johnson, an assistant to the editor announced on July 26, 1982--nine years after Roe v. Wade--the New York Times' new policy: "After examining the substance of your point, our National News editor is promulgating a memorandum for our national desk and our Washington Bureau instructing our editors and reporters that brief references to the Supreme Court's 1973 decision on abortion should say simply that the Court legalized abortion. As you indicate, the phrase 'in the first three months of pregnancy' might be incorrectly interpreted to mean that abortions in the last six months of pregnancy remain illegal." And for the most part, the Times has stuck to this policy in its newspaper reporting.

That the editors of the New York Times Almanac, which is a widely sold reference book, have not yet caught up with the policy established in 1982 raises some questions. If the almanac's editors actually believe that their version of Roe v. Wade is correct, then they are seriously misinformed--a sign of incompetence. (The list of contributors includes seven researchers and fact checkers.) If they agree that it is misleading but spread it anyway, then they are deliberately misinforming--a journalistic crime.

The New York Times Almanac's misrepresentation of Roe is equivalent to a description of the First Amendment as "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press," without mentioning the parts establishing religious freedom and the rights to freedom of speech and association and the right to petition the government. While the truncated rendition of the amendment is "correct," it is also totally misleading.

Ironically, the journalistic impulse to report facts isn't completely suppressed in the almanac. The second paragraph in the "Abortion" section of the 2001 New York Times Almanac states that 12% of abortions are legally done after the first trimester, implying that the preceding description of Roe v. Wade is inaccurate.

Also, a curious reader of the almanac might find the following description of Roe v. Wade under "Important Supreme Court Decisions" (page 125): "In a controversial ruling, the Court held that state laws restricting abortion were an unconstitutional invasion of a woman's right to privacy. Only in the last trimester of pregnancy, when the fetus achieved viability outside the womb, might states regulate abortion--except when the life or health of the mother was at stake." This is better, but still not an adequate description of the abortion right granted under Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (which isn't mentioned at all).

The tendency to mischaracterize Roe v. Wade and make it appear less radical is not limited to the New York Times or the mainstream media in general. Polling firms, often working in association with mainstream papers and TV networks, have shown similar tendencies. The polling with regard to Roe v. Wade demonstrates that the wording of the poll question has a great influence on the result--and that the public is still quite uninformed about Roe v. Wade and abortion in general.

A study by Professor Raymond Adamek of Kent State University (6/23/1999, Annual Mtg. of the Assoc. for Interdisciplinary Research in Values and Social Change, Milwaukee, WI) found that, for the period 1973 to 1998, eight major pollsters described Roe v. Wade as permitting abortion "during the first three months of pregnancy" in 85 different polls. In only 20 polls did they address abortion beyond the first trimester, and then mostly to pose it as a hypothetical case ("should" it be permitted?). In only four instances did they reveal that abortion after the first trimester is actually legal. (The worst serial offender was pollster Louis Harris, who kept referring to Roe v. Wade as legalizing abortion "up to three months of pregnancy.")

Lydia Saad's review of abortion polls (1/22/2002 at www.gallup.com/ ) mentions first-trimester-only polls that produced numbers in favor of Roe v. Wade as high as 62% and 63%, with 29% opposed. In contrast, an LA Times poll (June 8-13, 2000), describing Roe v. Wade as permitting "a woman to have an abortion from a doctor at any time," produced support of Roe at 43% and opposition at 42%, with 15% having no opinion or not knowing enough. I suspect that the phrase "from a doctor" implies for many respondents that Roe v. Wade requires a medical reason for the abortion, but of course it doesn't. Yet, as polls on Roe v. Wade go, this is one of the least biased.

Imagine the results of a poll truthfully describing abortion rights under Roe v. Wade as permitting "a woman to get an abortion at any time, including having an abortion provider deliver the fetus 'feet first,' except for the head; stab scissors into the base of the fetus's skull, which is still in the birth canal; insert a suction tube into the hole made by the scissors and suck the fetus's brains out; and then finish delivering the dead fetus." Now substitute "unborn child" or "baby" for "fetus" and imagine again.