On abortion ruling anniversary, 61% of Americans oppose Supreme Court rollback of rights, poll finds
A new poll says 61% of American voters oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back abortion rights, signaling the issue will remain a powerful force for Democrats in the coming 2024 election.
On the eve of the first anniversary of the top court’s controversial ruling, three in five voters disapprove of the justices’ move to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, the NBC News poll shows.
A whopping 80% of women between 18 and 46 years old say they oppose the ruling, along with two-thirds of all suburban women, a key demographic voting group.
Even about a third of Republicans disagree with the decision, which effectively allowed states to regulate abortion or ban it altogether.
A CBS News poll found similar results with 57% of voters saying the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dobbs case was “bad for the country.”
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden issued a new executive order Friday aimed at protecting access to birth control, the third such edict in the year since the Supreme Court ruling.
The survey results bolster Democrats’ resolve to use abortion rights as a key issue in the 2024 elections, just as they did in the 2022 midterms, when pro-choice energy helped cap Republican gains in what should have been a #RedWave year.
A year after the ruling, voters remain angry about GOP efforts to restrict or ban abortion outright in the roughly half of states that they control.
“Without a doubt, the issue of abortion will continue to shape our country’s political and electoral landscape moving forward,” said pollster Aileen Cardona-Arroyo, who worked on the NBC survey.
Opposition to the ruling has even ticked up by a couple of points since the ruling as at least 61 clinics have been forced to close in red states nationwide.
Pro-life Republican state legislators are even pushing to ban medication abortion, which enjoys even broader public support than surgical abortion.
A conservative federal judge in Texas recently overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, even though it’s been safely used in the U.S. for two decades.
If a higher court, also controlled by conservatives, upholds that ruling the ban would apply nationwide, even in blue states like New York where overwhelming majorities support the abortion right.
On Friday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill providing legal protection for licensed state medical care providers who send abortion pills to states where abortion is banned.
Despite being a clear political loser for them, Republicans continue to press the pro-life cause, with all of the party’s presidential candidates supporting the court’s rollback of Roe.
Top Republican candidates including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence celebrated the ruling at the pro-life Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference Friday, with former President Donald Trump expected to give a keynote address on Saturday.
The main dispute on the GOP side is over just how strict the limits on abortion should be, and whether they should apply nationwide or be left to the states, as Republicans themselves had demanded for decades.
