WHY IT IS HARD WORK

The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 started a revolutionary cultural change. The decision reflected neither a mandate from the Constitution nor the "will of the people," rather in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court arrogantly assumed the role of an extra-constitutional super-legislature.

Thus the cultural revolution--forced upon us not by the "will of the people," but by seven unelected and "unchecked" men. And reversing it has proved to be a long and difficult process.

Why is the cultural reversal so difficult? Aren't the facts about life clear? Haven't thousands of women made public the horror that abortion inflicted on them and their aborted children? Haven't the pro-abortionists been caught in lie after lie? Isn't it obvious that the authors of the Constitution and its amendments had absolutely no intention of creating a constitutional right to abortion? Is it really that difficult to understand that killing the innocent is morally wrong?

People who make a reasonable effort to think about these questions and become informed tend to adopt pro-life attitudes. Those who make a serious effort tend to become pro-life activists. What frustrates newly minted pro-lifers is that the " simple" task of righting an obvious moral wrong, namely nullifying Roe v. Wade, is so maddeningly difficult because so many of their fellow citizens don't see what is there for all to see.

Pro-lifers who stay the course don't allow the frustration to distract them. Understanding the source of the frustration, however, helps.

First, there is the problem that has plagued us from the day Roe v. Wade was announced: The radical sweep of the Court's decision was hidden from the public. While Roe effectively legalized abortion on demand throughout the pregnancy (as long as the woman found a willing abortionist), many press reports to this day describe the decision as legalizing abortion "in the first trimester" and imply that abortions would be primarily done for medical reasons.

At least 16 times the opinion research firm Louis Harris and Associates polled on Roe v. Wade with a question that stated that the Court ruled "that the decision on whether a woman should have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy [emphasis added] should be left to a woman and her doctor to decide." To distort the whole effect of Roe v. Wade this badly is either a mark of incompetence or of willful dishonesty in order to skew the poll.

Most American newspapers belong to the Associated Press (AP) newswire organization. Polls commissioned by AP are therefore widely disseminated. In such circumstances, public opinion may be shaped more by reporting the phrasing of the question than the actual responses to the question. Take, for example, this AP poll question: "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that a woman can have an abortion if she wants one at any time during the first three months of pregnancy. Do you favor or oppose this ruling?" While this phrasing is more honest than the Harris poll version quoted above (it captures the abortion-on-demand character of the ruling at least for the first three months), newspaper readers are likely to forget that only 49% said they favored the ruling and remember instead that "abortion is legal for the first three months." While the poll "informed" about public opinion on a poorly phrased question, it taught the wrong thing about Roe v. Wade.

Second, there is a kind of willful ignorance on matters related to abortion. Not knowing what's actually going on (or not making a reasonable effort to find out) makes it easier to do wrong or avoid doing the right thing. The former attitude permeates Justice Blackmun's opinion in Roe v. Wade. He wrote, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth"--as if several hundred years of scientific progress had not happened.

The Court's bad example is widely followed. The Los Angeles Times poll of June 2000 reveals what people believe about the beginning of life: 53% at conception, 12% at birth, 29% somewhere in between, 6% don't know. Sixty percent of women and 66% of conservatives believe that life begins at conception. Ten percent of both groups believe that life begins at birth. Willful ignorance seems more common among men, the college- educated, liberals, and moderates. Their respective tallies are 45%, 47%, 43%, and 46% for life beginning at conception. And 14%, 14%, 16%, and 11%, respectively, think that life begins at birth.

Third, deference to the Supreme Court's "wisdom" (if it's legal, it must be OK), the fear of being "judgmental," and the mistaken notion that one's personal beliefs must never be expressed as public policy have created a depressing moral fog. For example, 66% would not consider abortion an option for themselves or their partners, but 68% agree that "no matter how I feel about abortion, I believe it is a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor." (To be fair, without the "doctor" in the question implying a medical problem, the number would probably have been lower.) At the same time, we have 57% (61% of women) also agreeing that "abortion is murder."

The good news is that the public opinion has steadily moved in our direction. Why? Because we have worked hard and used sound strategies to improve the public's understanding of the abortion disaster--and carefully avoided things that give the pro- abortionists an advantage in the public debate.

Continue to work with and support NRLC to make more progress.