I was just rereading this excellent piece by Jeffrey Rosen on what would happen if Roe toppled, and wondering about the 15% of people he says support no-exception bans on the practice, even when the mother's life is in jeopardy. Is this really true? I know that there's controversy over mental health exceptions, but how many pro-lifers would actually support, say, forcing a woman with severe pre-eclampsia to roll the dice?
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"...but how many pro-lifers would actually support, say, forcing a woman with severe pre-eclampsia to roll the dice?"
Probably very, very few who read your blog. That really doesn't say much about whether the number is 15% or not. "No-exception" abortion banners are probably not likely to read libertarian leaning blogs.
"Is this really true?"
I doubt it. Obviously the mother's life should be saved. But there should also be an attempt to save the fetus if possible (via Ceasarian section for instance). In cases where this doesn't make sense, the fetus dies. Oh well. That doesn't mean abortion should be legal in general, nor does it mean it should be the first choice when multiple choices exist to save the mother.
They do it in Latin America, where abortion is completely banned in several Catholic countries.
"Is this really true?"
I doubt it. Obviously the mother's life should be saved. But there should also be an attempt to save the fetus if possible (via Ceasarian section for instance). In cases where this doesn't make sense, the fetus dies. Oh well. That doesn't mean abortion should be legal in general, nor does it mean it should be the first choice when multiple choices exist to save the mother.
In an ideal world, I would not force a woman with real medical risks to, as you say, roll the dice.
But this isn't an ideal world and any exception to a ban on abortion meant to allow a small trickle of truly endangered women will quickly result in a flood of nonendangered. Look at it this way: You aren't risking the life of one woman against the life of one child (hers). Every woman spared the risk has to be balanced against the loss of dozens of children.
Sorry for the double post. Didn't mean to do that.
15% is barely above noise level. My rule of thumb is 12% will answer "yes" and 12% will answer "no" to almost anything. "Would you support the President if he nuked Dayton?" 12% say yes. "Would you buy arsenic pops if they were available in eight-packs?" 12% say yes. "I have a winning lottery ticket I don't need, want it?" 12% say no.
I highly doubt it; I have yet to meet a pro-lifer who didn’t make an exception to protect the life of the mother (and a pretty clear majority make an exception for rape and incest). Even if I believed the 15% number (which I don’t), it would mean that 85% of the population favors allowing abortion to protect the life of the mother. If it came down to an election or legislation, I know which side I’d put my money on prevailing.
I suspect that how many people fall into the "15%" depends a lot on how the question is asked.
Take me, for example. I would oppose pre-emptive abortions recommended merely because the pregnancy might endanger the mother's life. OTOH, there are obviously situations where it's impossible to save the life of both the mother and the child, and I'd expect the mother's life to get first dibs in such a situation.
So am I one of those 15%? Probably. But I think that this is the only consistent position if, as most pro-lifers say, the fetus is a human being with all of the rights thereof.
You can get about 15% of the population to say almost anything in a poll.
-dk
to Cal:
I don't think you would want to "roll the dice" if it were your wife or daughter's life on the line. But you are perfectly willing to force someone else's wife or daughter to do so.
But, like you said, it's not a perfect world. If it were, people like you would hold themselves to the same standards they set for others.
Look at it this way: You aren't risking the life of one woman against the life of one child (hers). Every woman spared the risk has to be balanced against the loss of dozens of children.
Or, similarly, we must make guns 100% illegal because, if we allow any, some might be used to commit murder. Those legal guns must be balanced against the large number of murders guns commit each year.
I also think a lot of pro-lifers are concerned with the wording of the exception. If it's "harm the life of the mother" then that can be broadly interpreted to mean just about anything including inconvenience the life of the mother.
The distinction that some have already touched upon is that while prolifers oppose abortion, most of them are not opposed to necessary medical procedures conducted in a humane fashion. Presently, most abortions are not necessary, and some of the methods are not humane.
I doubt it. Obviously the mother's life should be saved. But there should also be an attempt to save the fetus if possible (via Ceasarian section for instance). In cases where this doesn't make sense, the fetus dies.
People also don't understand that there's a finite limit on how early the baby really can be saved. Below 23-24 weeks gestation, hospitals generally won't attempt to resuscitate a baby, because the success rates are so low and the catastrophic-damage rates so high. They also won't generally perform C-sections unless it's absolutely necessary, since there's no sense in risking the mother's health with surgery.
So if you have a 22-week baby who HAS to be born -- maybe you've got severe pre-eclampsia, or your water's broken and you have overwhelming infection -- you have two choices. One, you have labor induced and give birth to the baby, who (if it survives the birth process) will then be allowed to suffocate to death in its mother's arms over a period of several minutes to a few hours. Two, you quickly stop the baby's heart with a lethal injection, then perform one of the various abortion procedures to remove the dead baby.
I consider myself pro-life, and I believe I'd choose option A if possible (not an entirely idle question in my current pregnancy, which had a fatal-birth-defect scare and is now complicated by preterm labor). However, I think there's a good argument to be made that B is actually kinder to the baby, and it may be easier for some parents as well.
A future where a divisive question is decided by the political process? How marvelous!
There was a time, as I recall, in the Irish Republic, that it was pretty much accepted that a doctor's legal responsibility was to preserve the life of the child above that of the mother, such was the legal state of the prohibition of abortion.
It's probably just a case of people not thinking things through. Certainly there are some who would say no way, no how.
But moral philosphers have been playing games with the "no exception" rule, applying it to murder, rape, torture, etc forever.
I haven't been around that long and even I'm bored of it...
It depends on the wording. In Great Briton abortions are only legal if there is risk to the mother's life. Of course since the maternal death rate of labor is higher than that of an elective abortion, there is de facto abortion on demand because carrying the fetus to term will always cause increased risk to the mother (see NHS Blogdoctor ).
Some will try to close these loopholes by becoming absolutists, others exploit them (see medical marijuana).
Given that it's now possible to create a baby in a test tube, the question as you have phrased it seems odd. I am inclined to think that even casting it as "life for one or the other" is morally repugnant: why not make an honest effort to save them both? Why not simply change the intent of the medical practice in question from killing the baby to extracting it and saving it?
I have no doubt that there are people out there who support a no exception ban. There are more than a few pro-life websites and groups that oppose the pill. Which is an indirect way to say they oppose pre-marital sex.
Well as to your example pre-eclampsia happens at 20 weeks or later and at our mid size town hospital they are routinely saving babies at 23 weeks or so. (My daughter was born last year at 31 weeks at this hospital and no one was worried about her.) As a pro-lifer, I would advocate C-section with possible chance of saving the baby vs. mother and baby both dying.
I don't know that an abortion is any kinder to the baby than suffocating, plus the parents don't have to live with the fact that they allowed someone to kill their child instead of allowing him a 1% (pulling numbers out of the air) chance to live.
Well as to your example pre-eclampsia happens at 20 weeks or later and at our mid size town hospital they are routinely saving babies at 23 weeks or so. (My daughter was born last year at 31 weeks at this hospital and no one was worried about her.) As a pro-lifer, I would advocate C-section with possible chance of saving the baby vs. mother and baby both dying.
I don't know that an abortion is any kinder to the baby than suffocating, plus the parents don't have to live with the fact that they allowed someone to kill their child instead of allowing him a 1% (pulling numbers out of the air) chance to live.
ben: I think you'll find that plenty of (even most?) pro-life groups are quite openly willing to oppose pre-marital sex.
That has little to do with a "no exception ban" on abortion as such, however - given that in the real extremity of "mother dies or child dies", there's no clear and inherent moral or religious reason to pick one vs. the other.
(I suspect, as CAL says, that much apparent opposition to "exceptions" to a ban is because those who oppose it are very well aware that any possible exception will be exploited and extended as far as possible by proponents of abortion rights.
Which is no surprise, since such proponents, in my experience, are quite open about that tactic.)
(Nanonymous also makes an excellent point - soon (if it is not already) medicine will be in such a state that the "one or the other must die or be in immense risk of dying" end-state will occur so rarely as to be irrelevant.
The likeliest outcome of such a state being well-known, I reckon, is bans on abortion, since the practice is consistently unpopular in polling, once the "to save the life of the mother" exception is removed from the equation.)
Full disclosure: I have no strong feelings on the matter one way or the other, and I'm an atheist.
This all depends on whether or not you see the baby as a human being or not. If it is a baby, then the thought of murdering it is ghastly and unthinkable. If it is just a clump of cells, a parasite if you will, then of course you can kill it. As for me, I'm pro-life and would throw a party if Roe-vs-Wade was ever overturned.
45,000,000+ souls and counting
I'm with Bob Hawkins (wow, we Bobs are a special group), I recently saw a poll that had approx. 12% saying they believed the sun orbited the Earth. So, yeah, you poll any question, no matter how inane one of the answers is, you're going to get some respondents.
"Would you say you are a blithering idiot?" 12% say yes. Of course, we all know the true percentage is far, far higher in that case.
JS Bangs, there are cardiac conditions (e.g., left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, severe aortic stenosis, long-standing pulmonary hypertension) in which pregnancy is essentially a 100% guarantee of maternal death with essentially no chance of fetal survival.
Don't forget the de facto illegal states; for example, there is exactly one abortion clinic in Mississippi, staffed by non-resident physicians who come from out of state to perform the procedures. Social pressure (and fear of activists) essentially prohibits local doctors from performing purely elective abortions.
I'm amazed by the number of self-described pro-life readers! I usually describe myself as a pro-life libertarian, and I'm aware of the existence of a group called Libertarians for Life, but I doubted that there were very many of us out there...
"Social pressure (and fear of activists) essentially prohibits local doctors from performing purely elective abortions."
Good.
"As for me, I'm pro-life and would throw a party if Roe-vs-Wade was ever overturned."
Here, here.
I regard myself as a pro-life sometime libertarian. It's damned inconvenient that pregnancy puts us in the position of being responsible for someone else's life, but there it is: if you're not ready to deal with that consequence, don't, well, you know. That's a choice, too.
I think libertarians are often in a poor position, philosophically speaking, when it comes to abortion - we argue for autonomy and suggest that ability to accept the consequences of our choices is an inevitable part of freedom. Aborting another person is not a simple extension of our freedom; it's dodging of teh consequences of our own choice at the expense of the most helpless person imaginable. I want no part of that sort of libertarianism.
I said "extension;" I meant "exercise."
Steph, it's not common, but there definitely are cases of preeclampsia where termination is necessary--I'm aquainted with one that happened at 19 weeks and involved uncontrollable spikes in blood pressure that made a stroke near certain.
Not to thread jack but I remember reading about a poll that claimed that something like 16% of the public believed that the Earth was flat. However my old Earth Sciences teacher from junior high found the actual poll question and thought it worded in such an awkward way that even he had to think twice before giving his answer. I suspect that most people just give an immediate response not realizing that the wording of the question may have mislead them.
As far as the 15% claim, I say “show me the poll question.” What I do know so far though from just doing a google search is that the source for the claim, Jim Robinson, was the former executive director of the South Dakota Democrat Party and that his new group, Focus: South Dakota, who conducted the poll is funded by Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Given the bias of the group making the claim (and the failure of the author of this article to disclose that to his readers), I’m unwilling to accept the claim as fact without sufficient supporting evidence.
I think abortion is one of several issues – including foreign policy, immigration, civil marriage, and children – that libertarianism is generally inept at addressing. So I pretty much call myself a “small ‘l’ libertarian” and focus on areas like economic policy where libertarian ideas have more validity while not adopting the views of the libertines on those aforementioned issues.
As a practical matter, the 'life of the mother' exception created a demand for a certain psychiatric opinion. In theory I have no problems with this, but I think the law needs to be written that 'The Oracle at Delphi' provides them.
There's a word for people who have libertarian views on economic policy and authoritarian views on social issues, Thorley.
It's "conservative."
Maybe you don't like that word, so you'd rather run from it. Hard to blame you, given what "conservatism" has meant under the Bush administration, but don't pretend you're libertarian.
It is precisely because I reject the premise that every issue fits neatly into one of two poles – “libertarian” and “authoritarian” – that I find “libertarianism” generally inadequate to address the issues I spoke of.
I suppose it’s because I realized a long time ago that there is no “libertarian” philosophy anymore than there is a “conservative” philosophy or a “left-liberal” or “progressive” philosophy – those are merely terms that are used to describe political movements made up of individuals within those movements who may have different beliefs which while those beliefs may cause them to gravitate generally towards a particular movement, they may find that they don’t share quite the same beliefs as others on a particular issue.
Even so, Thorley, I would certainly have called you one of the more "conservative" (as opposed to "libertarian") commenters here, along with myself and the Mouse.
I wouldn't have said "authoritarian" by any means, and I certainly wouldn't have spoken of "social issues" in that way (is gun ownership a "social issue"? Whose "authoritarian" now?) but "conservative" seems to fit you pretty well.
I think for most nuanced or non-absolutist opponents of abortion the difference is "life" versus "health", since health includes mental and means whatever the most ardently pro-abortion doctor says it means. I have had this discussion in relation to a ban on late term abortions, which is something I do favor, save where the life of the mother is in jeopardy.
http://www.ncbcenter.org/04-03-11-EarlyInduction.asp
Summary: The RC view, at least as set forth here, is that early induction of labor, in cases of pre-eclampsia, can be (i.e., is not always) allowed.
Long version:
NCBC STATEMENT ON EARLY INDUCTION OF LABOR
March 11, 2004
BOSTON, MA— The National Catholic Bioethics Center wishes to assist individuals and institutions working with the ethical issue of early induction of labor. The following is the NCBC position regarding the application of Catholic moral teaching and tradition to the issue.
The application of Catholic moral teaching and tradition to this issue is directed toward two specific ends: (1) complete avoidance of direct abortion, and (2) preservation of the lives of both mother and child to the extent possible under the circumstances. Based upon these ends, the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services provides directives which set the parameters for the treatment of mother and unborn child in cases of high-risk pregnancies:
47. Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.
49. For a proportionate reason, labor may be induced after the fetus is viable.
The principle of the double effect is at work in each of these two directives. Actions that might result in the death of a child are morally permitted only if all of the following conditions are met: (1) treatment is directly therapeutic in response to a serious pathology of the mother or child; (2) the good effect of curing the disease is intended and the bad effect foreseen but unintended; (3) the death of the child is not the means by which the good effect is achieved; and (4) the good of curing the disease is proportionate to the risk of the bad effect. Fulfillment of all four conditions precludes any act that directly hastens the death of a child.
Early induction of labor for chorioamnionitis, preeclampsia, and H.E.L.L.P. syndrome, for example, can be morally licit under the conditions just described because it directly cures a pathology by evacuating the infected membranes in the case of chorioamnionitis, or the diseased placenta in the other cases, and cannot be safely postponed. However, early induction of an anencephalic child when there is no serious pathology of the mother which is being directly treated is not morally licit, emotional distress notwithstanding. Early induction of labor before term (37 weeks) to relieve emotional distress hastens the death of the child as a means of achieving this presumed good effect and unjustifiably deprives the child of the good of gestation. Moreover, this distress is amenable to psychological support such as is offered in perinatal hospice. Lastly, induction of labor before term performed simply for the reason that the child has a lethal anomaly is direct abortion.
As far as the 15% claim, I say “show me the poll question.” What I do know so far though from just doing a google search is that the source for the claim, Jim Robinson, was the former executive director of the South Dakota Democrat Party and that his new group, Focus: South Dakota, who conducted the poll is funded by Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Given the bias of the group making the claim (and the failure of the author of this article to disclose that to his readers), I’m unwilling to accept the claim as fact without sufficient supporting evidence.
Nearly every time a major poll is done on abortion by Gallup or anyone else, the results invariably break down on some variant of a 20-60-20 bell curve (20 opposed, 20 in-favor, 60 in the middle supporting varying levels of restriction...albeit usually the in-favor is up more towards 25% at the expense of the middle). So the 15% from this poll is probably about right, but I'll bet the poll questions doesn't make allowance for a distinction between abortion as it is practiced now, and ending a pregnancy as a necessary surgical procedure.
I guess I'm one of the "no exception" people. (And yes, I read and enjoy libertarian blogs. There's nothing inherently anti-libertarian about being anti-abortion; a proper use of laws is to protect people from violence, and if I count unborn babies as people, then I say it's a proper use of laws to protect them.)
The subtlety you miss is this: Inducing labor or performing a c-section to deliver a child who has only a small chance of survival is not an abortion, is not murder, and is not wrong if it is done for a proportionate reason to protect the mother. Therefore these rare cases are not cases where you just "let the mom die" -- they are cases where you make a hard choice about how to best take care of both people. "You've got to kill one to save the other" is a false dilemma.
After all, in cases where a pregnancy endangers a mother -- and pre-eclampsia is a perfect example of this -- it's not the death of the baby but the end of the pregnancy that will restore her to health. You could end a pregnancy by killing a baby, and certainly that's what is usually meant by the euphemism; but you could also end it by letting pregnancy last as long as is prudent, then delivering the baby and giving that baby medical care appropriate to her prognosis.
And here:
http://www.visionforumministries.org/issues/life/why_the_life_of_the_mother_is.aspx
are the views of at least one person with a strict "no exceptions, not even for the life of the mother," anti-abortion view. The author belongs to something called "Vision Forum Ministries," which also believes (not surprisingly, I suppose) in something called "The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy." Do 15% of people agree with them? Durned if I know.
...Even, I should add, if the medical care appropriate to her diagnosis is to wrap her up warmly and let her parents have time to say goodbye.
Well as to your example pre-eclampsia happens at 20 weeks or later and at our mid size town hospital they are routinely saving babies at 23 weeks or so.
Pre-eclampsia is not the only condition of pregnancy which can threaten a mother's life at an age at which the baby is guaranteed to die. Premature rupture of membranes can lead to chorioamnionitis, and if that happens to you at 18 or 19 weeks, there's not even a 1% chance of survival (no baby has ever been documented to survive at less than 21 weeks 6 days gestation).
The gap between 20 weeks and 23 weeks is enormous -- even the gap between 23 and 24 weeks is huge. At such young gestational ages, literally every day makes a difference of weeks in the NICU, especially if the baby is a boy. (Being female is the equivalent of an extra week's gestation in terms of survival rates.) Your daughter's 31-week birth doesn't even compare -- survival rates at that gestational age are well into the 90-percents -- so of course nobody was all that worried about her, comparatively. Once you get below 28 weeks, it's a whole different ballgame.
I am 25 weeks pregnant with a little boy, and was admitted for my first round of preterm labor ten days ago (and just released from my second stay). The cutoff to resuscitate in my state is 24 weeks 0 days, regardless of the parents' wishes, both at the community hospital I'd planned to use and at the state university teaching hospital with the Level III NICU. I would have made the cutoff by literally one day, and only then going by LMP. (My first-trimester dating ultrasound showed an EDD two days later than that, so the doctors and I had a little discussion about which date to use in the event the baby were to be born.)
I consider myself libertarian and I'm staunchly anti-abortion. I don't see a conflict because I believe life begins at conception. (I'd love for another commenter to explain to me why conception isn't the most likely starting point. I promise I've thought about this. My position has nothing to do with religion.)
Any good libertarian can agree with the old, "your freedom to move your fist is limited by the proximity of my jaw" line right? I'd say your right to vacuum out your uterus is limited in a similar manner.
Is the position of the 15% in question really that irrational? They'd probably ask you how murdering one person to prevent the possibility another might die makes sense. (I don't necessarily agree with their position, I'm just sayin'.)
Hang on, Emma B's little son! There's no hurry. The world can wait a couple of months to see you.
The problem comes from defining health. Pro-lifers can't define it as "the abortion will decrease the mother's risk of death or injury", because due to the inherent risks of even healthy pregnancies and child births, that's true of all abortions up to a certain point in time.
What if it hurts her health but has no chance of killing her, like a recent case in Poland where a woman's third pregnancy blinded her? What if was only a 50% chance of blinding her? 10%?
Of course, I think these are all reasons to allow abortion on demand until the point of viability.
I think the 15% number is probably accurate. I have been in many discussions in RL and on blogs with people who believe in no exceptions. They do not believe that mother and baby have equal rights, but rather that the baby has priority. Many will explicitly state this. Others wiggle around with lengthy explanations but end up at the same place. As a practical matter, if abortion is made illegal, I do not see any way to enforce it except with a no exceptions rule.
Steve
The first thing that came to mind was the nominee for sainthood, an Italian pediatrician who had 4 children and learned carrying the fifth to term would kill her; she opted to continue the pregnancy and die, leaving the 5 children (assuming the baby lived) to be raised by her husband. And this was the attitude welcomed by the church.
The second thing that came to mind was the rare but real case here in the US where things have gone drastically wrong in the second trimester but the woman is at a Catholic hospital that allows no abortion-like services and must make it to another hospital. Tie that to the medical truth that rarely is anything 100% this and 0% that, and within the doctor's honest admission of "I don't know for sure, but it is my informed opinion..." is room for a wealth of extremists to insist that abortion is not the only answer in this case and we must wait and see...
I have no problem believing 15% hold the absolute opinion outlined in the first paragraph, or at least hold it for hypothetical other people, even if, looking at their own daughter on the verge of dying and orphaning her 2 living children, they'd find a different answer.
I come to my pro-choice position by the opposite reasoning: There are very few circumstances under which I would consider an abortion, but they exist. (e.g. anencephaly) There are no conditions under which someone other than myself should get to make the decision for me--that idea terrifies me. And so I am pro-choice, accepting that some people will opt for abortion in circumstances I don't believe justify it. (I'm also in that large majority who accept the trimester framework, with the state needing to protect a child who could survive during the final trimester (certainly the final two months) but having no authority as to whether an egg can implant in a womb or not, as the strictest opponents of birth control would have it. This is an issue where almost everyone is in the middle, and defining exactly where the edges of the middle are is the debate.)
Scot: One argument that resonates with me for when life starts is that we are not far off the possibility of cloning, wherein under the right conditions one of my cheek cells could become a person. But that possibility does not grant to all my bodily cells full personhood status. It's not clear if you view conception as fertilization or implantation, but if the former, it's clear that God or nature or the universe do not care much, and most of the time there is no implantation. When there is implantation, it appears that more than 50% of the time there is a miscarriage before the woman knows she's pregnant.
In a burning building with a choice between rescuing a class of ten preschoolers in the west wing or a freezer with 1000 embryos in the east wing, I'd go west. Same for a group of senior citizens over embryos. And I think almost everyone would put the frozen embryos at the bottom of their list of rescuees, even though each is a potential life. This always seems to me to skirt Woody Allen...after all, each sperm is precious and unique and could, in the right circumstances, contribute to forming a child. Yet 99.999999....% of them don't, and we don't shed any tears over their sad fate.
I always found scientific books on pregnancy and child development more interesting than the various "What You're Doing Wrong" tomes, and as un-linear as the answer "life begins sometime around the middle of the second trimester, when the nervous system is hooked up, and a few weeks before the earliest survival of fetuses delivered" is, I think it's right.
To follow up Emma B's point above, if your water breaks when you are four months pregnant, the baby is going to die. If delivered by some fashion, it will die. If the most extreme steps to prevent the mother from becoming infected are taken, they will fail and both mother and baby will die. The argument to "deliver" the 14-18 week fetus includes a medical assumption that a straightforward "delivery" is the medically safest option for the mother in all cases that I don't think is warranted. I'd leave it to mother and physician to decide together what to do, without my or anyone else's getting involved.
"There are very few circumstances under which I would consider an abortion, but they exist. ... There are no conditions under which someone other than myself should get to make the decision for me"
I'm not a woman, but that's about 100 % my idea. The decider is the woman.
"I am pro-choice, accepting that some people will opt for abortion in circumstances I don't believe justify it."
Yes, choice carries with it the knowledge that some people will make ... bad choices.
Deborah refers to St. Gianna Beretta Molla.
She is called a saint in part because she declined medical care which would have been permitted by church teaching and which might have saved her life but would have resulted in the death of her unborn child.
Let me repeat: Had she chosen the medical care which would have resulted in her baby's death, no one would have called it a sin; it would have been permissible, but neither would it have been heroic. St. Gianna went beyond that. She chose to give up her life voluntarily so that another would live. This is heroic virtue.
Giving up your life voluntarily for another person is exactly the attitude welcomed by Christians. What's your definition?
BTW, the baby (her fourth child born, not her fifth) did live. Her name is Gianna Emanuela. She is a physician specializing in Alzheimer's disease.
Re: They'd probably ask you how murdering one person to prevent the possibility another might die makes sense.
If these people are total pacifists who oppose the use of violence even in self defense then their position might make senes.
But the one person I ever encountered (online) who held a no-exceptions POV was in fact in denial: she flat out stated that with modern medicine's capabilities there could never be a situation where an abortion was necessary to save a woman's life. I suspect you'll find that attuitude commonly in this group.
First, one can find 15% of the people report believing almost anything (about UFOs, Hitler being a barber in Peru, whatever).
Second, all of 15% of the voters aren't going to be passing any new & radically law-changing legislation on this subject, even should it come to a vote.
Third, as some others have noted, 15% of the people will for sure report believing whatever somebody wants if that somebody spins the poll question to get the desired response ... perhaps, say, to be quoted in a alarming headline to be used to boost contributions received from a political mailing list.
My favorite example is from a few years back when the New York Times wrote in breathless headlines "Most People Report Believing the Holocaust May Never Have Happened"! My God, what is civilization coming to?
But then, looking at the poll question, people noticed that it read: "Do you believe it is possible that the Holocaust may never have occured?"
Whenever you ask people if they think "is it possible?" you are going to get a hugely higher response than if you ask them if the same thing is probable ... and if you add another conditional "may have" on top of it,you are going to get a higher response yet.
("Do you think it is possible space aliens kidnapped you last night and forced you to watch a Carrot Top movie while measuring your body responses, leaving you with no memory of the experience?" "Well, I can't prove they didn't, so they may have, yes.")
When the Times re-did the poll simply asking: "Do you believe that the Holocaust didn't actually occur?", the positive answer rate dropped to something like 2%.
Hang on, Emma B.'s boy. There's no rush. Fall is a good time to be born.