The Partial-Birth Abortion Framing Is Making America Anti-Choice

Public opinion researchers call this a "priming effect." By bringing to mind a certain set of considerations—late-term abortion, graphic imagery, the language of "birth"—the partial-birth debate makes people who are ambivalent about abortion more likely to stake out a pro-life position. That is why the debate itself has helped the pro-life side and why it matters enormously what Bush, Gillespie, and the Democrats say or don't say about the partial-birth procedure, even if the law banning it is never enforced.