What Bill Maher Didn’t Know: U.S. Among Most Radically Pro-Abortion Nations and Most Pro-Lifers Are Women

Susan Berry, PhD

 

HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher said during his show Friday he was shocked to discover several facts about abortion he never knew until after the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion in the case that ultimately could overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that created a right to abortion.

Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, tweeted the video, and asserted, “the majority of pro-life advocates are women” and that the United States “is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.”

Maher said until the media frenzy over the leaked draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court could be poised to uphold the right of states to regulate abortion, he was unaware the United States keeps company with the likes of China, North Korea, and a handful of other countries that allow unlimited abortion, and that most pro-life individuals are women.

“People hate talking about abortion so, let’s do it,” Maher quipped at the start of the segment, and then said about the Supreme Court case involving the Mississippi law that bans abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy:

We haven’t really been focusing on it, or maybe I’m projecting, I guess, I haven’t been enough, because I learned things this week, because this put it on the front page, that are pretty basic things that I did not know about abortion. Like in Europe. The modern countries of Europe – way more restrictive than we are, or what they’re even proposing. If you are pro-choice, you would like it a lot less in Germany and Italy and France and Spain and Switzerland. Did you know that? I didn’t know that … Okay. I learned most people who are pro-life are women. Did not know that.

Last October, Fox News Primetime host Ben Domenech introduced his segment on the Mississippi law with the statement, “We have, as a nation, one of the most radical abortion regimes in the world.”

Noting the abortion industry and its political and media allies have framed the Mississippi law as “extreme,” Domenech observed that law, however, “would be right at home in Europe,” where most nations have made abortions past the 12th week of pregnancy illegal.

“None of them have what America effectively has in many states – abortion up to the point of birth,” Domenech continued. “For that, you have to look at our moral equals in nations like China or North Korea.”

The continual effort on the part of the abortion industry bosses to “gaslight the country into believing things that just aren’t true” has paid off for them, Domenech added:

They pretended they wanted abortions to be rare. They claimed they didn’t profit from them. They denied they sold organs. They refused to acknowledge the science of what we know about the development of unborn babies, utterly unknown to the authors of Roe, by the way, and they ignored the terrible and tragic impact on America’s poorest and most vulnerable families, and on the black community in particular.

A YouGov poll published last week that asked the question “at what point in a pregnancy do you think abortions should be banned,” found 64 percent of Americans believe the Mississippi law that bans abortions past 15 weeks is either acceptable, as is, or not restrictive enough.

The responses broke down as follows:

  • 23% said abortion should never be banned
  • 12% said abortion should be banned after six months
  • 10% said abortion should be banned after 15 weeks – what Mississippi’s law mandates
  • 13% said abortion should be banned after three months
  • 20% said abortion should be banned after six weeks (heartbeat)
  • 21% said abortion should be entirely banned.

A Marist poll released in January and commissioned by the Knights of Columbus found 71 percent of Americans support restrictions on abortion, including 49 percent of Democrats, 93 percent of Republicans, and 70 percent of Independents.

Respondents were also asked, “Which comes closest to your view of what the Supreme Court should do when it reconsiders Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling making abortion legal in the United States?”

The results from this question found 44 percent said states should determine the issue, while 17 percent said the Supreme Court should make abortion entirely illegal, and 36 percent said abortion should be legal without restrictions.

In summary, 61 percent believe the Supreme Court should either overturn Roe or make abortion entirely illegal.

A Fox News poll published last week also found 50 percent of registered voters favor a ban on abortions in their state after six weeks of pregnancy, or, when an unborn baby’s heartbeat can be detected, while 54 percent favor an abortion ban after 15 weeks, as the Mississippi law mandates.

Washington Examiner senior columnist Tim Carney challenged as well the common pro-abortion narrative that claims all women are in favor of abortion rights – and that abortion is a “women’s healthcare” issue. The underlying push, of course, is to imply if you are not in favor of abortion rights, you don’t care about women or their “health.”

Many polls show no gender gap, however.

YouGov’s latest poll, for example, asked respondents the question, “Do you think a woman’s right to have an abortion is established by the Constitution?”

“Only 34 percent of men said yes, along with 35 percent of women,” Carney wrote. “No statistically significant gender gap.”

“Only 8 percent of women said federal courts should decide the legality of abortion, compared to 13 percent of men,” he added. “In this instance, there is a slight gender gap, but men are actually more supportive of Roe.”

The poll also found 65 percent of women believe abortions should be outlawed after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with most of these women actually believing a 15-week ban is not restrictive enough.

National Right to Life noted the increase in pro-life women elected to Congress in 2020:

“So if you are a woman who rejects the pro-Roe side’s absolutism on abortion as a constitutional right that states may never regulate, you are not alone,” Carney concluded. “If you are a man who believes states can and should protect unborn babies, you have plenty of women on your side, and you should feel confident in rejecting the fallacious argument that you owe some kind of support to a position because an imagined majority of women support it.”

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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Pro-Life Supporters” by Fibonacci Blue. CC BY 2.0.

 

 

 

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