A New Poll Has Good News for Pro-Choicers
Mother Jones
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After seven years on the outs, choice is back. For the first time since 2008, significantly more Americans identify as pro-choice (50 percent) than pro-life (44 percent), according to a Gallup poll released Friday.
“This is the first time since 2008 that the pro-choice position has had a statistically significant lead in Americans’ abortion views,” the survey notes. In the intervening years, Americans were split fairly evenly on the issue of abortion—except in 2012, when pro-life sentiment outpaced pro-choice views 50 percent to 41 percent.
The poll found that in the past three years, women have become more pro-choice (54 percent) than men (46 percent). Since 2012, Democrats, Republicans and independents have all become increasingly pro-choice. But Democrats show the biggest long-term jump in pro-choice views, from 55 percent in 2001 to 68 percent today. By contrast, 30 percent of Republicans were pro-choice in 2001 and 31 percent identify as pro-choice today—a statistically insignificant change.
The years since the last pro-choice peak in 2008 have been rough for abortion rights advocates. Republican legislatures across the country have sought to roll back access to abortions—banning the procedure after 20 weeks (and even earlier in some cases), requiring additional doctor visits and ultrasounds, and placing onerous regulations on clinics that forced many to shut their doors. Gallup didn’t touch on these issues, simply noting that “the momentum for the pro-life position that began when Barack Obama took office has yielded to a pro-choice rebound.”
Gallup raised the possibility that abortion views are riding on the coattails of a “broader liberal shift in Americans’ ideology of late” that “could mean the recent pro-choice expansion has some staying power.”
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