Talk to Democrats at church and you will usually find citizens who yearn to find middle ground on America\u2019s most painful social issue, to find ways to restrict or even ban most abortions.<\/p>\n\n
Talk to Democrats as they exit voting booths and you will almost always find voters who pulled levers to elect candidates who oppose these compromises.<\/p>\n\n
The vast majority of Democrats want change on abortion. That\u2019s one of messages in a new study on politics, faith and social issues produced by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Yet harsh political realities make it almost impossible to find middle ground.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIf you ask Democrats, \u2018Would you like to see some compromises on abortion?\u2019, you will see high numbers\u201d of people saying \u201cyes,\u201d said veteran researcher John C. Green of the University of Akron, who is working at the Pew Forum during this election year. \u201cBut if you ask them if they want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, you will get a totally different set of numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
For millions of Americans it is \u201cimpossible to reconcile their emotional attachment to Roe with what they believe about finding middle ground on abortion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n
The Pew report provides plenty of evidence that Americans are hard to pin down. They lean right on gay marriage, but are beginning to lean left on embryonic stem cell research. On abortion, small camps of true believers dominate both parties, while millions of average Americans say they want compromise.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cAbortion continues to split the country nearly down the middle,\u201d according to the Pew team. Still, \u201cmajorities of Republicans (62%), Democrats (70%) and political independents (66%) favor a compromise. So do majorities of liberals, moderates and conservatives. More than six-in-ten white evangelicals also support compromise, as do 62% of white, non-Hispanic Catholics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s hard to define \u201ccompromise\u201d in terms of legislation, said Green. Study participants were asked if abortion should be \u201cgenerally available,\u201d \u201callowed, but more limited,\u201d \u201cillegal, with few exceptions\u201d or \u201cnever permitted.\u201d As expected, Republicans were more conservative than Democrats.<\/p>\n\n
Nevertheless, 10 percent of \u201cliberal\u201d Democrats chose the most anti-abortion option and 13 percent said abortion should be illegal, except in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother\u2019s life. Then, 14 percent said abortion rights should be restricted with new laws, which Green said might include a \u201cpartial-birth\u201d abortion ban, parental-notification laws, mandatory waiting periods and even a ban on late-term abortions.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cMany of those liberals are black Democrats who are frequent church goers,\u201d said Green. \u201cBut those Democrats are still out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Meanwhile, 12 percent of \u201cmoderate\u201d and \u201cconservative\u201d Democrats backed a complete abortion ban, while another 39 percent said abortion should be \u201cillegal, with few exceptions,\u201d the choice that Green called a \u201cmodern pro-life stance.\u201d Another 20 percent backed legalized abortion, with more restrictions. Once again, church attendance seemed to influence these views.<\/p>\n\n
In all, 37 percent of liberals and 71 percent of centrist Democrats said they supported policies that would not be allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court under current interpretations of Roe v. Wade and other decisions defining abortion rights.<\/p>\n\n
However, the modern Democratic Party is led by liberals who lean left on abortion and hot social issues, according to Peter Steinfels, the veteran religion columnist of the New York Times. But this creates a problem, since the centrists make up 67 percent of the party and the liberals only 31 percent. \u201cThe ideologically dominant group \u2014 certainly on abortion, less so on same-sex marriage \u2014 is the numerical minority,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n
The Republican Party has internal rifts of its own on religious and cultural issues. For example, 44 percent of white evangelicals now support embryonic stem-cell research, which is a 12-point increase over the past year alone. Democrats are split over whether to push gay marriage, but Republicans are split over the issue of whether to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban it.<\/p>\n\n
Green stressed that most Americans, especially those who frequent pews, want to affirm what they believe are \u201ctraditional,\u201d even conservative, positions on these kinds of moral issues.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cBut they also want to affirm personal freedom and the right of individuals to make their own choices,\u201d he said. \u201cSo they are not so sure how to put all that together, when it comes to deciding what to do about an issue like abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Talk to Democrats at church and you will usually find citizens who yearn to find middle ground on America\u2019s most painful social issue, to find ways to restrict or even ban most abortions. Talk to Democrats as they exit voting booths and you will almost always find voters who pulled levers to elect candidates who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,294,1544,663,691],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-democrats","tag-politics","tag-polling","tag-pro-life"],"yoast_head":"\n