Yesterday, The New York Times said this about the anti-abortion march: "A new sense of urgency, anxiety and maybe a little envy has accompanied this year's event, with anti-abortion organizers suddenly realizing they had a tough act to follow." The act was the record breaking women's march which hit D.C. last Saturday, accompanied by sister marches in more than 300 U.S. cities and towns, and more than 600 marches worldwide.
For anyone interested in likely turnout today at the anti-abortion march, there is no reason to look past the number of bus permits issued for the march in order to guesstimate attendance ... today's march has 92 permits compared to 1800 for the January 21st Women's March.
As an aside, Trump's inauguration had only 450 permit requests and we all know how badly attended that was.
So-called Right to Lifers are not just losing the battle of mass demonstrations, but are losing the popular and demographic battles too. Even though Donald Trump is in the White House, Americans remain firmly pro-choice.
According to Pew Research Center , June 27, 2016, 56% of US adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases vs. 31% who say it should be illegal all or most of the time. These numbers have been relatively stable for at least two decades.
Younger adults also are less likely to view abortion as an important issue.
62% of Americans ages 18 to 29 say it is "not that important."
All of this goes a long way to explaining why there will be fewer marchers outside today in D.C than there were last Saturday.
Can we once again expect that Trump and friends will try to falsify the attendance number?
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January 27, 2017