here's a stat that surprised me: men support abortion more than women do

The older I get, the more some of parts of the liberal credo niggle at me as short-sighted, ultra-ist, or self-defeating--me, the college-educated liberal white male raised as from, if not actually in, the Northeast. And if there's any part that has bothered me more than another, it's the way that a portion of feminist community rails against men the same way that ultraconservatives like Rush Limbaugh rail against feminists. And nothing is a greater example of this than the line, frequently trotted out, that men (men, note you, not "conservatives," or even "conservative men" men) are the root of the anti-abortion movement. Men want to make abortion illegal. Since I'm a men, and I'm in favour (as Presidents Clinton and Obama--both men--have put it) of abortions remaining safe, legal, and rare, I doubt the veracity of this broad brush and rankle when it is put to use in tarring all males.

So imagine my pleasure and surprise when, researching the issue (in response to comments posted on the article I linked to earlier in The Other Place), I found this 2010 survey from Gallup. What it shows is that, in surveys from 1975 to 2009, men responded that abortion should be legal under some or all circumstances at a consistently higher rate than did women, And that over that same period, women consistently responded that abortion should be illegal at a higher rate than men did. And that currently they do so at a higher rate (21%) than at any time since 1975, and that the gap between women so responding and men doing so (16%) is also higher than ever.

Something about motes and beams...