Your first sentence does not necessarily contradict any of mine, or vice versa.
I agree that from 1965-75, the death penalty was less popular and reproductive rights more so, but my post spoke to who was or was not supportive. The 65-75 movement was not labor-based, by and large, so its support for reproductive rights and opposition to capital punishment, which has carried over to be mainstream liberal positions today, remains off-kilter, relatively speaking, as far as working people are concerned.
It is one thing to say pro-choice is a majority position; one way we can be sure of that is that Clinton-Gore support it, no slur on the position intended. It is another to say that pro-choice is less popular among working people than among the population as a whole.
Finally, I would not suggest that out of political expediency the left throw reproductive rights overboard or embrace capital punishment uncritically. I do think that a more nuanced, non-absolutist posture, combined with some consideration of the class basis of many workers' views on these subjects, would improve our politics. My suspicion is that our failure or disinclination in these dimensions tends to foster an isolation of Catholic and other observant religious workers' families from progressive causes, whether left or social-democratic.
[By class basis, incidentally, I do NOT mean what I took Curtis to be saying, namely that workers were so fucked over that their moral sensibilities were wanting, and their perversity inflated. I do mean that for those with less compensating factors in their future lives, the loss of a present or future bread-winner can be more hurtful, hence the possible added importance of retribution.]
So I think it was appropriate, some time back, for somebody to suggest that alternative rationales for pro-choice were worth discussing.
Present company excepted, left postures in these discussions often reduce quickly to moral righteousness, forgetting that folks on the other side of the argument often act from the same motives. So people tend to talk past each other, or simply attack each other, both to little purpose, and end up simply avoiding each other.
mbs