Media Alert: Charmaine Quoted In LA Times 51% identify as 'pro-life' in U.S. Why The Change?

The household of Your Business Blogger(R) has been involved in a number of studies — commissioning statistical polling.

A number of years ago, Charmaine’s dissertation centered on data gathered with a $230,000 budget. To pass academic peer-reviewed scrutiny, she was most careful in ‘framing questions’ to get unbiased responses. And she had an expert team study the study so that all the actors involved in the questioning understood the questions.

The Little Woman knows statistical sampling and polling pit-falls.

It was of great interest to learn about the new Gallup poll showing a move of America from Pro-Choice to Pro-Life. Reporters began calling.

Charmaine did an outstanding interview with the LA Times reporter, Robin Abcarian, who was engaging and fair. (I know this ’cause I was driving while they talked on the phone…) The interview follows later.

I wanted to know more on the cause of the dramatic shift to America’s current Pro-Life self-identification. So I asked Charmaine, Why such a big change?

This passes for pillow talk in our house…

She says that America has always been Pro-Life and there are four reasons for the poll shift:

Reframing Pro-Choice,
Obama Backlash,
Advances in Technology,
Financial Independence

Reframing Pro-Choice

How polling questions are framed can prompt a particular answer. But this was not the challenge of Gallup: They have asked the same question for years. The issue may well be the question itself. It seems that the public is beginning to understand when an abortion occurs — in which trimester — is important to being Are you Pro-Life or Pro-Choice in this black and white question. No shade of gray.

So. If a Pro-Choicer recoils at partial birth abortion, as do all normal humans, can she still be Pro-Choice? The question (and Cecile Richards at Planned Parenthood) does not allow this.

Or, more likely, if the Pro-Choicer is confused about any abortion after viability, is she no longer Pro-Choice? Maybe. If I am not Pro-Choice, then I am Pro-Life.

Charmaine’s work reminds us that most Americans have always been Pro-life. But only now have the extremists of the Pro-Choicer agenda — of abortion on demand — pushed the public out of the comfortable gray area — the mushy middle — into a stark admission: I am not a part of any group who holds for partial birth abortion.

The public perception — the shifting of the frame of the question — changed.

It was: Yes, I am Pro-Choice because a woman can abort her baby in the first trimester.

It is: No, I am not Pro-Choice because there is no reason to abort in the third trimester.

The shift was not in the framing of the question but in the understanding of when the abortion was taking place during the pregnancy.

This demonstrates that the incremental strategy of changing law state-by-state in universal, common-sense regulation is what all Americans want. The incremental strategy of Americans United for Life is working.

Obama Backlash

This is why Planned Parenthood was so insistent that Candidate Obama push and pass The Freedom of Choice Act or FOCA. This law would kill all incremental controls passed by local lawmakers on abortion. The public is not happy with the extremism of the current Executive Order allowing Federal funding for abortions overseas. Americans don’t want to pay for abortions in any country.

Americans do not want to pay for any abortion bailout.

President Obama has installed radical pro-abortion political appointees to implement Planned Parenthood’s abortion on demand agenda — abortion at any place; at any time; for any reason; at taxpayer expense. People don’t like this. This makes self-identification as Pro-Choice unpalatable.

The Obama Backlash began when Jill Stanek documented his position against Infants Born Alive. What politician dare be against legislation protecting infants born alive?

Advances in Technology

Four Dimension Sonogram — where the mother can watch her baby move about in real time. 85% of women who see the sonogram do not go through with a planned abortion — which is why Planned Parenthood doesn’t care for the science of the sonogram: It kills profits.

Babies can now survive at very young stages. Years ago Your Business Blogger(R) worked with aggressive technologies to help neonates with underdeveloped lungs to ‘breathe’ and to live. The public understands the new survival rates and is beginning to understand the illogical of aborting a child who could, today, survive outside the womb, where, a few years ago, could not.

Financial Independence

Most legal scholars — even Obama short-listers — agree that Roe v Wade was poorly reasoned and poorly decided. Even back then, the Justices cited a compelling state interest against third trimester abortions.

But recent Supreme Court cases have shifted from the healthy viability of the baby to the financial viability of the mother, a “reliance interest.” The Court has now ruled that abortion is necessary so that women can break the glass ceiling.

And this is why liberals are so unhappy with Sarah Palin: She could have lotsa babies and still be a governor. Palin proves that financial success is compatible with motherhood (X 5).

(No, it is not easy. Do not just drop by our house unless you want to help do laundry…)

51% identify as ‘pro-life’ in U.S. It’s the first time the Gallup Poll finds ‘pro-choice’ outweighed — at 42% — and a near-reversal of last year’s figures, By Robin Abcarian,May 16, 2009

At a time when President Obama is trying to convince opponents in the abortion battle that they can find middle ground — in rhetoric, if not reality — a new Gallup Poll shows that more Americans describe themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice.”

For the first time since it began asking the question in 1995, Gallup reported Friday, a majority of adults questioned for its annual survey on values and beliefs — 51% — said that when it comes to abortion, they consider themselves “pro-life”; 42% consider themselves “pro-choice.” (The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.)

…antiabortion activists think they have more than the new poll on their side. “This isn’t new,” said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life. “It tracks pretty much with what we’ve always known: People generally are pro-life depending on how you ask the question.”

But Yoest said abortion foes were not placated. “There has been such an avalanche of pro-abortion activity that it’s jaw-dropping. It’s not just that his rhetoric doesn’t square with reality; the gap is Grand Canyon-size. I think this administration has fundamentally miscalculated how out of step they are with the American people.”

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

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Thank you (foot)notes:

From the Gallup organization,

May 15, 2009, More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time

Also, fewer think abortion should be legal “under any circumstances,” by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ — A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

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