A recent survey of 10,000 college students in the United States, conducted by College Pulse, reports that more than 60 percent identify as “pro-choice.” The survey was limited to students enrolled in four-year degree programs.
But in an exclusive interview with The New American, Tony Lauinger, the vice-president of the National Right to Life, said that these poll numbers should be placed into perspective. “Polls are kind of a complicated issue,” Lauinger explained. “It depends greatly on how you ask the question.”
Nevertheless, it appears that if the issue of abortion were determined by the present generation of college students alone, American babies would not have much support on the campus, as 44 percent of students surveyed even contended that abortion was “morally acceptable,” with a mere 22 percent taking the position that the procedure should be “illegal.”
Thirty-five percent even argued that abortion should be legal in “all cases.”
In contrast, in the general American public, less than one-fourth of Americans believe abortion should be legal in “all” cases.
But a closer look at the numbers appears to support Lauinger’s skepticism. For example, whereas 20 percent said that abortion should be allowed if “the fetus is diagnosed with severe abnormalities,” one could just as easily report that 80 percent did not favor abortion if the unborn child is diagnosed with severe abnormalities. And as Lauinger said, it depends greatly how a question is asked as to what answer one is going to get. With this question, readers should note that the question was asked about a “fetus” with “severe” abnormalities. Few people use the word fetus (Latin for young one), except in the abortion debate. What if College Pulse would have asked the question this way: “Do you believe it should be allowed to kill an unborn child because of a diagnosed abnormality?” There is little doubt that the numbers supporting that position would drop considerably.
And inserting the word “severe” before “abnormalities” seems to create a very leading question.
In regard to the question of how significant a survey of college students is in determining the position of Americans generally on the abortion question, Lauinger noted that these students are immersed in a highly charged liberal environment, and that college students are more pro-abortion than even other Americans their own age on the issue of abortion.
Lauinger has been a leader in the pro-life movement since the 1973 Supreme Court twin decisions on abortion — Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton — and is quite familiar with the way the mainstream media misleads the public on the abortion issue. He told The New American that liberal reporters and pollsters will ask about those twin decisions, but will mischaracterize what the rulings actually did — essentially legalize abortion throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. Instead, when pollsters ask the question, and reporters cite Roe and Doe, they generally cast the decisions as having “legalized” abortion only in the first trimester, or the first three months of pregnancy. The reality is, according to Lauinger, because of the two decisions, abortion is performed throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy.
Another deceptive practice, according to Lauinger, is that pro-abortion activists, reporters, and pollsters will ask about abortions performed for such things as rape or incest, when very few abortions are actually performed for either of those reasons. Most abortions are performed for convenience (the person simply does not want to have a baby) or as a means of birth control. In other words, the abortions are performed if an actual form of birth control failed to prevent a pregnancy. And an overwhelming percentage of the American public do not favor abortion being legal for those reasons.
As Abby Johnson, who was a director of a Planned Parenthood facility in College Station, Texas, but eventually left the abortion industry to become a pro-life leader, said in testimony before Congress, abortion advocates always raise the issues of incest and rape, but if abortions were allowed for those two reasons, and none others, abortion advocates would still oppose outlawing abortion, showing the shallowness of the argument. Johnson’s story was dramatized in the highly successful movie Unplanned.
The College Pulse survey actually supports Johnson’s assertion. According to the survey, 23 percent support legalized abortion if the mother was raped, but that means 77 percent did not take that position. Matt Lamb, the director of communications of Students for Life, told Campus Reform that the survey results are not as gloomy for the pro-life cause as initially reported. “If you look at the questions, most people support pro-life positions.”
That is still true on college campuses, even with all the secular-progressive indoctrination conducted across America.
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