Men more likely to be Pro-Choice than Women

[Nederland]

Granted, it's close. I wonder why...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/22/opinion/polls/main537570.shtml

[Warpy]

1. Young things who haven't had that first pregnancy scare,

old women who are aching for grandchildren, and sentimental women who fantasise every blastocyst as a three month old baby swell the ranks.

Otherwise, it's limited to the deeply religious.

[Hardrada]

6. Around here we have women who are not so old

waiting for grandchildren. They marry in their teens and can be grannies in their 30's.

[Igel]

2. You can't say which is higher.

"This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 814 adults, interviewed by telephone January 19-21, 2003. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points. Sampling error for subgroups may be higher."

So if 40% of men, but only 37% of women, say abortion should be "generally available", we're 95% sure that the actual number for men (assuming that they sampled in a valid manner) is between 36% and 44% and for women between 33% and 41%. That's pretty good overlap. Actually, we're not sure of that--it's likely that the interval's larger than 4 points.

[JuniperLea]

3. Very interesting!

Good find.

[Scout]

4. only so they can get out of child support

and as long as the woman does what THEY choose...


not all men...

[TheWraith]

5. What a BS statement. NT

[lukasahero]

10. Ding ding ding ding ding

Did anyone really have to think about that?

[Scout]

13. I've had men actually SAY that to me...

"well, what if the woman wants the baby and the man doesn't" or vice versa ... and these guys called themselves "pro-choice" but really did mean as long as THEY got to make the choice and the woman had to abide by it.

[lukasahero]

14. We see it on this board all the time

I believe if you go to the "Choice" forum, you'll see more than a few posts discussing men's rights in the abortion discussion. This usually focuses on two things: men shouldn't have to pay child support for children they don't want and women shouldn't be allowed to abort if men want the child. As you said, it's not about abortion to the people who use either of those arguments and it's not about supporting women. It's all. about. them.

[Thor_MN]

7. Actually, who cares what men think?

Men can not have abortions, so their opinions are only of minor interest. A man could hold a valid opinion about a fetus that possibly could be his, but his opinion is superseded by the mother's.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. One obvious answer is "the electoral commission".

The people who tally the votes to decide which candidate has won elections for public offices care what men think. So do the people running for those offices and trying to attract votes.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BoneDaddy]

21. Gee

Should we care what you think then? What hypocrisy.

[musette_sf]

22. you're more than welcome

to not care what women think about what you choose to do to your nads, as long as it doesn't infringe upon our liberty.

[Name removed]

23. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cerridwen]

8. Not what the article said at all. Why did you focus on that?

Gender, age and abortion

There are no major differences between mens' and womens' stands on the issue. 40% of men believe abortion should be generally available, and 37% of women think it should be. 20% of men think it should not be permitted, and slightly more women, 24%, agree.

Apparently, the author of the article sees that 3%/4% as statistically insignificant. While * may have thought 2% was a mandate, I don't buy that particular form of math; even at 3%. Did you think *'s "2%" was a mandate?

Next, I'd like to know, why from an article titled "Strong Support for Abortion Rights" you chose to focus on a 3% difference between men and women? I don't like that form of slanted reporting from the "media". It's even uglier when it comes to a democratic board looking like an attempt to create division. Uglier still when you come into the Women's Rights forum and try to stir the shit.

Don't you have a hornet's nest somewhere you can go play with?

[iverglas]

25. just by the way

37% of 814 is 301 (women who think abortion should be generally available).

40% of 814 is 325 (men who think abortion should be generally available).

24% of 814 is 195 (women who think abortion should not be permitted).

20% of 814 is 163 (men who think abortion should not be permitted).

Yup, those are some huge numbers to be basing assertions about the relative support for reproductive rights in the US on.

If we were to break each group down by age, location, ethnicity, religion, class ... just imagine what overwhelmingly meaningful numbers we'd have, and how representative of the population each group would likely be ...

A sample that is 1/368,550th of a population just doesn't strike me as a good basis for superimposing minor differences on that population.


Ew; forgive the source, but the facts were handy:

http://www.lifecanada.org/html/resources/polling/leger2003poll.htm

This report is based on a survey conducted among a representative sample English- or French-speaking Canadians, 18 years old of age or older. In total, six (6) questions were inserted in Leger Marketing’s national omnibus survey.

In total, 1505 respondents were interviewed for the first three questions, and 1882 were interviewed for the last three questions. Using the latest data from Statistics Canada, the results were weighted according to region, gender and language spoken at home to ensure a sample representative of the entire Canadian adult population.

In a population of about 30 million, 1/10 the current population of the US, the sample was about twice as large, in absolute numbers, as the sample in the US poll in question.

The report itself (commissioned by the anti-choice organization) is kinda interesting:
http://www.lifecanada.org/html/resources/polling/omnican_nov_2003.pdf

[seven79]

9. read the fine print

"This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 814 adults, interviewed by telephone January 19-21, 2003. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points. Sampling error for subgroups may be higher."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

what's the current total in the usa?
@ 280,000,000 ???

814 / 280,000,000 = significance of this 2003 poll.
(no offense .... no poll is any better .... IMO. )

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. No, that's *not* what significance is.

The significance of a result is *not* simply the sample size divided by the size of the sample set.

It's some years since I've done this, but the definition is something *like* "This result is significant at the 5% level if the chance of obtaining this result from an unbiased set due to sampling error is 5%" (N.B. That isn't the correct definition either - statistics is not my strongest suit - but it's something vaguely like that, or at least cladistically associated with it).

A sample size of 814 is easily large enough to discount nonsystematic sampling error (coincidentally picking more people of one sort than another); no sample size is large enough to discount systematic sampling error (e.g. picking more people with telephones than without) but that can usually be accounted for fairly accurately.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[musette_sf]

16. no "babies" are being "killed"

when an American woman exercises her constitutional right to privacy in her health care matters.

:banghead:

enjoy your stay.

[Katherine Brengle]

18. You need to go find a different forum to play in.

Last I checked, this was the Women's Rights forum, not the Rabid Anti-Choice Douchebag forum.

[knitter4democracy]

17. But the most rabid pro-lifers I know are all men.

Most of the pro-life women I know are awfully uncomfortable with forcing their personal decision on anyone else, but the guys I've run into have actually marched and picketed and yelled at women. Odd.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

26. And most libertarian males I've met are pro-forced birth

Libertarianism means freedom to have sex with women AND force them to bear your children I guess. :shrug:

Also odd.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. The older women I know who are anti-choice

are at least the next generation up from mine (I'm in my fifties).

I think that deep down, it's resentment that they were expected to be virgins until marriage and would have suffered for it if the town gossips knew that they weren't, and now it's common for single women to have children.

They seem to see pregnancy as "just punishment" for, as they put it, "sleeping around."

[Captain Hilts]

20. It's always been that way. I think it will change with generations. I was in polling...

and there's no real gender gap on this issue.

It's more important to women, however. A higher priority with them than with men.

I think like gay rights, some of this will change with generational change.