Abortion Freak Out, Attitude Changes – American Family Association of Indiana
The Battle for Life
Last week Governor Holcomb was asked about calling a special session of the legislature to address abortion based upon the Supreme Court ruling that we expect to see formally in June. He was asked about this in part because 100 pro-life legislators, two-thirds of our 150 House and Senate members, had signed a letter in the Spring asking for this.
Predicting what the Governor would do is anybody’s guess. I tend to think that he will punt on this and simply let the legislature address restricting abortions when they return in January. After all, about half of our legislators asked him to close abortion clinics as non-essential surgeries during the Covid shutdown and the shortage of protective supplies. He left it completely up to the abortionists to decide. At the same time, churches and other businesses were prevented or discouraged from operating.
However, if a session is called AFA of Indiana will be there to fight for life. If not, we will be there in January for this battle.
As this issue heats up, there is a lot of hysteria in the media and on the political left over this issue. Facts often get lost in the fury. Last week The Catholic League sent out an email with some interesting history that I did not know. I thought it would be helpful to share here as you encounter a lot of claims, scare tactics, and falsehoods in the mainstream media trying to prevent states from further limiting abortion.
“Prior to the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, pro-abortion activists told the media that there were five thousand to ten thousand deaths a year owing to abortion. But it was a lie. We know it was a lie because the man who broadcasted about it at the time, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a practicing abortionist, and activist, later admitted that he lied. By the way, the actual number of women who died of an abortion the year before Roe was thirty-nine; the figure was published by the Centers for Disease Control.
The pro-abortion industry loves to say that prior to Roe, women were prosecuted all over the country for having an abortion. This is another lie. There are only two cases in which a woman was charged in any state for having an abortion: Pennsylvania in 1911 and Texas in 1922. Since 1922, there have been zero documented cases in which a woman has been charged in an abortion case.”
Incidentally, one of the tactics to be wary of is an argument of the extremes. Abortion advocates often argue the comparably rare and extreme cases such as rape, which everyone agrees is a horrible crime no woman should ever experience. The criminal doing that awful act deserves full punishment. One can certainly say that the baby doesn’t deserve punishment. The point I want to make here is that arguing the few cases of rape do not justify ignoring the other 99+% of abortions for convenience reasons that have equated to the termination of over 62 million unborn children since Roe v Wade.
Here’s another item of interest on this. In the days before the leak of the Mississippi abortion decision draft, Republicans (mostly the pro-life party) had a one-point generic lead going into the fall elections over Democrats (mostly the pro-choice party).
Despite the furor from the left in response to this news of the possible overturning of Roe, another CNN poll taken a week after the draft opinion leak found that support for Democrats had not grown. Instead, the GOP now holds a 7-point generic ballot advantage. Support for Republicans has appeared to increase after this news of the overturn of Roe. Never deterred from their liberal agenda, CNN reported that this way: “comparing the results of the new poll to one conducted immediately before the revelation of the draft opinion, the impact on the political landscape heading into the 2022 midterms appears fairly muted.” A 600% increase is “fairly muted” according to CNN. This is like when BLM set cities on fire and CNN called it “mostly peaceful protests.”
Is There a Change Occurring in Cultural Norms?
Opinions on two family patterns that affect the well-being of children might be changing in the United States. Even though more adults are cohabiting today than in the past, and the U.S. still leads the world in the rate of kids raised in single-mother homes, recent research indicates that Americans’ views on single motherhood and living together outside of marriage have grown more negative, as the practice of cohabiting in the U.S. appears to be stalling.
Could these changes have anything to do with the pandemic of the past two-plus years? Or is it simply that more Americans have experienced or witnessed both family patterns and now view them in a more realistic light?
A recent Pew Research Center survey that asked American adults about their views on single motherhood and cohabitation revealed some surprising changes. The survey, conducted in October 2021, found that 47% of U.S. adults said single women raising children on their own “is generally a bad thing for society,” an increase of 7 percentage points from 2018.
Continue reading at the Institute for Family Studies.
In Their Own Words:
“One of the most pathetic—and dangerous— signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.” – Economist Thomas Sowell
