The Limits Of Pro And Con

by Patrick Appel

Ed Kilgore wasn't impressed by polls from last week showing that more Americas call themselves pro-life. He writes:

The nuance that I've written about recently deals with the simple fact that Americans seem to care quite a bit why a woman seeks an abortion. And once they are aware of a plausible rationale, anti-abortion attitudes appear to relax...it's maddening that so few polls on abortion get into these sorts of questions. Until they do, we are all entitled to dismiss the big headlines, and rely on hard data like election results to determine which basic direction in abortion policy Americans tend to support. Based on that data, the anti-abortion cause is not doing very well.

More thoughts from John Sides here.