As Usual, Public Opinion on Abortion is Rock Steady

Over at National Review, Michael New reports that abortion opponents are winning:

Last week, Gallup released its annual public-opinion poll on abortion policy, and its results contain some good news for abortion opponents. According to the survey, a plurality of Americans now identify as pro-life, with 49 percent of respondents calling themselves “pro-life,” and 46 percent calling themselves “pro-choice.” This is the first Gallup poll since 2013 in which a higher percentage of respondents identified as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.”

….This gain in public support for the pro-life position is more significant than many observers realize.

Needless to say, this violates Kevin’s Law, which states that opinions on abortion never change, and anyone who says otherwise is engaged in special pleading. So without further ado, here is Gallup’s own conclusion:

Little has changed over the past year, or even over the past 10 years, in Americans’ basic outlook on abortion.

And here’s the main chart:

Since 1975, the number of people who think abortion should be illegal under all circumstances has surged from 22 percent to . . . 21 percent.

Give it up, folks. Nothing is changing, and there’s no special reason to think it ever will. Whatever happens, the chart above describes the basic state of public opinion that we all have to deal with. So deal with it.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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