538: Dobbs turned abortion into a huge liability for Republicans

Full article at link

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dobbs-abortion-opinion-liability-republicans/
Support for abortion rights is higher than it's been in decades.



When the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion, between 50 and 60 percent of Americans wanted the right to stay in place. But while abortion was legal throughout the country up to a certain point in pregnancy, Americans had the luxury of not having strong or cohesive views on the topic, or thinking much about abortion at all. Their views were messy and sometimes contradictory, and there was little evidence suggesting that the issue was a political priority for anyone except Christian conservatives. In the fall of 2021, with the Dobbs case looming on the horizon, many Americans thought that Roe wasn’t in real danger.

Now, a FiveThirtyEight analysis finds that after one of the most disruptive Supreme Court decisions in generations, many Americans — including women, young people, and Democrats — are reporting more liberal views on abortion than major pollsters have seen in years. Even conservatives, although the changes are slight, are increasingly supportive of abortion rights. There are other signs that longstanding views are shifting: For instance, Americans are more open to the idea of unrestricted third-trimester abortion than they were even a year ago. And although it’s hard to predict what will shape upcoming elections, there are indications that abortion has the potential to be a major motivator for some Americans when they go to vote in 2024.


In the past year, there’s been more coverage of how the loss of abortion rights affects ordinary people, as well as future threats to abortion access, which may be shaping people's perspectives. Polling by KFF conducted last month found that awareness of mifepristone, one of two pills commonly used for medication abortion, has doubled since the beginning of the year, with nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans saying they had heard of the drug in May, compared to only 31 percent in January. Major knowledge gaps still remain: KFF found that most Americans are unaware that mifepristone, when correctly used, is safer than common drugs like Tylenol or Viagra, and there’s widespread confusion in states where abortion is limited or banned about whether abortion is legal. But the topic is much more ubiquitous than it was a year ago.

“People started having conversations about abortion,” said Tresa Undem, a co-founder of the nonpartisan research firm PerryUndem. “And most Americans support abortion rights so if you’re having a conversation, you’re more likely to encounter pro-choice people and their views and attitudes. You’re learning other viewpoints. And that’s when we see attitudes starting to change.”

Perhaps most crucially for Republican politicians, who have mostly doubled down on abortion restrictions despite backlash in swing states during the 2022 midterms, no subgroup in Gallup’s data has become notably more conservative on first-trimester abortion since Dobbs. The KFF poll found that Americans are much more likely to say that the Democratic Party best represents their views on abortion (42 percent), rather than the Republican Party (26 percent).


And a YouGov/CBS News poll conducted earlier this month found that the 57 percent of Americans who think the Dobbs decision has mostly been bad for the country aren’t just worried about the impact on abortion access: 81 percent of that group saw the ruling as bad because a constitutional right was taken away. Steve Baker, 63, lives in Ohio and is registered as a Republican but identifies as an independent. He said that to him, the demise of Roe felt like the canary in the coal mine. “Losing the right to abortion is just the trickle as we start to lose more individual rights,” he said. “The right to marry. Other rights. What’s happening with abortion is important, don’t get me wrong, but I feel concerned about those too.”


More people think third-trimester abortion should be legal
One of the most surprising post-Dobbs trends is the speed with which some Americans have embraced the view that abortion should be legal with no restrictions at all times, including the late second trimester and early third trimester. Under Roe and the precedents that followed, states were free to enact restrictions on abortion after a fetus could potentially live outside a woman’s body — which meant, in practice, that some states were allowed to ban abortion after about 20 weeks of pregnancy, although medical experts say that viability usually happens between 23 and 26 weeks. That dividing line wasn’t especially controversial. Many blue states, including major Democratic strongholds like California, restricted abortion after viability, and the vast majority of Americans believed that abortion should be mostly illegal in the third trimester of pregnancy.

That’s changing — and fast. Third-trimester abortion is still unpopular overall, but in Gallup’s polling, it has close to majority support among some subgroups, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. For example, the share of women who think abortion should be legal in the last trimester of pregnancy jumped from 11 percent in 2018 to 25 percent in 2023. One-third (33 percent) of people ages 18-34 think abortion should be legal in the last trimester, up from 14 percent in 2018. And a stunning 43 percent of Democrats think abortion should be legal in the third trimester, up from 18 percent in 2018. “I’ve become more solidified in the belief that there should be very little law around any abortion,” said Meredith MacVittie, 41, who lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “If there were some regulations on abortion after 30 weeks, something like a second opinion, maybe that would be okay.” She paused and added, “It’s very hard for me to give up the sense that politicians just shouldn’t be having a say in this decision at all.”


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conti...


Americans are thinking about abortion when they vote
Over the past few months, seven Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed restrictions or bans on abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy — despite the fact that Americans in states where abortion is limited want access to be more available, not less. A poll conducted in late March and early April by the Pew Research Center found that people in areas of the country where abortion is restricted or illegal are likelier than they were four years ago to say that abortion should be easier, not harder, to obtain. The same survey found that 62 percent of Americans — including 39 percent of Republicans — think states are making it too hard, rather than too easy, to get an abortion.

Those findings are part of the reason why abortion is unlikely to fade from voters’ minds as the next major election cycle rears its head. But there are also signs that the issue is becoming personal for many people in a way that it wasn’t before, which could make it harder for abortion rights to fade into the background as other issues, like the economy, come to the fore.

The Dobbs ruling didn’t just change laws — it changed people’s lives. Data collected by #WeCount, a research project led by the Society of Family Planning, and analyzed by FiveThirtyEight estimates that tens of thousands of people were displaced to other states for abortions in the first nine months after the Supreme Court’s decision, and thousands more were unable to receive a legal abortion at all. But polling also shows that people are shifting their behavior in other ways. That KFF survey conducted in May found that reproductive-age women are taking more precautions around pregnancy because of concerns about their ability to access abortion: About 3 in 10 women between the ages of 18 and 49 say that they or someone they know has started using long-term contraceptives or stocked up on emergency contraceptives, and about 1 in 5 delayed getting pregnant, while a similar number got permanently sterilized.

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The groups that seem disproportionately motivated by abortion rights don’t represent a majority of American voters. But the 2022 midterms signaled that they do have a significant amount of power, particularly if abortion is galvanizing voters who might otherwise feel unenthusiastic about Democratic candidates. A recent analysis of the Latino vote by Equis Research found that Latinos who chose abortion as their top issue were overwhelmingly likely to vote for Democrats, and turned out at rates that were higher than analysts had predicted before the election.

All of these findings suggest that abortion will remain a potent political issue as the 2024 election cycle ramps up — and after years of pushing for more abortion restrictions without much backlash, Republicans are on the defensive. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, the country, and particularly key Democratic constituencies, are more supportive of abortion rights than they’ve been in years, and there’s no sign that the issue is becoming less important to them.

 

the poll had it as a coin flip, so it was off by just a tsunami's worth

Alabama Democrat Wins Special Election Running on Abortion and IVF Access - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Democrat Running on Abortion and I.V.F. Access Wins Special Election in Alabama
Marilyn Lands flipped a State House seat in the deep-red state by 25 percentage points, underscoring the continued political potency of reproductive rights.

Ms. Lands defeated her Republican opponent, Teddy Powell, by about 25 percentage points — an extraordinary margin in a swing district where she lost by seven points in 2022.

 

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/fl...mar1juana-initiatives-to-remain-on-the-ballot

In two major rulings today, the Florida Supreme Court has agreed to keep two ballot initiatives, one dealing with abortion rights in the state, and the second dealing with recreational use of mar1juana, on the state's ballot this November. Previously, both ballot initiatives were challenged in court, and the challenges were supported by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody.


The first initiative, titled "Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion" also known as Amendment 4, would enshrine abortion rights in the Florida Constitution, specifically stating that "no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability."

The ruling today will allow the initiatives to remain on the Florida ballot this November. Although the ruling is a major win for abortion activists and pro-mar1juana activists, it is not the end. For the initiatives as to pass, more than 60% of Floridians need to vote in favor during the elections.

 

60% is a tall order but doable from what we have seen elsewhere.