Washington – For all the recent tumult over abortion, one thing has remained surprisingly stable: Americans have proved extremely consistent in their beliefs about the procedure – and extremely conflicted in their views.
A solid majority has long felt that Roe vs. Wade should be upheld. Yet most support at least some restrictions on when abortions can be performed. Most think having an abortion should be a personal choice. But they also think it is murder.
“Rock solid in its absolutely contradictory opinions” is how public-opinion expert Karlyn Bowman describes the nation’s mindset. But if public opinion is stable, the political landscape is anything but.
The arrival of two new justices on the Supreme Court has stoked speculation about how abortion laws could be affected. Also, there has been a flurry of action at the state level to ban or sharply restrict access to the procedure – most notably, South Dakota outlawing almost all abortions this month.
An AP-Ipsos poll finds that most Americans are ensconced in what one policy analyst calls the “big mushy middle” on the issue. In this latest poll, 19 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all cases; 16 percent said it should never be legal; 6 percent did not know. That left nearly three-fifths somewhere in between, believing abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.
Dicing the same data a different way, 52 percent of those surveyed thought abortion should be legal in most or all cases; 43 percent said it should be illegal most or all of the time.
The survey, taken from Feb. 28 to March 2, found that men’s and women’s views were similar, although men were a little more likely to be undecided.
With slight shifts one way or another, this is about where Americans have been for decades.
“You have this very stable support for a principle but a willingness to limit it in lots of circumstances over the last decade,” said Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard’s School of Public Health.
In the AP poll, two-thirds of Democrats said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while two-thirds of Republicans said it should be illegal all or most of the time.
Bowman said about 9 percent to 13 percent of voters tend to cast their ballots based on a candidate’s stance on abortion, with Republicans tending to benefit the most from these single-issue voters at the national level and results more mixed in state races.
The poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,001 adults in the U.S. from all states except Alaska and Hawaii.
Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a strategy group for moderate Democrats, said abortion foes made significant inroads during the 1990s by appealing to those in the middle who do not think abortion should be completely legal or illegal. In the wake of South Dakota’s new law, progressive Democrats have an opportunity to “win the battle of reasonableness” by positioning the party as one that wants to reduce abortions while preserving a woman’s right to have one, he said.
