The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties

by Christopher Caldwell

Polls taken in the days after Roe v. Wade show that Americans had a sense that abortion was bad, but lacked a moral framework that would allow them to think about abortion logically and confidently. They were concerned about dangers to a mother’s health (for which they favored allowing abortion by 91 to 8 percent), rape (they favored abortion by 81 to 10 percent), and birth defects (abortion was okay by 82 to 15 percent). They wanted, it seems, to guard against “risk.” But they understood that doing so could easily upset the rules of courtship, the balance of power between men and women, and what used to be called “the way of the world.” They were divided on how to proceed. Suppose a married woman who doesn’t want more children gets pregnant? Tough luck. People disapproved of abortion in that case, 51 to 46 percent. And a young woman who gets knocked up by her boyfriend? Tough luck to her, too. Forty-nine percent disapproved of abortion in that case, versus 47 percent who approved.