Ramesh Ponnuru, sorting through a CBS News poll that measured respondents' personal opinions on abortion, sees good news and bad news. "The good news for pro-lifers," he writes on the Corner, "is that in the latest poll, taken from Jan. 18 to Jan. 21, 47 percent of the public says that abortion should be generally banned." Bad news: "there seems to be a bit of a leftward trend." Free license for killing fetuses has widened in its appeal, rigid opposition contracted.
The polls, however, were national. A state-by-state breakdown, I wrote in a letter to Ponnuru, would be interesting, especially if respective populations reflected stronger majorities on one side or the other — suggesting, perhaps, less contention over post-Roe laws — than national surveys.
He responded: "It would also be interesting if states were closer to each other on the policy question than on the general question 'do you consider yourself pro-life or pro-choice'?"
Sentiment and political tolerance may be closer than we realize. The trouble with today's politics, inherited from the state of the argument last century, is the absolute implication of any policy. Of course, that is because abortion has been made a national issue. But should the legal question cease to be academic by an act of judicial review it will necessarily be returned to the states.
If regulation is no longer centripetal it will likely diffuse controversy, as seen in the discrete reinstatement of capital punishment and securement of the definition of marriage. New Yorkers may not care for the decisions of Ohioans, but with no interposing constitutional right, laws are passed and that's that. And though on abortion Ohioans may not be as stringent as Kansans they will probably restrict certain invasions of the womb. Legislatures could set proscription or permission of abortion in laws according to what a state electorate would, in degrees, accept.