Americans' View on Abortion Consistently Contradictory

[Gabu]

The main thing I get from this is that most Americans honestly don't care about abortion enough to form a coherent, internally consistent stance on it.

[Gabu]

The main thing I get from this is that most Americans honestly don't care about abortion enough to form a coherent, internally consistent stance on it.

Not necessarily.  For instance, Ebowed finds my supposedly conflicting views on abortion, marijuana, gay marriage, etc. incoherent and inconsistent.  But I find them perfectly in tune with another and harmonious.  It all depends on one's point of view.

According to the poll, "Most think having an abortion should be a personal choice. But they also think it is murder."  Unless most Americans think that murder should be a personal choice, I don't see how anyone could call this anything but contradictory.

I still feel that abortion is probably a lot like gay marriage, in that it's a "hot button" issue among those who actually care, but the pool of those who don't particularly care is much larger.

[Gabu]

Gabu, It's not like asking whether you like cats, and a majority say no, then turning around and asking whether you dislike cats, and a majority say yes.  That would be a contradiction, at least among the non-null intersection of the two majority subsets.  But the data only suggest two questions are asked:  Is abortion murder?  Should abortion of a fetus be a personal choice?  It is possible someone says yes to both, honestly, and from the point of view that one has a right to commit murder.  This isn't intended to justify such a position, but to describe that it isn't necessarily a logical contradiction.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.  Is it that there is actually a group of Americans who feel that murder should be a personal choice?

[Gabu]

Define murder.  Define it exactly before I can answer.

Most Americans would probably define murder as "an unjust killing".

[Gabu]

okay, then we have three possibilities:  either there is a subset of those polled who either do not require justification for killing

Which is not terribly likely.

or there is a subset of those polled who misunderstand the question

Possibly, but the questions seem pretty unambiguous: "Is abortion murder?" and "Should abortion be a personal choice?"

even with only these possibilities we can say that the view isn't necessarily a contradiction.

Is it necessarily a contradiction?  No.  Would it appear that the most likely explanation for it is that it is a contradiction?  I would say so, yes.

[Gabu]

This talks about the restrictions already in place on abortion. But that isn't enough for the anti-abortionists, they want want to ban it altogether (like South Dakota basically did). We will not cooperate with extremists. End of story.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/12/195433/116

It seems to me that, if someone feels that abortion is murder, it would kind of make sense that counselling and waiting periods would not be enough for that person.

Not that I agree with the notion that abortion in general is murder, but you can't really expect people who feel that a baby is being murdered when an abortion occurs to be fine with simply making there be a few roadblocks on the way to getting an abortion.

There really is no such thing as acceptable compromise on abortion if you view it as murder, which is why I've taken it upon myself to never, ever, ever debate abortion, because it goes absolutely nowhere.

[Gabu]

Forcing a 12 year old rape victim to be pregnant for 9 months even if will likely kill her is first degree murder.

Anyways, most of these "pro-life" people have no moral authority because they are pro-death penalty, pro killing random Iraqis, and ignore other parts of the bible like that about how easy it is for rich men to go to heaven.

Most pro-life people I know support exceptions for rape and incest for basically that reason, or something thereabouts

As for the second point, "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are really stupid terms that I personally hate to no end.  Your extrapolation is correct, in my view, given the term "pro-life", but it would be equally correct to expect someone who is "pro-choice" to be in favor of promoting private schools as a "choice", or of banning gun control to give people the "choice" to own a gun, etc.  I personally wish we could just stop using those terms altogether, but then again, people tend to be really big on throwing around stupid labels.