Here’s a summary of the latest data on public opinion on abortion and how Americans will feel about the decision, from CNN and elsewhere:
Opinions on Roe’s outrage against Wade
In a May CNN poll conducted immediately after the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on the case, Americans said, from 66% to 34%, that they did not want the Supreme Court to annul Completely read the historic decision of 1973. In the CNN poll dating back to 1989, the share of the public in favor of the complete elimination of Roe has never exceeded 36%.
Only 17% of Americans in the CNN poll said they would be happy to see Roe vs. Wade falls, with 12% saying they would be satisfied, 21% saying they would be dissatisfied, 36% saying they would be angry. , and 14% would not care. Most Democrats (59%) and nearly half of adults under the age of 35 (48%) said they would be angry. And a majority of 59% of Americans said they would support Congress in passing a law to establish a right to abortion nationwide, with only 41% against.
In a May poll by CBS / YouGov, 63% of Americans said they hoped canceling Roe would make access to abortion more difficult for poor women, and 58% said it would make it difficult for access to abortion for women of color. Less similar difficulties were expected for white women (35%) or rich women (19%). And most women (54%) said that, in general, turning Roe upside down would make the lives of most American women worse.
Opinions on state abortion laws
In the CNN poll, 58% of American adults said that if Roe were repealed, they would want their state to make abortion laws more permissive than restrictive. About half (51%) said they would like their state to become a safe haven for women who wanted to have an abortion but could not take them where they lived.
But not everyone knew in advance how their own state would be affected. Of Americans living in states with activating laws to ban abortion immediately after Roe’s overthrow, only 45% realized it was, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey conducted in May. Another 42% living in these states were not sure what the impact of the sentence where they lived would be.
Political implications
It is still too early to know how opinions on abortion may change as a result of the court’s decision, or to predict how the consequences of the decision could affect the upcoming elections. In a May poll, Gallup found few changes in the long-standing majority opposition to Roe’s overthrow. However, their survey also found a change in several other metrics. For the first time in Gallup polls since 2001, a small majority (52%) said they considered abortion morally acceptable. A similar majority of 53% also said abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances, more than 45% just a year ago, a change that was especially pronounced among Democrats and North Americans. younger Americans.
There are some early indications that the impact on access to abortion could be especially motivating for proponents of abortion rights. A significant portion of major Democratic sponsors, such as youth and women, said they would be angry over the ruling, and several polls this spring found Democratic voters more likely than Republicans to consider abortion a very important issue. relevant to this year’s election. . But it is less clear how this motivation can manifest itself or to what extent it will alter the overall political landscape.
A May poll by the University of Monmouth found that 48% of Democrats considered aligning a candidate with their views on abortion to be extremely important to their vote, up from 31% in 2018; among Republicans, the figure was 29%, down from 36% four years ago. The CNN poll conducted immediately before and after the leaking of the draft Supreme Court opinion on Roe v. Wade found a 7-point increase in the proportion of Americans who expressed their views on the ‘abortion aligned more with Democrats than with Republicans. But there was little immediate evidence of a radical change in any of the early Republican advantages in the face of the mid-term. Only about half (49%) of Americans said they had heard even a fair amount of the draft decision at the time, with 51% saying they had only heard some news or nothing at all.
Views of the Supreme Court
The decision could also affect the views of Americans on the Supreme Court. Following the leaking of the draft opinion, according to the Marquette Law School survey, the court’s public approval fell, from 54% in March to 44% in May. The change was largely due to a shift among Democrats: while 49% of Democrats passed the Supreme Court in March, only 26% felt the same in May. Marquette’s May poll also found that 23% of Americans considered the Supreme Court “very conservative,” an increase from 15% in March.