That's the most recent Fox News Poll about abortion and lately, most of them yield similar results. I'm posting it not to get into an argument about the procedure or the morality or who controls whose bodies or When Life Begins or any of that. I just want to wonder aloud about something. 59% of respondents think abortion should be available all or most of the time and an additional 32% say it should be available for certain situations.
Given what laws are being passed in this country and which ones are being promised or proposed to stop abortions, aren't you amazed that the percentage of people who want it banned everywhere is in single digits? That 7% seems to be commanding around 77% of the news coverage and just about the entire Republican party. I see people on my TV all the time talking about abortion and the ones who are against it always seem to want every single bit of it illegal — no exceptions for any reason. They're even going after things like in vitro fertilization because it seems to have a vague connection to abortion. (You get the feeling the people who wanted to ban it didn't really know what it was or how it works?)
It's like that with too many debates on television…and extreme views may make for Good Television but I think they warp the real debates. When John Oliver started Last Week Tonight several years ago, one of his first segments made this point about the debates over Climate Change. I thought this was brilliant. Go ahead. Watch it. It's only four and a half minutes…
Mr. Oliver could recycle that same script making it about almost any issue of the day that anyone is prone to shout about. Too many of them are presented as if the matter is 50/50 when it's not. The abortion issue certainly isn't.