The results were not surprising to any serious student of public opinion on the subject. But if taken seriously, they would be deadly to the conventional wisdom. The CW on abortion politics is that most people favor keeping abortion legal, although harboring serious moral qualms about the procedure itself. And the Republican party, by taking a more intransigent position, is said to be hurting itself, especially with women. The challenge for the Republican party, then, is to satisfy conservative Christians without turning off the pro-choice majority.
Trouble is, the pro-choice majority doesn t exist.
A majority, that is, takes a position identical to, or to the right of, that of George W. Bush and the Republican platform. This finding corroborates a poll taken last year for the Center for Gender Equity, a feminist group, which found that 53 percent of women took one of these anti-abortion positions. Here there has been some movement in recent years, presumably largely owing to the controversy over partial-birth abortion. Most people don t know much about that decision, so their response is best seen as an indication of attitudes about whether abortion is too freely available. In election after election, they have proved far more likely to vote on the issue than the other side is.