Anti-abortion rights forces see an end to Roe v. Wade just around the corner, writes Michelle Boorstein in today’s Washington Post.

Tens of thousands of abortion opponents held an upbeat rally on the cold, gray streets of downtown Washington yesterday and described what they see as a societal tide turning against the 33-year-old Roe v. Wade court decision that legalized the procedure.

“Societal tide”? Two justices don’t make a society. In fact, possibly the most remarkable thing about the abortion controversy is that, in spite of years of Sturm und Drang, opinions actually are not shifting. I believe we’re still pretty much where we were just after Roe v. Wade was decided.

Check out the archive of abortion polls at pollingreport.com. Scroll down to the ABC News/Washington Post poll asking the question, “Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?” This table shows results going back to 1996. In June 1996, 58 percent of adults nationwide believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases; 39 percent believed it should be illegal in all or most cases. In December 2005, 57 percent believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 40 percent believed it should be illegal in all or most cases. Given a 3 percent margin of error, this shows that over the past decade there has been no change at all.

If you scroll even further down, you can find a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll that goes back to 1975. This poll asked the question “Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?” Let’s compare April 1975 to November 2005:

1975

Always legal — 21 percent
Sometimes legal — 54 percent
Always illegal — 22 percent

2005

Always legal — 26 percent
Sometimes legal — 56 percent
Always illegal — 16 percent

If anything, the Fetus People lost ground somewhere.

Back to Boorstein:

Demonstrators at the annual March for Life said their movement has been buoyed by two recent Supreme Court nominees — one of them confirmed — who appear open to reconsidering the 1973 decision. They talked optimistically about how technological advances are producing clearer sonograms, which could make it harder to argue that a fetus is not a person.

Life Magazine ran its famous photographs of fetii in utero in April 1966. These photos and others like them have been around for 40 years. And the dingbats are talking about better sonograms?

You’ll like this part:

And they noted yesterday’s large turnout of young people, who filled the march route along Constitution Avenue and lined the walls outside the Supreme Court in cheerleader jackets, black leather outfits with studs and T-shirts that read, “Abortion is Mean” and “Sex is good, the pill is not.” [emphasis added]

You see the problem.

In the February 9 New York Review of Books, historian Gary Wills reviews Jimmy Carter’s Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. Here’s a snip:

On abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a “pro-life” dogmatism defeats human life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy “brought about by a combination of human errors.” But the “pro-life” forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.

Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the “pro-life” movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:

Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany…. It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs.

The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can be seen where the law forbids abortion:

In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].

A New York Times article that came out after Carter’s book appeared further confirms what he is saying: “Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions.“[*] This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as the only form of contraception—demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of that kind of program.

By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 1990s. Yet the ironically named “pro-life” movement would return the United States to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the fundamentalists try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign aid to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive knowledge. They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research. With friends like these, “life” is in thrall to death. Carter finds these results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).

Be sure to read the whole review; you’ll enjoy it. I’d also like to point out that Wills is a Catholic and Carter an evangelical, proving that not all religious people are whackjobs.

Back to Boorstein:

“This is the beginning of the end. We’ll look back at some point soon and won’t believe that people were ever killing babies like it was nothing,” said Ryan McAlpin, 19, who came from Chicago with a group of friends.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute provides a wealth of information on abortion and abortion law worldwide. I’ve spent considerable time there and have yet to find an example — in the past 30 or so years, anyway — of a nation criminalizing abortion in a place where it was once legal. Abortion has been decriminalized in many nations, but not the other way around. Worldwide, the societal tide is clearly with choice, not against it.

One more bit from Boorstein:

Joe Giganti, a spokesman for the action center, said more Americans are starting to question the notion that Roe is settled law. “I’d say the mood has changed significantly just in the past year,” he said. “We’re going to see the overturning of Roe .”

Back to pollingreport.com. According to a, NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in December 2005, 66 percent of adults nationwide support keeping Roe v. Wade as settled law; only 30 percent want it overturned. I’d say Joe Giganti is celebrating a little too soon.

In the long term, even if Roe v. Wade were overturned and a whole mess of states criminalized abortion the next day, the overwhelming force of public opinion would eventually set things right again to make abortion legal. That is, unless the United States isn’t converted into a fundie theocracy, in which case all bets are off. And in that case abortion law will be the least of our problems.

Update: See also feministing and Digby.