I think this is beside the point. Most religious folk don't possess some special moral wisdom. When a Christian equates abortion with murder, they're typically parroting a belief they've accepted dogmatically from their preacher or faith community, not stating some organic belief emerging from some lengthy Socratic process. So yes, most (but not all) pro-life folk are imposing their religious beliefs on others.
Of course, one could argue that pro-choice folk are equally susceptible to dogma, but it's not as though they're forcing pro-life folk to have abortions.
Disagree. According to Pew polling, pro-life folk are more likely to be religious, more likely to be more certain about their belief in God, and are more likely to attend religious services.
Furthermore, more than 50% of pro-life folk identify religion as their greatest source of guidance for deciding right from wrong (compare with less than 20% for pro-choice folk). [1]
So yes, most pro-lifers are driven by their religious beliefs.
Interesting, 54% of pro-choice folk say "common sense" is their greatest source of guidance, comparable to 52% of pro-life folk saying religion is theirs (on top of 34% going with common sense).
please, continue to explain why a large group people other than yourself UNIFORMLY think the way they do, based upon self-reported poll results, as though that's a valid means of discerning complex human motivations for a broad group of people (that, once again, does not even include yourself). it must be really nice to be content in your own complex thoughts and motivations while boiling those of a large swath of others down to some chart data.
I didn't read panda-giddiness@ saying it is uniform, just that being pro-life vs pro-choice is highly correlated with being religious and some religions are against abortion.
I'm all for freedom of religion but I personally would rather not have laws that apply to everyone be based on the religious beliefs of a portion of the population which it seems like a good portion of religious people are trying to do.
Yes, precisely this. Most people are not moral philosophers, so I don't expect them to have a nuanced view of moral problems (this includes people who are pro-choice).
Abortion epitomizes a hard moral problem, and frankly I doubt we'll ever be able to solve moral quandaries the way we can solve differential equations. However, I have zero desire in having the solutions legislated based on some group's religious beliefs.
Of course, one could argue that pro-choice folk are equally susceptible to dogma, but it's not as though they're forcing pro-life folk to have abortions.