The much trumpeted impending SCOTUS ruling effectively striking down Roe vs Wade and so making abortion illegal in America unless specifically decriminalised at state level, is widely at odds with American public opinion, but largely in line with the views of white evangelical Christians, showing the degree to which entitled white evangelical Christianity, with Donald Trump's help, has subverted SCOTUS.
While 61% of Americans are in favour of legalised abortions, only 37% oppose it. SCOTUS is representing only a minority of American extremists while ignoring the views of the vast majority. On this issue, if no other, SCOTUS can be seen to represent only a minority of Americans, who nevertheless feel entitled to have their views predominating.
This Pew Research survey show that, of all the religious groups in the USA, only the White Evangelicals back a ban on abortion. 73% of white evangelicals say their almost universal opposition to abortion is shaped by their religion, while only 28% of white, non-evangelical Protestants say their views have a religious basis and 7% of non-affiliated cite religion as shaping their views.
74% of Evangelicals think abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while only 37% of white, non-evangelical Protestants agree with that extreme position. This view is shared by 28% of black Christians, 42% of Catholics and only 15% of the non-affiliated.
When it comes to concern for the health and welfare of the woman, Evangelical Christians show their callous disregard for the suffering of others - a callous indifference that betrays their pretence of being pro-life rather than pro-control of women, but which is consistent with their stance on the measures to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the preventative vaccination campaigns, where they showed they were quite prepared for people to die or suffer long-term health problems rather than be even slightly inconvenienced, and even to lie to justify their selfishness. A survey at the height of the pandemic concluded that evangelical Christians were the least concerned of all American religious demographics.
On the question of an abortion being legal if pregnancy threatened a woman’s life or health, only a narrow majority (51%) of evangelicals thought that could be grounds for a legal abortion, compared to 77% of white, non-evangelical Protestants, 71% of black protestants, 69% of Catholics and 87% of non-affiliated.
The result was similar on the question of a pregnancy resulting from rape. Only 40% of white evangelicals thought pregnancy resulting from rape was grounds for an abortion, compared to 75% of white, non-evangelicals, 71% of black protestants, 66% of Catholics and 87% of non-affiliated.
On the question of how long a woman had been pregnant being a consideration for an abortion being legal there was more agreement across the different religious groups. 56% of evangelicals though it should be compared to 64% of white, non-evangelical Protestants, 63% of Catholics and 50% of non-affiliated.
This finding is very much in line with another survey, by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding that showed only white, non-evangelical Protestants and white evangelicals have a majority in favour of a ban on abortions with again, white evangelical Christians being way out of line at 80% in favour of abortions being illegal.
It's clear then that the widely expected SCOTUS ruling overturning Wade vs Roe is way out of line with American public opinions and represents only the extremist views of a Christian minority who seek to impose their bigoted superstition on the rest of their fellow Americans and to use the law to ensure their domination of women and their reproductive rights, so taking America back to the Bronze Age from whence this obscene misogyny derives. The irony is that it is the sanctimonious judgmentalism of fundamentalist Christians that has stigmatized having a child out of wedlock - the most common reason for wanting a termination.
We can now expect their campaign to move on to allowing the teaching of creationism in US public schools by overturning the Establishment Clause, so allowing Christian Bible literalist fundamentalism to be taught to children as genuine science and history at American tax-payers expense. Another step closer to their dream of replacing American democracy with a self-appointed fundamentalist Christian theocracy.
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