By Dave Andrusko
When you have almost the entirety of the media on your side—enthusiastically so, I might add—not surprisingly support for your position as measured by public opinion polls must be examined very carefully. Gallup offered two examples today: “Most Americans Favor Availability of Abortion Pill” and “Broader Support for Abortion Rights Continues Post-Dobbs.” Both are part of Gallup’s Values and Beliefs poll conducted each May.
In summarizing the story written by Gallup’s Mohamed Younis, Sarah Fortinsky illustrates all too well what we are up against
Mifepristone is a medication commonly prescribed in the early stages of pregnancy, up until 10 weeks, when the fetus is about 1 or 1.2 inches — or about the size of a green olive, according to WebMD.
Why would anyone worry about something “about the size of a green olive”? Dehumanization of the human embryo is par for the course. The only difference is in how creative the pro-abortionist can be in diminishing his/her humanity.
So what was the question? “Do you, personally, favor or oppose allowing mifepristone, the abortion pill, to be available in the United States as a prescription drug?”. A “prescription drug” is available at a pharmacy and is prescribed by a doctor, exactly the kind of requirements that Mifepristone’s backers are eager to shed.
And how many billions (and billions) of dollars in free publicity is the media’s wholly supportive coverage of mifepristone worth? I mean the human embryo you’re about to destroy is “about the size of a green olive” and the abortion pill you take to initiate the destruction is “safer than Tylenol” (to the woman).
Priceless.
Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRL Director of Education and Research, offers a very different perspective on the dangers of mifepristone.
So, 28 deaths from mifepristone in twenty years against 150 deaths from Tylenol in just a single year’s time? Sounds like mifepristone is safer.
But wait. That’s 150 Tylenol deaths against a backdrop of 25 billion doses of Tylenol in a year. We’re told that there have been only 5.6 million total chemical abortions with mifepristone in the U.S. since that 2000 approval. That is less than a thousandth of the sales of Tylenol in a single year.
Note what this does to your risk factor.
Using the minimal figures provided by the FDA, your risk of dying from taking mifepristone is about 1 in 200,000. Not large, but not negligible. And remember that your risk of a complication putting you in the emergency room is closer to one in 10.
But your risk of death from Tylenol is actually something like one chance in 166.7 million, even including those who overdose and fail to follow the manufacturer’s instructions.This means that your risk of dying from mifepristone is about 833 times your risk of dying from Tylenol!
Lydia Saad wrote the second story: “Broader Support for Abortion Rights Continues Post-Dobbs”.
But on closer analysis the results show something somewhat different.
Gallup asked the same question it has for many years. The key difference from other polls is that ever since 1975 it teases out what people meant when they say that they believed abortion should be legal “only under certain circumstances.” Did that mean they want abortion to be legal “in most or only a few circumstances?”
Saad wrote, “Specifically, close to half of Americans, 47%, now say abortion should be legal in all (34%) or most (13%) circumstances, while a similar proportion, 49%, want it legal in only a few (36%) or illegal in all (13%) circumstances.”
What wasn’t highlighted was that these results were significantly better than the results last year in the midst of the post Dobb’s leak pro-abortion hysteria.
Gallup asked the same question in May 2022. They found that 53% said abortion should be legal in all (35%) or most (18%) circumstances while 45% said it should be legal in few (32%) or no (13%) circumstances.
So on this benchmark question this year’s results showed a net gain of about 4% for the pro-life side.
“Americans’ views on the legality of abortion have long differed depending on the stage of pregnancy in which the procedure would occur,” Saad wrote, “That continues today, with 69% saying it should generally be legal in the first three months, 37% in the second three months and 22% in the last three months.”
Saad added, “Women and men hold similar views on the legality of abortion at each stage of pregnancy with both favoring it in the first trimester and opposing it in the second and third trimesters.”
And “Less than half of Republicans, versus about three-quarters or more of independents and Democrats, think abortion should be legal in the first trimester,” she writes. “Democrats are the only group saying it should generally be legal in the second trimester.”
If there was an instrument to measure hysteria the way a seismograph measures earthquakes you would have anticipated exactly what ensured following the collapse of Roe v. Wade: Dire predictions about the end of life as we [meaning pro-abortionists] know it.
Given all that the defenders of the babies have been up against, these results are a source of encouragement.