For as long as abortion has been a major issue in this country, supporters of abortion rights have portrayed it as a fight between men and women. On one side, the story goes, are men trying to restrict the choices available to women; on the other are women striving to establish and preserve their reproductive freedom.
Men, we are led to believe, don’t object to abortion curbs for the simple reason that they are not the ones being told what they can do with their bodies. Some “pro-choice” activists have even gone so far as to insist that men should have no say at all in the matter, since they never have to worry about getting pregnant.
This view dates back at least as far as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe vs. Wade, handed down 25 years ago this week. In finding that the Constitution protects the right to abortion, Justice Harry Blackmun said, “The detriment that the state would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice is altogether apparent.”
After the court allowed a few restrictions on abortion in 1989, Molly Yard, then president of the National Organization for Women, declared, “This is a war against women.” The executive director of an abortion clinic involved in the case castigated the court as “a patriarchal group who has the arrogance to try to control a woman’s body.” Nowadays, politicians eager to burnish their credentials on “women’s issues” typically trumpet their support for abortion rights.
It’s a simple, logical, plausible assumption–that women, who alone bear the burden and hazards of pregnancy and childbearing, are instinctively friendlier to “the right to choose” than men. But it’s absolutely false. Abortion-rights groups have always known that, and a recent poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News demonstrates it once again.
Two illuminating facts emerge from the survey, whose results were published Friday. The first is that most women do not support the unrestricted right to abortion demanded by NOW, Planned Parenthood and their compatriots.
Only 32 percent of females surveyed said that abortion should remain “generally available,” with 44 percent saying it should be “under stricter limits” and 21 percent saying it should be prohibited. In other words, two out of every three American women would like the government to interfere more with the “freedom” of women to control their own bodies.
The second revelation is that women and men think exactly alike on the issue. Among males, 31 percent believe abortion should be available without restrictions, 45 percent prefer some limits and 23 percent would forbid it–numbers that, given the margin for error in the poll, are indistinguishable from those for females.
Men clearly are no more and no less likely to oppose abortion rights than women. Among both sexes, there is considerable disagreement and deep ambivalence.
This convergence is not foreordained. On many issues, women and men differ significantly. But to judge from public opinion surveys over the last quarter-century, abortion has never divided the sexes.
Maybe it’s partly because at least half the fetuses that are destroyed by abortion are females. For every woman who intensely supports the “pro-choice” agenda because of her personal stake in being able to end an unwanted pregnancy, there is another who intensely opposes abortion because she can’t imagine anyone killing the fruit of her own womb.
For every man who dislikes abortion because he’s insensitive to the needs of women, there’s another who favors it because he doesn’t want to be held hostage by anyone he happens to impregnate. Feminists generally regard Playboy magazine as the enemy, but Playboy has always vocally endorsed abortion rights. You don’t have to be a genius to understand why.
Anyone who has ever had any contact with anti-abortion groups knows that they are staffed largely by females, most of them still in their childbearing years. The annual March for Life in Washington, held every Jan. 22 to protest the Roe vs. Wade decision, features a disproportionate number of women. My mind was changed on the issue years ago after I heard a lecture by a Massachusetts physician, Mildred Jefferson, one of the leading lights in the original pro-life movement.
The reality is that abortion implicates fundamental moral issues that transcend sex. On this issue, Americans are governed not by their reproductive organs but by their minds and hearts.
