{"id":299436,"date":"2023-09-29T06:37:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T11:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=299436"},"modified":"2023-10-02T16:41:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T21:41:13","slug":"study-americans-confused-abortion-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/study-americans-confused-abortion-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Study shows Americans are confused about what ‘abortion’ is. Here’s why that matters."},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

How Americans feel about abortion continues to be a complicated issue. While polling has long found that Americans grapple with the morality of abortion<\/a>, regardless of whether they feel it should be legal, the abortion industry continues to push for abortion to be legal across the country, for any reason, at any time, with no restrictions or safeguards. This has long been an unpopular position, which is perhaps why abortion activists have so frequently misrepresented the reality of what abortion is.<\/p>\n

Now, a new poll shows that there is widespread confusion about what constitutes an “abortion.”<\/p>\n

NPR reported<\/a> on a study<\/a> from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which portrayed multiple situations, and then asked if it was an abortion. “Our biggest takeaway is that people do not hold a shared standard definition of what is and isn’t an abortion,” Alicia VandeVusse, lead author on the study, told NPR. “We found that there’s a lot of nuance and ambiguity in how people are thinking about these issues and understanding these issues.”<\/p>\n

One question asked of respondents involved miscarriage:<\/p>\n

“Person G is 12 weeks pregnant. When they have their first ultrasound, there is no cardiac activity, and their doctor recommends having the fetus removed. Person G has a surgical procedure to remove the fetus.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Of the 2,000 people who took the survey, one-third felt this qualified as an “abortion.”<\/p>\n

Conversely, people seemed to waver on whether or not a eugenic abortion \u2014 when someone ends their preborn child’s life due to fetal abnormalities \u2014 still counted as an abortion. \u201cI guess, I mean, maybe [it\u2019s an abortion]. It depends on if you know you\u2019re not able to take care of a severe \u2013 a sickly child I guess, then what choice do you have?” one respondent said. “Would you rather go all the way through, you know. I think it\u2019s considered abortion only when you personally know you can take care of a child and you\u2019re being selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is there such confusion surrounding what is, or is not, an abortion?<\/p>\n