Monday, May 18, 2009

Thinking About The New Pro-Life Stats

A couple days ago I posted a link to a new survey by Gallup that showed that more people consider themselves to be pro-life than pro-choice for the first time since 1995. It got me thinking... Why is this?

Some suggestions:

1. Christians seem to be the only ones having big families anymore. Christian families will (hopefully) teach a pro-life view. When non-Christians show negative population growth from not having many kids and Christian, pro-life teaching families have two or more kids, over time this has to tip the scales somewhat.

2. Could it be that all the attention Obama's radical pro-choice views have garnered have contributed to more conversations being had and more pro-choice views being challenged? I know it has certainly caused me to be increasingly more vocal than I used to be.

3. Sadly, I think this reason could be more telling. Before the election, I talked to many people who would identified themselves as pro-life Christians who also told me they were voting for Obama. So simply because people say they are pro-life doesn't mean that we are on our way to having it be legally banned.

I am encouraged, but cautious.

3 comments:

Nick said...

Christians, Mormomons, Muslims...

Joe Selness said...

Two thoughts:

1. Many people who call themselves "Pro-life" don't like abortion, want to reduce abortions, but feel it is important to retain the "right" to an abortion, as though there is a divorce between what I believe and how I vote.

2. Christians have larger families and teach their kids to value life, then send them to universities where pro-choicers with few to no kids undermine their parents' values and teach them that murder is a women's rights issue.

Perhaps I speak to rashly.

Chet said...

The effect you speak of with pro-choice people having fewer children is known and is supposed to kick in quite strongly in the future, and should be a reason democrats find fewer young voters as strong pro-choice advocates. Only pro-choice people have abortions, so assuming strong parental influence, its been said they are "aborting themselves to political oblivion."

I think this is a trend to watch, and may be a sad "silver" lining.