I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
ALBUQUERQUE — A Gallup poll released last Friday revealed some surprising news for both sides of the abortion debate: More Americans now describe themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice” for the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 1995. But numbers from the same poll show 76 percent of Americans still believe abortion should be legal in all or some cases — a number that remains unchanged from 1975.
“This just thrills my boots off!” says Dauneen Dolce of Right to Life Committee of New Mexico. Dolce believes the change in public opinion is directly related to the change in the White House.
“A good deal of it has come because of the administration and they’ve decided to become more involved. Everyone’s been down because we have an administration that’s very pro-choice, but the fruit of our efforts of many years is coming out. This says to me: you can change hearts and minds,” Dolce says.
Perhaps, too, the heightened political activity of a year of campaigning has made it more socially acceptable to be pro-life.
“When we first came out we were the nuts. Now we’re the acceptable because we’ve been there and we’ve proven that we’re your next-door neighbors and your coworkers. Some of us are really kind of nice,” Dolce says.
But a closer look at the poll reveals a conflicting trend.
“When we look at the follow-up question, we find that only between one-fifth and one-fourth of people [believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances.] And then you have 53 percent who say, ‘Well, it depends,”Brian Sanderoff of Research and Polling, an Albuquerque public opinion research firm.
Those numbers are virtually unchanged since 1975.
“There wasn’t a big shift in people saying it should be legal or illegal, the shift is in what people call themselves,” explains Kristin Williams of the Washington D.C.-based group Faith in Public Life. “‘Pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ don’t really mean anything.”
Of course those labels do have broad significance, but Williams, Sanderoff and Dolce all agree that the terms don’t give an accurate picture of how individual people feel about abortion. Some, evidently many, who are pro-life, oppose abortion, but still believe that it should be legal in some or all cases.
What this poll shows, observers say, is that conservatives and Republicans are consolidating their opposition to a very-pro choice President Obama.
Looking at a detailed history of responses to this same question in previous polls, there is a precedent for a swing of this nature: After George W. Bush was elected in 2000, after eight years of a pro-choice president, the number of Americans who identified as pro-choice rose by eight percentage points, while the number of those identifying as pro-life dropped by seven points.
“What most people do agree on is finding ways to work together to reduce the number of abortions,” Williams says.
Whether it worked or not, that was the message President Obama was trying to spread in a commencement address delivered on Sunday, after months of planned protest by anti-abortion groups.
“It would be interesting to see a poll taken this week after Obama’s speech at Notre Dame,” Sanderoff says.
