The Road To Gilead, Con't

Americans want Roe v Wade to remain the law of the land in a new NPR poll, but they also are overwhelmingly okay with restrictions on availability of abortion, and the group most likely to support restrictions is, surprise, Republican women.

The poll comes as several states have pushed to limit abortions in hopes of getting the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue. Abortion-rights opponents hope the newly conservative court will either overturn Roe or effectively gut it by upholding severe restrictions. The survey finds that while most Americans favor limiting abortion, they don't want it to be illegal and don't want to go as far as states like Alabama, for example, which would ban it completely except if the woman's life is endangered or health is at risk.

A total of 77% say the Supreme Court should uphold Roe, but within that there's a lot of nuance — 26% say they would like to see it remain in place, but with more restrictions added; 21% want to see Roe expanded to establish the right to abortion under any circumstance; 16% want to keep it the way it is; and 14% want to see some of the restrictions allowed under Roe reduced. Just 13% overall say it should be overturned.

Even though Americans are solidly against overturning Roe, a majority would also like to see abortion restricted in various ways. In a separate question, respondents were asked which of six choices comes closest to their view of abortion policy.

In all, 61% said they were in favor of a combination of limitations that included allowing abortion in just the first three months of a pregnancy (23%); only in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman (29%); or only to save the life of the woman (9%).

And again, the biggest driving factor against abortion in 2019 are Republican women, even more so than Republican men.

The most acute divide among Americans on the issue of abortion, arguably, is not a gender divide but between the parties — and of women of different parties.

For example, 54% of men identified as "pro-choice," compared with 60% of women. For women of the different parties, 77% of Democratic women identified as "pro-choice," while 68% of Republican women identified as "pro-life." (A lower percentage of Republican men, 59%, considered themselves "pro-life.")

Throughout the poll, the divide was stark. On Roe, for example, 62% of Republican women said overturn it or add restrictions; 73% of Democratic women said keep it the way it is, expand it to allow abortions under any circumstance or reduce some of the restrictions.
Eighty-four percent of Democratic women said they are more likely to support state laws that decriminalize abortion and make laws less strict; 62% of Republican women said they are more likely to support laws that criminalize abortion or make laws stricter.

On requiring insurance companies to cover abortion procedures, 75% of Democratic women support that, while 78% of Republican women oppose it, higher than the 63% of Republican men who said the same.

Republican women also stand out for the 62% of them who said they oppose laws that allow abortion at any time during pregnancy in cases of rape or incest. They are the only group to voice majority opposition to that. Fifty-nine percent of Republican men, for example, said they would support such a law.

And Republican women are the only group to say overwhelmingly that life begins at conception. About three-quarters said so, compared with less than half of Republican men and a third of Democratic women.

It's a reminder that Republican women, in many ways, are the backbone of the movement opposing abortion rights.

As long as women are happily signing away their own bodies to men in order to force other women to do so, we remain on the road to Gilead.