Half of the registered voters in a recent poll support banning abortion at six weeks into pregnancy except for victims of rape and incest. Nearly three-fourths would support a 15-week abortion ban, the very law upheld in the landmark Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson.
In the largest survey since Dobbs, the case in which the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Harris Poll and Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies asked 1,300 registered voters what abortion laws they would want in their own state.
More than 1 in 3 (37%) said their state “should allow abortion only in cases of rape and incest.” Another 12% favored allowing abortion only in the first six weeks of pregnancy — that is the point at which the baby’s heartbeat can be detected. Combining those two groups of respondents, you get 49% of the country that would support a six-week abortion ban. Another 23% would support a ban at 15 weeks, meaning 72% of the country would support Mississippi’s abortion ban at the center of the Dobbs case. Women were more pro-life than men in this poll (75% of women supporting a 15-week ban compared to 69% of men).
Only 10% said they would want their state to leave abortion legal up until birth.
Here’s the most telling part of the poll: A majority (55%) said they opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, even though 72% support a law that Roe would have struck down. What’s more, only 25% agreed that the Supreme Court, as opposed to state or federal lawmakers, should set standards on abortion.
Overturning Roe meant two things: Legislators, not the court, should set abortion law, and a 15-week ban is allowable under the Constitution. In other words, more than 70% of registered voters agree with what Dobbs did, yet 55% say they oppose Dobbs.
This is all in keeping with other recent polls. (See here, too.)
The clear lesson here is that most don’t understand what overturning Roe meant or what Roe did. Yet, again and again, left-leaning media outlets trot out the “most Americans support Roe” poll number as if it told us anything meaningful.
Now we can hope, with the numbers so crystal clear and Roe dead and gone, this misleading practice will end. And we can hope more polls like this will embolden state legislators to take action and protect the unborn.
