Study shows Americans are confused about what ‘abortion’ is. Here’s why that matters.

How Americans feel about abortion continues to be a complicated issue. While polling has long found that Americans grapple with the morality of abortion, regardless of whether they feel it should be legal, the abortion industry continues to push for abortion to be legal across the country, for any reason, at any time, with no restrictions or safeguards. This has long been an unpopular position, which is perhaps why abortion activists have so frequently misrepresented the reality of what abortion is.

Now, a new poll shows that there is widespread confusion about what constitutes an “abortion.”

NPR reported on a study from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which portrayed multiple situations, and then asked if it was an abortion. “Our biggest takeaway is that people do not hold a shared standard definition of what is and isn’t an abortion,” Alicia VandeVusse, lead author on the study, told NPR. “We found that there’s a lot of nuance and ambiguity in how people are thinking about these issues and understanding these issues.”

One question asked of respondents involved miscarriage:

“Person G is 12 weeks pregnant. When they have their first ultrasound, there is no cardiac activity, and their doctor recommends having the fetus removed. Person G has a surgical procedure to remove the fetus.”

Of the 2,000 people who took the survey, one-third felt this qualified as an “abortion.”

Conversely, people seemed to waver on whether or not a eugenic abortion — when someone ends their preborn child’s life due to fetal abnormalities — still counted as an abortion. “I guess, I mean, maybe [it’s an abortion]. It depends on if you know you’re not able to take care of a severe – a sickly child I guess, then what choice do you have?” one respondent said. “Would you rather go all the way through, you know. I think it’s considered abortion only when you personally know you can take care of a child and you’re being selfish.”

Why is there such confusion surrounding what is, or is not, an abortion?

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It’s fairly simple: because the abortion industry has insisted that things like miscarriage treatment qualify as abortions, even if the preborn child is no longer alive. The pro-life movement has sought to clarify this confusion by noting that induced abortion is the intentional, direct killing of a human being in the womb. Therefore, miscarriage treatment does not qualify, and early delivery with attempts to save the child (even if the child dies secondarily) is also not an abortion.

Abortionist Nisha Verma claimed an induction, followed by a hysterectomy, was an abortion. Abortion activists bullied Jessa Seewald after she experienced a miscarriage, claiming that because she had a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure, she had undergone an abortion even though her preborn child had already died in utero before the procedure. Another abortion activist said she had undergone a late-term abortion, when in reality, she had a c-section out of medical necessity, and her babies were too premature to survive.

The difference between things like miscarriage management, ectopic pregnancy treatment, or induction for health reasons and abortion is simple: one intentionally causes the death of the preborn child, while the others do not.

Plain and simple, these legitimate health care procedures are not abortions — yet the abortion industry has worked hard to conflate these issues, likely because they are aware that these scenarios are more sympathetic, and therefore, are scenarios Americans would support.

Ultimately, the confusion surrounding “abortion” is beneficial to the abortion industry, because when people know the truth about what abortion is, how it’s committed, and what it does… they are much less likely to support it.