How a Pro-Life Editorial Completely Ignores the Facts to Make its Point

A pro-life op-ed in in the Wall Street Journal says 72% of voters support abortion restrictions at 15 weeks—but offers only proof to the contrary

 

By Eric Butterfield

 

October 12, 2022

​

Truth is hard to come by these days. Distortions, cynical games, and baldfaced lies are everywhere. Opinion writers and news-ish talking heads claim to be fighting a war on stupidity—but too often, their fictions are as stupid as what they claim to be fighting against.

 

It's not just the crank media outfits that are dishing out conspiracy theories and fear-inducing hyperbole. To wit, on October 6, 2022, the Wall Street Journal gave a forum to Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, to claim in an editorial that 72% of voters back restrictions on abortions at 15 weeks. That's startling. Not just because it's false—but because the polls she cites not only don't support her argument, but because they actually contradict it.

 

First, this 72% figure supposedly came from a meager poll with barely more than 1,000 respondents. La di da. Contrast that with this much more important statistic — 59% of voters in the conservative state of Kansas (where Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly two-to-one) voted against an amendment aiming to remove abortion rights protections from the State Constitution. How about that? That's more than 540,000 people who voted "No" on the amendment—slightly more indicative than a thousand-person poll. Nonetheless, this unbelievable claim of 72% support for abortion restrictions was trumpeted under a headline that read, "The Political Case for Federal Abortion Limits." Note the use of the slippery word, "political". Also, pay close attention to the claim of wanting federal limits.

 

Kansas voters spoke so clearly—more than half a million of them committing their views to a ballot. By contrast, Dannenfelser is inflating a poll of just a thousand people conducted over the phone while the respondents were preparing dinner or watching a TV show or distracted, or who knows what. Talk about a margin of error. But we live in a time of never-ending polls. So, does Dannenfelser have actual evidence of overwhelming support for abortion restrictions? I still don't know. But based on what she presented in her editorial, I'd give that assumption a big, fat, No.

 

The poll she cites, the Harvard CAPS Harris Poll, says nothing about overwhelming support for abortion restrictions after 15 weeks. Nothing. In fact, the 51-page summary never even mentions 15-week restrictions—and actually suggests that support is far lower than suggested.

 

Here's one example from the poll, a page title that reads, "Over Half of Voters Oppose SCOTUS Overturning Roe Vs. Wade". That doesn't sound to me like overwhelming support for abortion restrictions—is Dannenfelser really claiming that although more than 50% of voters opposed the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade, by some convoluted logic two-fifths of those opponents still want a 15-week federal restriction? Are abortion opponents just bad at math or completely delusional? This is making my head hurt.

 

The Harvard CAPS Harris Poll cites other contrary statistics, such as: When asked who should set abortion standards, 44% favored state legislatures and only 31% favored Congressional vote. That doesn't sound like massive support for a federal abortion restriction to me. In addition, 69% of poll respondents said the Supreme Court decision on abortion law has created turmoil. Citing turmoil is not the same as disagreement with a decision, of course, but neither is it an indicator of support. So, where is this 72% support for federal abortion restrictions coming from? Not from this poll.

 

Don't the editors at the Wall Street Journal fact-check their editorials? Apparently not. This disingenuous editorial ran on the same day that a member of the Proud Boys pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy (a more serious charge than simple conspiracy) and thus faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

 

That bit of Jan. 6 news reminded me of a previous Wall Street Journal editorial that had factual problems and a tenuous grasp on reality. Published at the one-year anniversary of the attack on our Capitol, this blithe bit of pretzel logic was entitled, "Stop Calling Jan. 6 an 'Insurrection". Crammed full of disingenuous legal deflections and ridiculous whining about the media's negative stereotyping of Trump voters, the column by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro argued that "insurrection" was too strong a word.

 

In a nutshell, Shapiro played a dictionary game that sought to take the spotlight off the political violence of Trump supporters. Oh, those poor Trump voters, caught with their pants down, believing the same ridiculous lie that motivated the violent goons at the Capitol.

 

As I wrote at the time, in "Yes, Jan. 6 Was An Insurrection":

 

Shapiro writes, "many of them [the attackers] believed—however erroneously—that the U.S. constitutional system was in jeopardy from voter fraud." He uses this sly bit of motivation explaining to let the attackers off the hook—as if their delusional beliefs disprove their intentions and absolve them of an attempt to defraud the United States. That's just pretzel logic.

 

Similarly, Marjorie Dannenfelser should not be let off the hook for her disingenuous citation and lack of logic. I wish the Wall Street Journal would stop publishing such foolish drivel, fuzzy thinking and completely un-fact-checked editorials. Poorly rationalized, poorly cited, and conspiratorial argumentation has no place in a serious newspaper. But there it is.

 

You might think that Dannenfelser, a president of an abortion rights abolitionist group, would find a slightly more credible path to buttress her argument. Claiming that 72% of Americans favor a federal ban at 15 weeks, while citing a small-sample poll that says no such thing whatsoever, is on a par with a sloppy high school report that's half plagiarized. When the stakes are so high, you might think the thought, the rhetoric and the fact-checking would match the moment.

 

No such momentous adherence to Americans' real opinions on abortion happened here. That would, apparently, be inconvenient to the anti-abortion argument.

 

Perhaps this finding from the erroneously cited Harvard CAPS Harris Poll sums up best Americans' real views related to the abortion issue: GOP Approval Shows A Slight Decline for the Third Straight Month.