For as many voters who say they support Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that was overturned last month, there are just as many who have no idea what the decision actually meant.
A recent poll from Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies, for example, found that 55% of voters said they opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade, even though 72% also believe there should be some restrictions on abortion. In other words, the vast majority of people are in favor of a law that Roe would have struck down.
Indeed, support for restricting abortion access is widespread, even in blue states where the policies tend to be much more lenient. More than 1 in 3 respondents said they would support a law allowing abortion “only in cases of rape and incest,” and another 12% said they’d support banning abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy, which is usually when a heartbeat can be detected. In comparison, these policies are much more restrictive than the Mississippi law at the center of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, which would have banned abortion in the state after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.
This poll reveals a couple of things. First, support for restricting abortion access is much more widespread than people seem to think. Most voters like the idea of allowing women to choose whether to go through with a pregnancy or not, but they also recognize a heartbeat for what it is: a life worthy of protection and support.
Second, there are a lot of people who have been misinformed (deliberately, I might add) about what Roe is and what it did. Yes, it was the case that legalized abortion access nationally, but it also prevented the states and their voters from being able to regulate or restrict the procedure up until the point of viability, which is when an unborn child can survive outside the womb. Overturning Roe, then, did not ban abortion — it simply returned the issue back to the states and gave them the freedom to pass legislation as they see fit. That means blue states such as California and New York will expand abortion access significantly, while red states such as Texas and Mississippi will restrict it and maybe even ban it outright.
Considering how many voters have expressed the desire to weigh in on the debate themselves, I’m sure more would actually agree that Roe needed to go — if only they weren’t being lied to about it.
