Poll Smoking & Profiles In Cluelessness

There must be some reason that the Fascist religious crackpots at FetusFetishOnline are flogging this collection of abortion polls as a “Prolife Polling Resource”, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.  Painstakingly assembled by the Evangelical Fellowship and datamined from years of polls, it’s generally good news for prochoicers.  Good old news, since it only confirms what we already know: that Canada is a vehemently prochoice country.  It can’t be a relief to fetus fetishists to know that in this great country of ours the wearing of animal fur is considered more morally unacceptable than abortion.

Not that there isn’t the occasional ripe-sounding data to be cherrypicked, like the one indicating that about half the country would favour gestational limits on abortion.  Far be it from me to rain on their parade — oh, shit on that, who am I kidding?  I take great pleasure in noting that while this gestational limit thing might sound good for antichoicers at first blush, unpack it a little and what it really shows is support for abortion rights, just not as framed in the question.  Any respondent who answered “No” to “Should women be able to have abortions any time during pregnancy?” would go in the “favours gestational limits” column.  And — oh no, somebody stop me, I’m about to take the Mighty Pinprick of Truth to a few more of their party balloons — with so many fetus fetishists preferring the brain-damaged “All Or Nothing, Egg Personhood, Stop Embryo Oppression” approach, the idea that half of Canadians would accept gestational limits under 9 months must be cold comfort.

Then there’s the data we’ve already seen in poll after poll, but which I’m only too happy to see again: like the clear plurality of Canadians that think abortion is “morally acceptable” and do NOT want the so-called “abortion debate” re-opened, or don’t give a shit either way.  Can you say “MASSIVE ProChoice Majority”?

Why Lifesite would choose to publish this less-than-encouraging data at the height of the battle of words & wits over Motion 312 is a mystery.  But then again, why not: it’s in line with the haphazard and utterly clueless way the rest of the M312 campaign has been run, a confused and riotous crusade of Twitterspam, fetusmobiles, inconsistencies, transparent lies and general dumbness.  For an initiative thought by some to be the last kick at the anti-abortion can for a long, long time, the ineptitude of its handling has been breathtaking to behold.

And fun to watch.  Did I mention fun to watch?

(h/t fern hill on Twitter)