What I’m saying is that I bet that the objective rate of incidence is massively overestimated by those who have swung their identification from pro-choice to pro-life. If you were moderately pro-choice, but then come to believe that late-term abortions are common (as the right wing has been successful in convincing people), you are more likely to change your identification to pro-life.

So basically, my hypothesis is that for those who changed identification, they were thinking of zygotes in 1996, but thinking of viable fetuses in 2009. It’s an empirical question.

But to clarify, I’m not trying to suggest that they are common, liberally administered, or anything else I think Chris is accusing me of thinking :)

This has two effects: it makes the Republicans appear to be more pro-life (since the moderates tended to be more balanced) AND it makes independents and Democrats appear to be more pro-life as well (since the newly self-identified members of these groups tended to be more pro-life than the prior members). This is a very counter-intuitive result that most people overlook and gives you an illusion of change if you only look at the subsets without considering movement between them.

If I were to add one variable as a covariate, I would consider adding a question asking for an estimate of the prevalence of late-term abortions.

In objective terms, late term abortions are uncommon, accounting for perhaps 2% of total abortions. But the pro-life movement has been successful in framing the debate around these procedures, which (as @sarahMC notes) has moved moderates to the pro-life camp.

I’ll bet that you could explain a lot of the shifts in self-description (pro life vs pro choice) if you could capture people’s lay beliefs about how often late-term abortion happens.

In other words, the shift is happening not because of a fundamental shift in people’s core moral beliefs — but because they construe abortion as frequently involving viable fetuses. (i.e., what people think abortion refers to is qualitatively different in 1996 and 2009).

Ellen Goodman in an article several years ago wrote these amazing words,
“There will always be 3 execptions for an abortion, rape, incest……..and me”.

The personal trumps the political

Thanks for the heads up. I fixed the stats and sent a note to Sally about the possible typo.

I really enjoyed seeing such a rigorously cited and quantitatively analyzed piece in my Google Reader. It’s a nice break!