Think of the 2008 election as Katrina for the pro-life movement. What do you do after a disaster? You see what the damage is, and what your assets are. You marshal your assets to try to rebuild.

The Register has listed “we still have a pro-life majority” as a major asset. This prompted readers to ask, “What pro-life majority?”

Susan Wills spells out the polling data on abortion, and explains how pro-abortion folks manipulate it in last year’s “The Slippery Art of Abortion Polling.”

“Here’s how we know that Roe is not supported by 66% of Americans,” she writes. “Polls with carefully-worded, neutral questions about allowing abortion in identified circumstances show minority and waning support for the policy of Roe. These are better measures of public opinion on whether abortion law should change. An April 2005 poll by the Polling Company inc., offering respondents six choices, found only 10% support for what Roe actually does.”

“Similarly, an April 2004 poll by Zogby showed 56% of Americans taking a strongly pro-life position (18% never legal; 15% legal for mother’s life only; 23% legal only for mother’s life/rape/incest). Younger Americans were even more pro-life than older Americans: among 18-29-year-olds, 60% took a pro-life position, including 26% who said ‘never legal.’”

See more context in the article. We see hope in those numbers — but only if we work confidently to deepen and broaden our majority. We aren’t a desperate, dying movement. We are a movement that has been winning hearts and minds.

There’s no reason to stop now.

— Tom Hoopes

See the Hope for America Series:

1. The Pro-Life Majority
2. The Marriage Majority
3. The New Springtime of the Faith