Roe v. Wade at 25

**Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly**

On the 25th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a New York Times/CBS poll reported that, after 30 million abortions, our nation is just as irreconciled to that evil decision as ever. The people who hope that this divisive issue will go away are just whistling in the wind.
It was encouraging that the NYT/CBS poll shows a “notable shift” in attitudes over the last decade from 40% general acceptance of unlimited legality to 32%. It also showed a growing desire to make abortions are harder to get and for fewer reasons. The poll reported that 50% of Americans believe that abortion is murder, and almost half said it was too easy to get an abortion.

Conventional wisdom might have predicted that the result would be a growing sympathy or acceptance since 58% Americans say they know somebody well who has had an abortion. But guess again, attitudes have shifted the other way, with one-fourth saying they thought the woman did the wrong thing, and 70% saying that interference with her career is not a sufficient reason to justify an abortion.

Despite all that has been written and spoken over the past 25 years, 45% of respondents are still either misinformed or uninformed about what Roe v Wade makes legal or illegal. They don’t know that Roe legalizes the killing of unborn babies at any time throughout nine months of pregnancy, for any reason no matter how trivial, by any method no matter how gruesome.

I think we have to credit the debate over the gruesome method of partial birth abortion for changing public attitudes about abortion. A lot of people have just realized that abortion is killing an unborn baby. And the source of the problem is the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade.

Listen to the radio commentary here: