03/02/2023

Majority of Americans Support Legal Abortion

PRRI conducted a national poll on abortion views in all 50 states

The Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade last year is perhaps the preeminent modern political example of the dog catching the car.

Republican leaders had pledged for decades to restrict abortion and to challenge the precedent in Roe, a pledge that continued to stoke the energy of the most fervent abortion opponents in their base but didn’t run the risk of alienating more moderate voters by actually coming to fruition. And then, thanks to the vagaries of the electoral college and a president who wasn’t read into those decades of Republican strategy, it came to fruition.

The immediate constriction of access to abortion that followed helped Democrats overperform in the 2022 midterms and probably continues to power Democratic electoral strength. In part, this is because Democrats have a new, potent organizing argument: protecting access to abortion. In part, though, it's because most Americans — including a majority of people in most states won by former president Donald Trump in 2020 — think abortion should be legal.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.