Thanks to Team Rape, Most Americans Consider Themselves Pro-Choice Again

Just six months ago, a Gallup poll found that the number of people who call themselves “pro-choice” was only 41%, a record low. Many conservatives gleefully championed the study as evidence that scores of youngins were becoming radically invested in the anti-abortion movement, while others thought the poll was more indicative of the problems with the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” since few non-psychopaths are actually ANTI-life (which is why it’s so frustrating that anti-choicers get away with using that moniker), and most people surveyed didn’t actually want to overturn Roe v. Wade, even if they felt more comfortable identifying with the pro-life camp.

Not that it’s a competition (JK, it is), but more recent polls show that the Personhood brigade was counting its embryos before they hatched: the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of “Likely U.S. Voters” shows that 54% describe themselves as pro-choice on the issue of abortion, while 38% say they are pro-life.

But how did the lefties manage to brainwash so many people in such a short amount of time?? Was it part of some slut-vote strategy?

Nope. Another CNN poll found that the number of people who think abortion should be legal under any circumstances jumped from around 25% — where it had been stuck, more or less, since 2006 — to a whopping 35% at the end of August 2012. Remember what happened in August? Todd Akin said pregnancy from rape was “really rare” because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Just weeks later, other polls showed that more people supported the idea that abortion should be “generally available” than they had in over 15 years.

As it turns out, when people are forced to think a little harder about the meaning of “pro-life” — thanks to politicians like Akin and Richard “God luvs rape!” Mourdock, among many, many others — most don’t actually identify with the pro-life platform. How odd!

Hot Air believes pro-choice support will “level off” in the post-election weeks to come, but that the numbers are “proof positive that Republicans lost more than just Senate seats when they said what they said. People who claimed that two inadvertently did damage to their own socially conservative cause weren’t kidding.”

Sure, pro-choice support might temper down in the polls now that Akin and a few of his rape-apologist cronies are out of office. But, since that clearly doesn’t accurately reflect the number of people who actually support the legal right to reproductive choice, the most important takeaway here for pro-choicers should be to seriously strategize about how to stop letting anti-abortion advocates call themselves pro-life.