A recent Associated Press poll found that Americans' views about abortion aren't very clear-cut. Only a small percentage of the respondents were in favor of either legalizing abortion completely or banning it outright. About 60 percent were somewhere in the middle. The AP took these results to mean that most Americans believe a woman has a right to an abortion but that there should be restrictions.

We tend to hear of the abortion debate in terms of moral extremes, but most people, according to the AP, "think abortion is murder" and yet are unwilling to prevent a woman from having one if that is her decision. Though morality enters into this thinking it's mainly a matter of privacy, which is what Roe v. Wade, the court decision that made abortion legal in America, was all about. The irony is that the debate is way out in the open. Everyone is required to have an opinion, even if they'd prefer not to think about it.

In Japan, where abortion is technically illegal but loopholes result in at least 300,000 approved pregnancy terminations a year, opinions are kept to oneself. Moreover, morality, rather than being a widely held set of values, is dispensed from on high as a means of adjusting public opinion toward some desired end.