"Complex and Even Contradictory"

"NARAL’s Nancy Keenan likes to say that abortion’s biggest defenders right now are a 'menopausal militia'--a rueful, inspired little joke. These baby-boomers, whose young adulthoods were defined by the fight over the right to choose, will soon be numerically overtaken by a generation of twentysomethings who is more pro-life than any but our senior citizens. As GOP strategists Christopher Blunt and Fred Steeper have pointed out, this group came of age during the partial-birth debate and was the first to grow up with pictures of sonograms on their refrigerators. The major development in reproductive technology during their lifetimes wasn’t something that prevented pregnancies but something that created them: IVF. These kids have no idea--none--what it was like to live in a world without abortion rights. ('This generation’s knowledge of Roe is like, "Roe vs. what?"' says Keenan.) And they feel much more strongly about personal responsibility than the generations preceding them: Didn’t use birth control? The burden’s on you."

Jennifer Senior in New York attempts to wade through Americans' views on abortion.