Choice is good when you have it and bad when someone else has it. Of course, you'll choose responsibly and your reasons are good but someone else...

So-called prolifers have done a better job of framing the issue than pro-choicers have (Who wouldn't want to be "for life?" Much more catchy than "pro-choice."). And people against reproductive choice have done a fantastic job of nipping away at Roe v. Wade (from ending Medicaid funding, preventing military women from getting abortions, enacting notification laws and waiting periods, mandating ultrasounds, mandating specifically-worded pamphlets, and enacting local restrictions that have driven providers out of the state --today's Roe isn't the Roe of 1973).

The thing is, many people view each of these threats to Roe individually as common-sense or not-so-bad, without considering the actual effects of how these laws and restrictions work together to completely undermine Roe.

If voters thought about how these "common-sense" laws would affect them or people they love and trust, they might think twice about them -- you or someone you know might need to make a choice and find you have no options.*

*There are any number of reasons someone who considers herself pro-life might choose to have an abortion. That would be another, much longer post.

You can change the results you get by slanting the questions. Abortion is very "hot button" emotional issue, even after so many years. As the previous poster said correctly, people tend to feel differently about their answer if they are asked (or are thinking about) "others" -- people they perceive as different and less worthy. People they don't trust, or who they suspect of gaming the system.

And they very rarely think the ramifications through. So a poor black teenager is pregnant, and wants an abortion "for selfish reasons". If you deny her the abortion on those grounds, who pays for the child? YOU THE TAXPAYER. And is it reasonable or fair to punish a child, by forcing them to grow up unloved and unwanted? And don't bother mentioning adoption, because that only applies to healthy, perfect white babies.

Percentages would certainly be different if you asked "do you want to support a baby born to an unwilling teen mother, with a lifetime of welfare and ADC and food stamps, and all the attendant social, health and educational problems entailed by a fatherless baby growing up in an inner city slum?" and you get a very different sort of sort of response. People are only sentimental about babies that look like they do, that they can imagine as their own kids.

They also aren't processing the numbers. A million pregnancies a year end in abortion. How would they answer about paying taxes, building schools, providing health insurance for TEN MILLION NEW BABIES every decade? Didn't think so.

This is a "them vs. us" issue. Pro-lifers are typically cowards who talk a big story about "the sanctity of life" but then do not give a rat's ass about health insurance, or good schools for that "sacred life". I have literally never heard or read about any pro-lifers actively adopting unwanted, special needs infants and giving them a "forever family". When you boil it down, it's basically about wanting to control people's sex lives, by punishing them for having sex. The baby part is incidental.

A real question for Gallup to ask should be, "what would YOU PERSONALLY DO if you had an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy (or your teenage son or daughter did), and circumstances (school, finances, health) made it impossible...and the likelihood of adoption was virtually nil. Would you still bring the pregnancy to term?"

Because most people, pro or con, believe THEY INDIVIDUALLY always have the right to know and do what is right FOR THEMSELVES. They trust THEMSELVES to know the difference between what right and wrong, moral and immoral, "good enough reasons" and poor excuses. The only people who DO NOT have this right are "other people"...people they judge as too poor, too dark skinned, "not our kind", not religious enough, lazy or greedy (wanting to go to college or have a career qualifies here as "lazy and greedy").

I would not be too quick to jump on the "end of pro-choice" in America. As is said here, "pro choice" was always a poor choice of names and doesn't inspire any sense of urgency.

Thank god we have a Democratic President in the White House, and the new Supreme Court Justice will not be a right wing ideologue. A couple votes the other way, a financial crisis that happened a few weeks later...and it could all be very, very different.

Oh, God no, NOT THAT!!

A 16 year old is fully capable of making her own choices with life-long consequences!

But she'd better not get married and become a housewife, dammit. She's far too young to make choices with life-long consequences.

The way I read this it sounds like last poll said about half were pro-choice and this poll says about half our pro-life. I would hardly call a couple of yards away from the proverbial 50-yard line substantial change in either direction.

Because most people, pro or con, believe THEY INDIVIDUALLY always have the right to know and do what is right FOR THEMSELVES. They trust THEMSELVES to know the difference between what right and wrong, moral and immoral, "good enough reasons" and poor excuses. The only people who DO NOT have this right are "other people".

Well said. I know of several "pro-life" women who chose abortions when they found out their "baby" had some abnormalities. They felt that was the correct decision for them, but others can't make that same decision?

And the nonsense about providing programs designed to deal with those who choose to abort because of economic issues. Nurses visits, well-baby care just cover a fraction of the cost of raising a child for 18+ years. Women are not choosing to abort just because they don't have the money for the birth or infant care - they don't have enough money to support an additional child to adulthood.