The Abortion Divide

Abortion has been a hot-button issue for a while, and probably will remain so. Despite the importance of the issue to this country, one might wonder, is there really such a polarization between the two opposing sides as we're lead to believe? The answer is no, and the problem, the cause, of this false perception, lies in several areas.

We are led to believe, from media, from politicians, from polls, that America is deeply divided on this issue. If you asked the American people their views on abortion, you might come up with the result I've illustrated in Figure 1, with about half leaning sharply toward Pro-Choice, about half toward Pro-Life, and a small majority in the "I don't know category" in the middle. Now, the illustration is a crude one I drew quickly, but it is essentially what you are shown in the news, whether in that form or in the form of a pie chart, bar graph, etc.

However, consider this: You're at the mall and a pollster comes up to you. (Actually, it's probably more likely to be a telephone or Internet survey.) He asks your view on abortion and gives you three choices: Pro-choice, Pro-Life, and I Don't Know. They made be worded simpler, such as simply For or Against, but nonetheless, you have to choose one, forcing you either to the far right, the far left, or direct center of the spectrum. This is how those polls are conducted. They then proceed to infiltrate television and politics.

A better polling option would be to ask an open ended question, such as: "What are your views on abortion?" and allow the participant to respond any way he chooses. The obvious problem with this method is that presenting results would be difficult to present and hard to read. However, if you don't go completely open-ended, but just ask a few more detailed questions, you may find the results begin to change a bit. If you ask questions such as: "Do you believe that abortion should not be tolerated under any circumstances?" "What about rape?" "What if the birth of the child can potentially kill the mother?" "It wasn't long ago that birth control (the pill) was considered by some as abortion. So what about birth control?" and so on, you will find that Pro-Life advocates begin to move closer to the center of the spectrum. The reverse is true for Pro-Choice advocates with questions such as: "One of the earliest form of abortion (Greeks) was infanticide. Do you believe in that?" "What about abortion the day before birth?" "The week before?" "The month before?" By asking more and more question, you find that the spectrum begins to look much more like Figure 2, with more people toward the center, perhaps leaning slightly in one direction, and a couple people on opposite sides of the extreme.

So why do we get this biased spectrum instead of the true spectrum? Aside from poor polling techniques (and there are many negatives when it comes to polling, perhaps to be discussed in another article), the media needs to report on issues of contention. Just like, for obvious reasons, when you hear about war or violence in an area or an economic crisis, but you never hear about the low murder rates in certain cities or economic booms prosperous states, media would never take a poll that shows how much people agree with each other and present it as news. The same goes for any set of data or statistics; depending on how you measure the variables, you get a different result. The data that shows conflict is always the most intriguing. Politicians, too, hop on this bandwagon. This is due to many reasons, better left to the field of political science, but not the least of which is the need to show a stance on an issue. Even better, a stance opposing that of the other party. Despite claims of strong convictions on the side of both parties, in general they are as moderate as the rest of us, with a couple exceptions, but that stance helps swing a few votes their way.

Let me ask you two questions. If, hypothetically, a democratic candidate followed all his parties' convictions on the platforms except abortion, would he ever come out and say that he is Pro-Life during a campaign? Of course not, because then he would lose potential votes. (Vice versa for Republicans) And in the past 30 or so years that you've heard candidates say they go one way or the other, have their really been any changes? (And I don't mean minor details, such as when and where pushed this way and that. I mean an actual change in law.) So, next time this issue turns into an argument with a friend, stop, ask him a couple more detailed questions, and you may find that, while you still disagree, it's not by as much as you think.