Hattip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Gallup is out with a new poll on abortion which shows that the percentage of young adults who believe that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances has jumped from 14%-23%.
As a result, 18- to 29-year-olds are now roughly tied with seniors as the most likely of all age groups to hold this position on abortion — although all four groups are fairly close in their views. This is a sharp change from the late 1970s, when seniors were substantially more likely than younger age groups to want abortion to be illegal.
Take a well-deserved bow pro-lifers: with academia, the media and entertainment almost solidly against you, you are making headway. Future historians will find it astounding that a movement so despised by “elite” opinion could prevail.
And, of course, 18-29 year olds were all born post Roe. One would assume this means that 18-29 years olds disproportionately grew up in pro-life families, compared to older groups, since a million a year of their age-mates never made it.
Good point Darwin. The pro-aborts are the only political movement I can think of in history dedicated to the right to exterminate their off-spring. We may be beginning to see the impact of their success in thinning their numbers.
I hope the pro-life movement takes all of this survey research to heart. The evidence also is that pro-lifers will not capitalize on this new support from young people unless they dramatically change the way they present the pro-life movement. These young people are more pro-life but they are not ghettoized. They have friends, family and even spouses who are politically pro-choice.
They don’t hate their “pro-choice” friends. They don’t call them “babykillers.” They accept that good people can tragically misunderstand the public policy aspects of this issue.
And they don’t have a very high opinion of the Right-to-Life Movement.
And these young pro-lifers are more likely to be minorities and children of immigrants than older pro-lifers. They don’t have as kind of a view of the Republican Party as others.
Kurt, do you have any evidence to back up any of your assertions? I say that not in a critical way but simply out of curiosity. The pro-life kids I know usually have a high opinion of pro-lifers who have been fighting this uphill battle for decades.
Kurt just described me, more or less.
I’d also point out that the number of pro-lifers grew at the expense of the pro-choicers, not the middle-grounders. I’ve noticed that a lot of the bleeding-heart youth today sit on the fence when it comes to abortion. It’s a good sign when liberals don’t mind restricting abortions.