Abortion’s Growing Acceptance
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Shockingly, when people take things for granted, it lets reactionary forces eliminate them. Then people wake up and they are pissed off about it. While I might be frustrated that they didn’t take this seriously when they had the right, as a silver lining, this does lead to significant political engagement, as we have seen in the year since Dobbs.
In the year since, polling shows that what had been considered stable ground has begun to shift: For the first time, a majority of Americans say abortion is “morally acceptable.” Most now believe abortion laws are too strict. They are significantly more likely to identify, in the language of polls, as “pro-choice” over “pro-life,” for the first time in two decades.
And more voters than ever say they will vote only for a candidate who shares their views on abortion, with a twist: While Republicans and those identifying as “pro-life” have historically been most likely to see abortion as a litmus test, now they are less motivated by it, while Democrats and those identifying as “pro-choice” are far more so.
One survey in the weeks after the court’s decision last June found that 92 percent of people had heard news coverage of abortion and 73 percent had one or more conversations about it. As people talked — at work, over family Zoom calls, even with strangers in grocery store aisles — they were forced to confront new medical realities and a disconnect between the status of women now and in 1973, when Roe was decided.
Many found their views on abortion more complex and more nuanced than they realized. Polls and interviews with Americans show them thinking and behaving differently as a result, especially when it comes to politics.
“This is a paradigm shift,” said Lydia Saad, director of United States social research for Gallup, the polling firm. “There’s still a lot of ambivalence, there aren’t a lot of all-or-nothing people. But there is much more support for abortion rights than there was, and that seems to be here to stay.”
Gallup happened to start its annual survey of American values just as the court’s decision in the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaked last May. That was when the balance began to tilt toward voters identifying as “pro-choice.” And when the question was divided into whether abortion should be legal in the first, second or third trimester, the share of Americans who say it should be legal in each was the highest it has been since Gallup first asked in 1996.
This is good and it is undeniably a boon to Democrats. However, imagine what Democrats could have done over the past decades if their voters took things like abortion, gay rights, civil rights, and unions as core rights that needed defending election after election. Once again, Democrats are having to play catch up. But at least it is starting to happening and holding on to the Senate in the midterms is the first concrete gain.