September 28, 2016

Voters Want to Know About Abortion

Were you one of the 80 million people who tuned into the first presidential debate this past Monday night? This was the most-watched presidential debate in history. Eighty million is an enormous number of people watching a single event.

Do you know what people were Googling, according to Google Trends, during the debate but never once was mentioned in the 90-minute slugfest?

Abortion.

This is fascinating for a couple reasons. Firstly, abortion isn’t usually mentioned as one of the top priorities of likely voters in public polling. The economy and terrorism are the first priorities of this election cycle. This isn’t to say abortion is not on the list of concerns. It is. It’s just not one of the top concerns.

Secondly, abortion isn’t covered on television and in the news as often as other issues so for the public to explicitly want to know more about the candidates for president and their positions on abortion could indicate that there is an underlying current of high interest on this hot button issue.

Planned Parenthood has been a mainstay in the news for the past year – and it hasn’t exactly been the best kind of news since most of the coverage circles around the Center for Medical Progress videos that show high level Planned Parenthood executives and abortionists discussing the harvesting and sale of body parts of babies they aborted.

The Select Panel on Infant Lives, a special committee in the US House of Representatives, has issued damning evidence backing up not only the profiting off of baby body parts but violations of patient privacy and records and other illegal activity.

Oh, and Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is a taxpayer-funded entity, receiving over $500 million a year from the forced donors who pay their taxes.

Planned Parenthood also is heavily involved in the political process, having stumped for the Democratic nominee and pledged millions to help her get elected (and SFLA has a new campus tour talking all about this!). They also influenced the most pro-abortion platform of any political party to be approved. The Democratic Party’s platform supports abortion on-demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, further funding of Planned Parenthood and repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars tax money from directly paying for abortion in Medicaid. So they not only want abortion to be legal whenever and wherever but they want taxpayers to pay for it.

Hmmmm, maybe that’s why voters were Googling the heck of out “abortion” and the presidential candidates?

In any case, we at Students for Life of America could not agree more that abortion needs to be discussed in the debates. There are two more debates left and here are a few questions we believe need to be asked:

When and under what circumstances should abortion be legal?
What would you do to support women in crisis pregnancies, especially on college campuses where Planned Parenthood preys on vulnerable women and tells them they can’t possibly have a child and continue their education?
Why should Planned Parenthood get one more dime of taxpayer funding after their executives have been caught on tape selling the body parts of aborted babies, after they have been subject to repayment of millions of dollars after defrauding taxpayers, after they’ve been caught covering up child abuse?
A vast majority of Americans, pro-choice and pro-life, are against taxpayer-funded abortion so why should they be forced to fund it directly if the Hyde Amendment is removed?
Do you think taxpayers even should pay for abortions and if so, in what cases?
Kermit Gosnell sits in prison right now because he was convicted of killing babies born alive after abortion and ending the life of a woman who came to him for a late-term abortion, yet his facility was never inspected even though the abortion industry knew of his shady business practices. What would you do to stop other abortionists like Kermit Gosnell who are operating dangerous abortion facilities?