Catholic News Agency Spins Abortion Data

With a new abortion poll released by the Pew Research Center, the CNA takes a warped perspective.

The Catholic News Agency
reports on a new poll examining opinions on abortion from the Pew Research
Center, claiming that the results show "significant drop in Americans’ support for legal abortion." Looking at the poll numbers in their article, however, one can see a loose interpretation of the data, and a rush to spin numbers in their favor.

According to the poll, 44% of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances, while a majority of 46% believes it should be legal.

There are two things we should be concerned about, both of which were ignored by CNA: what was the methodology of the poll, and what should we consider a "significant" change?

First, there’s a problem with the methodology. Pew divided the issue into four categories: legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in all cases, and illegal in some cases.  They then combined the results for all/most for the legal/illegal categories, claiming that this showed overall of either support or opposition to abortion. 

This disrespects the gray areas of the debate, where many people have varying opinions on the extent to which abortion should be allowed or limited. They failed to determine the difference between "legal in most cases" and "illegal in most cases," and it’s thus unclear what would incline people to lean one way or the other; certainly, many of these middle opinions could fall into either category.

To say that either result (the 44% or the 46%) demonstrates an overall sentiment on whether or not abortion should be legal or illegal, vastly overstates the results of the poll. This is why it isn’t surprising that CNA would fail to mention the specific details of the poll.

But does the poll mark a significant change? In another Pew poll, conducted in August 2008, 41% of Americans believed abortion should be illegal while 54% believed abortion should be legal. This means that, according to the poll, there’s an overall 3% rise in those who believe abortion should be made illegal, and a 9% decrease in the overall number of people who believe it should be legal.

If we break the results down into their original four categories, the sentiment of the poll changes. Those believing abortion should be legal in all cases accounted for 18% of those polled, rising 1% since the previous poll. Those who believe abortion should be legal in most cases marked the most significant change, from 37% in August to 28% today. Those who responded by saying it should be illegal in all cases rose from 15% last August to 16% today, and those who said it should be illegal in most cases rose from 26% to 28%. This means that "the decline in support for legal abortion has come entirely in the share saying abortion should be legal in most cases" – meaning entirely in the grey area previously mentioned. 

None of this demonstrates a significant change quantitatively, and because the percentage points lost from the "mostly legal" category weren’t recovered by the "mostly illegal" and "illegal" categories.

CNA’s headline, "support for legal abortion drops in US," is a specious claim, spun to fit their ideological objectives.  Judging by the numbers, not much has changed since last August.