Washington, Jan. 13 (BUS) – With Roe facing Wade facing its strongest threat in decades, a new poll shows that Democrats increasingly view protecting abortion rights as a top priority for the government.
13 percent of Democrats cite abortion or reproductive rights as one of the issues they want the federal government to address in 2022, according to a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up from the less than 1% of Democrats who named it a priority for 2021 and 3% who listed it in 2020.
Some other issues such as the economy, COVID-19, health care and gun control were ranked as top priorities for Democrats in the poll, allowing respondents to name up to five major issues. But the massive increase in the percentage citing reproductive rights as a major concern indicates that the case resonates with Democrats as the Supreme Court considers cases that could lead to dramatic restrictions on abortion access.
“The public has a lot of things they want to see the government address,” said Jennifer Benz, deputy director of the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. “You’re asking these kind of questions in a time of economic turmoil and in a time of pandemic and all of these other things that are happening, we might not expect abortion to rise to the top.”
With a conservative 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court, Republicans see this as their best chance in years to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion across the United States. In December, the Supreme Court left a Texas law banning most abortions in the state and indicated during arguments that it would support a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This decision will be announced in June.
Benz called abortion poll numbers “stark” and noted that conventional wisdom holds that abortion is a stimulating issue for Republicans rather than Democrats. Research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, Benz said, “regularly found that opponents of abortion are more powerful in attitudes and consider the issue more important to them personally than pro-choice people.”
That may change. Sam Lau, senior media director for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, believes that more Americans are perceiving this moment as a crisis for abortion access.
“I think what we saw was definitely an increase in awareness, an increase in urgency, an increase in the need to respond,” he said. “But I still believe in fact that large segments of this population still don’t fully believe that access to abortion and the 50-year precedent that is Roe v. Wade really hangs in the balance.”
FKN