You might have noticed that despite the overwhelming, broad, diverse religious support for the newly reintroduced "Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act," (often referred to as "Ryan-DeLauro") the bill has a few high-profile detractors.

Predictably, old-guard groups like the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America have come out in full force against the measure, releasing statements full of harsh rhetoric (and misinformation).

These groups are trying to create the impression that the "pro-life" community is uniformly against the bill, citing concerns about contraception and comprehensive sex education that are supposedly anathema to anti-abortion folks.

The trouble is, they're wrong.

Despite claims from FRC and Focus on the Family, your average pro-lifer or evangelical (separate but overlapping groups) DOES in fact support government support for family planning programs.

Polling has shown that 80% of self identified "pro-lifers" agree women should have access to contraception. 77% of pro-lifers support the federal government's Title X family planning program (the Ryan-DeLauro bill will increase funding to Title X).

In another poll*, voters were asked, "Should the federal government provide funding for birth control for low-income women" and 66% of evangelicals agreed. (42 percent strongly agreed compared to 30 percent who disagreed, 21 percent strongly disagreed.)

On the sex education side, Pew found that 66% of white evangelicals favor teaching students in public schools about birth control.

Polls like these back up the anecdotal evidence that's been piling up for years pointing to a new generation of leaders who are reexamining their approach to contentious issues, focusing on results, rather than old fights.

The new leadership has real numbers behind it too. Pastors Joel Hunter and Adam Hamilton each have congregations with over 12,000 members. Combined, the pro-life leaders who endorsed this legislation have a reach in the tens of millions, a number that dwarfs the 35,000 who tuned in to the "emergency webcast" organized by over 20 of the leading old-guard "pro-life" organizations.

Old-guard organizations might still have their spots on journalists' speed dials, and they might still fire up their (shrinking, but not insignificant) base with their hard-line rhetoric, but it's leaders like Joel Hunter, who urged "those of good will in the pro-life community" to support the Ryan-Delauro bill, who are now more in touch with the average pro-life person.

By rejecting contraception, comprehensive sex education and other measures proven to reduce unintended pregnancies (and therefore abortions, a study from the Guttmacher institute showed Title X family planning funds prevents over 800,000 abortions a year) the old guard has marched itself off common ground and onto increasingly remote and lonely territory.

*The survey was conducted by Lake Research Partners on behalf of Moving Forward for the Women Donors Network/CCMC. The survey reached a total of 1,200 likely registered voters nationwide. The sample consisted of 1,000 interviews among voters who were reached on landline phones and an oversample of 200 interviews among voters reached on cell phones. The survey was conducted November 2nd through November 4th, 2008.