At a time when President Obama is trying to persuade opponents in the abortion battle that they can find middle ground -- in rhetoric, if not reality -- a new Gallup poll shows that more Americans describe themselves as "pro-life."
For the first time since it began asking the question in 1995, the Gallup Poll reported Thursday, 51% of the American adults questioned for its annual Values and Beliefs survey said that when it comes to abortion, they consider themselves "pro-life." Forty-two percent consider themselves "pro-choice." (There is a 3-percentage-point margin of error.)
This finding, Gallup noted, represents a significant shift from years past. As recently as last year, 50% of respondents called themselves "pro-choice" and 44% identified themselves as "pro-life."
Moderate and conservative Republicans accounted for the change; Democrats' attitudes toward abortion remained constant. "It is possible," Gallup said in its analysis, that the president "has pushed the public's understanding of what it means to be 'pro-choice' slightly to the left, politically."
Also, in a shift, there is a convergence in the number of Americans who hold what Gallup called "extreme views" on abortion. Those are people who say abortion should always be illegal (23%) and people who say it should never be illegal (22%). Previously, more people thought abortion should always be legal.
On what Gallup calls "the middle option" -- that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances -- the number has remained steady at 53% since 1975.
"I am pretty confident that Americans really don't want Roe v. Wade overturned," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. The larger number of Americans calling themselves "pro-life," she said, "doesn't square with what has happened in the last several elections."
Keenan cited the rejection of abortion bans by voters in politically conservative South Dakota in 2006 and 2008, and the failure of five other antiabortion ballot measures in California, Oregon and Colorado since 2005.
But antiabortion activists think they have more than the new poll on their side. "This isn't new," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life. "It tracks pretty much with what we've always known: People generally are pro-life depending on how you ask the question."
The Gallup poll comes at a delicate moment for the president, who campaigned on the principle that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare."
