Every time there is a Supreme Court vacancy, pollsters, the media, and Democrats rush to assure everybody, particularly lawmakers, that the American public supports the pro-abortion decision Roe v. Wade and would be angry were it overturned.
These days, liberals are using this claim to build their case that when the Right gains political power, it’s undemocratic (which is an authoritarian claim to make).
A majority of Americans favor keeping Roe V Wade, and the number has INCREASED Significantly in the last 30 years. If it’s overturned, it’s not the “Right” or “Republicans” winning. It’s a (largely) religious minority imposing their will on the rest of us. pic.twitter.com/oxTXmzpph7
— Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama) September 20, 2020
This is fundamentally a false claim, though. Most people say they support Roe v. Wade, but that’s because most people don’t know what Roe did, and they don’t know what overturning it would mean.
Roe invented a constitutional right to have an abortion up until the moment before birth. Only about 18% of the public supports that position, according to a recent poll by Marist and NPR.
This absolute right to any abortion at any time has been pared back in the nearly 50 years since Roe, and some states have gotten away with some restrictions on abortion. But Roe, as it stands today, is still an extreme federal power grab that prevents states from protecting mothers and their babies.
A majority in a recent CBS poll (54%) want abortion more restricted than it currently is. That is a de facto endorsement of overturning or at least paring back Roe.
Consider the court’s two recent rulings on state regulations of abortion clinics in Texas and Louisiana. The justices striking down the regulations based their rulings on Roe. Consider what the Kaiser Family Foundation found in a January poll: “A majority (69%) of the public support laws requiring abortions to be performed solely by doctors who have hospital admitting privileges, similar to a Louisiana law in question in a case that will be heard at the Supreme Court this term.”
That survey, however, also found that a majority don’t want Roe overturned. How can that be? Most likely, because a huge portion of the population believes that overturning Roe would outlaw all abortion. They don’t realize that overturning Roe would return most abortion to being a state issue.
There is majority support for requiring a 24-hour waiting period (65% to 30%) and for requiring doctors to show the mother an ultrasound of her baby before an abortion (52% to 43%).
When Planned Parenthood polled specifically on Supreme Court precedent protecting abortions up to 24 weeks, a majority opposed the precedent and wanted 20-week bans.
Poll questions on Roe v. Wade often don’t describe the ruling’s effects. Often they mischaracterize them, implying or stating that Roe protects abortion only in the first three months. They typically say Roe “legalized abortion,” implying that overturning it would outlaw all abortion.
When Harris asked the question in such a way that accurately described Roe and its effects, support was almost evenly split.
Here’s how the polling group phrased it:
“In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that states laws which made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy were unconstitutional, and that the decision on whether a woman should have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy should be left to the woman and her doctor to decide. In general, do you favor or oppose this part of the U.S. Supreme Court decision abortions up to three months of pregnancy legal?”
That honest phrasing saw the country very divided on Roe.
So politicians and reporters will continue to say most people support Roe, but that’s because our media have misled most people on what Roe does.
