38% in the opposing strongly categories. Exactly balanced.
But in the larger groups — combining stronglys with other degrees of feeling including the passionless and the utterly bored — there are 5 more percentage points on the side of approving of what the Court did.
Why might that be? It could be that some people approve of whatever the Supreme Court does. They're the experts! They ought to know. That said, 50% is way less that the total percentage that know absolutely that they personally will never need an abortion. Maybe there are a lot of people who just want to be rid of the unpleasant subject — either way. Don't ask me. Ask the Supreme Court.
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51 comments:
I think MOST people would be okay with abortions up to when you can detect a heartbeat. After that, it is murder. Abortion at ANY time is not popular. Progressives ALWAYS push it too far, and then call everybody bigots, women haters, ect... who don't agree with them...
Including GOP pols.
No more weaseling out!
Ask again in 5 years. The strongly's will probably both have shrunk, but "approve" will be the overall gainer at 70% or more because people will have gotten used to the ruling. The disapprove numbers are juiced by the seeming radicalness of the decision. Most of the responders, including almost all of the strongly disapprovers, don't understand what the Supreme did in this decision.
Abortion will probably end up being legal in the first 14 or 15 weeks. That's what is the law in most of the world. The NY Times lied and said the Supremes "banned" abortion, then stealth edited the item out. New York and California will probably leave infanticide legal.
@wendybar Yes, the poll does not distinguish between the people who approve of Dobbs because they believe that abortion is always morally wrong and those who are approving of what the case actually is — a removal of the barrier to legislation that draws the line at viability and the beginning of a process of working out, through legislation, where the line ought to be.
That said, 50% is way less that the total percent that know absolutely that they personally will never need an abortion. Maybe there are a lot of people who just want to be rid of the unpleasant subject — either way. Don't ask me. Ask the Supreme Court.
Wow, this seems rather dismissive. FWIW, I'm pro-choice, reluctantly, because I also believe abortion takes a human life. And I have a uterus, which hopefully makes me a woman ...if only because today, I identify as one. Who knows how I'll feel tomorrow? Where I personally come down on this matter doesn't depend on whether I might need an abortion (or had one in the past, for that matter). It comes down to how I believe these matters should be decided, and whether I find an express right to privacy in the enumerated rights set forth in the Constitution (I don't). Maybe there should be - if so, maybe we need another Amendment. But that hasn't happened yet.
And while I confess to feeling ambivalence when I contemplate the states that want to eliminate most abortions, I broadly and strongly approve of placing this matter in our hands rather than the hands of unelected jurists with lifetime appointments who are not terribly accountable to the citizenry.
Democracy is messy. It means people get to make judgements, argue for positions I disagree with, and pass laws I don't like. This isn't a power grab by the Court. It's the opposite.
Today on the bike path, on my walk in, one intrepid young woman biker instead on saying "On your right" yelled out "My body, My Choice, people"
At least she was far over in the other lane. I don't like bikers who make a sport of passing as close to a pedestrian as possible.
"Most of the responders, including almost all of the strongly disapprovers, don't understand what the Supreme did in this decision."
Gee, do you think the media and certain politicians might have contributed to that confusion?
Blackmun, et al., were similarly intentionally clueless.
I think MOST people would be okay with abortions up to when you can detect a heartbeat. After that, it is murder.
Of course, by the time most women determine or confirm that they are pregnant, that has already happened.
The problem is that the roe supporters and the people who disapprove of the ruling are lying about what the ruling means.
The ruling did not ban abortion. Not even anything close.
This issue has nothing to do with abortion.
This ruling is about how our society builds our social arrangements and solves problems.
We were meant to have a legislative process where we all get together and hash out a solution with elected representatives deliberating. The justices that stole that power and decided they were going to decide the issue for everyone did massive damage to our body politic.
Morality doesn't enter into it except to the same extent that people think it morally wrong to walk up to someone and shoot them in the head.
This is very different from what I was told over and over by pro-abortion activists in the media.
The viral furvor over the loss of Roe, I believe stems a great deal on a distrust that the voters are not going to back abortion on demand at any time during pregnancy 🫃
"It could be that some people approve of whatever the Supreme Court does."
More likely it is a combination of folks who understand states' rights, human embryology, homicide, con law, that Dobbs does not outlaw abortion and some who "approve of whatever the Supreme Court does."
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that the baby killing activists, whiners and placard carriers alike, have any comprehension of the first four, above.
They would, however, approve of anything "their" Supreme Court does just as they approve of phony impeachments and holding trespassers without bond.
I've long thought that the abortion issue is one that has long been fought around the edges. By that I mean I think most people are sympathetic to young girls/women who get pregnant and don't yet want a child. I think most people will accept the rationalization that early in their development fetuses are 'potential' rather than 'actual' children and so abortion in those cases is accepted.
The extreme pro/anti abortion positions is where the problem lies. One side would force women to have unwanted pregnancies, the other would allow late term abortions which is approaching, if not already at, infanticide.
I think most people view the overturn of Roe v Wade a net positive because it ends the problem of Federally tolerate4d, if not outright sanctioned, infanticide (the slippery slope that was eroding the 'legal, safe and rare' notion Roe v Wade was sold on).
Now that Roe v Wade has been overturned, the tangle of that ethical decision, where does human life begin, gets returned to the States where voters can have a say in the matter. I think that drives some of the polling results.
I've long thought that the abortion issue is one that has long been fought around the edges. By that I mean I think most people are sympathetic to young girls/women who get pregnant and don't yet want a child. I think most people will accept the rationalization that early in their development fetuses are 'potential' rather than 'actual' children and so abortion in those cases is accepted.
The extreme pro/anti abortion positions is where the problem lies. One side would force women to have unwanted pregnancies, the other would allow late term abortions which is approaching, if not already at, infanticide.
I think most people view the overturn of Roe v Wade a net positive because it ends the problem of Federally tolerate4d, if not outright sanctioned, infanticide (the slippery slope that was eroding the 'legal, safe and rare' notion Roe v Wade was sold on).
Now that Roe v Wade has been overturned, the tangle of that ethical decision, where does human life begin, gets returned to the States where voters can have a say in the matter. I think that drives some of the polling results.
Perhaps there’s an inherent repugnance born into the human heart.
Maybe God put it there, maybe survival of the fittest.
You don’t succeed as an animal by eliminating the next generation
Why might that be? It could be that some people approve of whatever the Supreme Court does.
Whoopi Goldberg and Samuel L. Jackson being prominent exceptions.
My guess?
1: There's been a huge national fight over Roe for the last ~50 years. Push it to the States, and it's more likely it can get a "solution" that almost everyone can live with
2: The Democrats have consistently failed to provide any sort of actual justification for Roe, other than "we want it"
The longer the screaming goes on, the more that becomes apparent
3: People are starting to figure out that SCOTUS didn't make abortion illegal, it just got the Feds out of the mess
We'll find out the real numbers in November.
“those who are approving of what the case actually is — a removal of the barrier to legislation that draws the line at viability and the beginning of a process of working out, through legislation, where the line ought to be”
I think we ought to give the electorate some credit. The unintended consequences have manifested after 49 years. Why can’t there be a material segment that is pro-choice and anti-Roe? If it’s just 5-10%, that would explain the supposed anomaly.
I just read a substack article from Naomi Wolf that had an interesting take on things. Interesting only in that it may be what the majority of Americans feel. She refers to an essay she wrote back in 1995 in which she stated "...that while I was pro-choice, I also recognized that the death of a fetus is a real death, and that an abortion always represents a loss'; that we as feminists risked becoming increasingly hard-hearted and soulless if we continued to embrace a discourse in which a fetus was merely “a clump of cells”, if we persisted in pretending that abortion was spiritually meaningless, and if we continued to posit that a second- or even third trimester abortions were nothing more bloody or catastrophic than “personal choices”.
She went on to say that their movement would lose the middle ground if they kept pushing in that direction. I'd say that's been accomplished.
I'll go a step further. I think back to the Kermit Gosnell case in which the entire courtroom was empty, except for the court employees, the accused, and attorneys. There were one or two reporters on the scene of the most notorious and horrific abortion doctor we've known of to date. What this man created was a circus of horror. And the national press, with their reservations and names on the chairs in court, refused to cover this case. They stayed home instead of reporting on the crime of the century. Because...well...you know. They had a narrative to protect.
I think that if the public was shown more of both sides of this story- both the need by some to have an abortion, and the horrors of killing a baby, we would have a large majority somewhere in the middle. Approving of those needed if done early, and disapproving of using abortion as a birth control option. In the end, it requires ending a life. We've categorized it as a lifestyle choice, when it's literally a matter of life. Or death.
We can’t litigate this forever. Let’s move on…
Maybe it's because the People have seen that abortion is being used as a form of birth control.
The "Right To Choose" was sold as a way of eliminating self-administered back alley abortions with rusty coat hangers. In reality, it allowed 20-something college students to create "hookup culture" because there was always a safety net.
Bait and switch. The con has finally been exposed, and the People are no longer on board.
We can finally have the national debate about the best approach. Also, a lot of people are getting an overdue civics lesson. These are good things.
I expect that most states and most people will live with abortion rules up to 15 weeks, with some states holding on to "partial birth" or "leave newborns out to die" options. These could be the next court/public opinion tests. Most of the political action will happen within 1-2 years.
This case also brings all sorts of sex versus gender versus choice versus rules back for resolving inconsistencies and incoherence:
- Should everyone now be required to register for the military draft, not just those biologists classify as "men"?
- Should "baby carrying people" who choose to keep babies when an "inseminator" wishes to abort be entitled to child support from the inseminator? [E.g., cannot say men/women as it's possible for a transgendered male to be paired with a transgendered female.]
- Are transgendered males who choose to become pregnant (i.e., appear as male now) required to follow male or female laws and rules? Should transgendered males with young babies be required to register for the draft and fight in combat?
I'm so confused.
Hard cases make for bad law. Extreme and rigid ideologies make for bad law.
I think most people will accept the rationalization that early in their development fetuses are 'potential' rather than 'actual' children
And then they suffer a miscarriage and it becomes an actual gut-wrenching tragedy because they know she is an "actual" child, even when the miscarriage is 6-12 weeks.
(And the "fetuses" and "unwanted pregnancies" is a tell.)
I am of the opinion that polls only measure one thing. It measures the effectiveness of the mainstream media's propaganda. People don't really know the details, they just have a reaction to what they have been told is the truth, such as the supreme court banning abortion. It isn't true, but if you and a number of the 38% strongly against crowd, I bet you will find a significant number are opposed because they think that is exactly what happened.
Polls are useful in telling us what people are reacting to, but not at what people actually think about an issue.
They stayed home instead of reporting on the crime of the century. Because...well...you know. They had a narrative to protect.
The "crime of the century"?? How about the crime of the month or week.
There are a lot more Gosnell facilities than are known. The narrative is still being protected. A great many ambulances having to go to a great many facilities to take the butchered women to the emergency room.
And now a lot of places -- like our nation's capital -- want to open up "abortion access" even more to promote abortions by non-physicians and even legalize abortions by non-medical providers. Yes, there is legislation to legalize the coat-hanger users.
If the Constitution really has a right to privacy, the NSA has a lot to answer for.
Edward Snowden should be a national hero.
And everyone he exposed should be in convicted of civil rights violations.
But...none of them even lost their jobs.
So there's good evidence in the government actually believes there is a Constitutional Right to Privacy.
Rasmussen skews conservative. Other surveys show Dobbs unpopular.
The polls show relatively high support for Dobbs for a few reasons:
1. It's the correct decision as a matter of constitutional law. The only good argument for keeping Roe was stare decisis, but stare decisis is a (flexible) judicial doctrine, not a constitutional right. (Now that Roe has been overturned, pro-abortion advocates cannot even claim stare decisis in support of their position!)
2. Very few people are directly affected. To be directly affected, you'd need to be a heterosexual woman of childbearing years, living in a pro-life state, not using birth control, and who, if you became pregnant, would choose to have an abortion. That likely describes only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population. Even then, Dobbs is unlikely to mean that you CAN'T get an abortion. Overturning Roe is simply not the disaster for (all) women that dems have made it out to be over the years.
I doubt even 1% of people have even read the decision. Given the outright lies by the Demediacrats about Dobbs outlawing abortion, whether one agrees with it or not should be discounted if they can't demonstrate that they actually understand it in the first place.
The fact is, however, that you don't need to be a lawyer to see that the Constitution doesn't recognize a right to abortion. People will come to understand that we can have different abortion laws in this country and the sky still won't fall.
The problem is that for decades people have been led to believe that the Supreme Court's job is to affirm good things they like and strike down bad things they don't- i.e., good things are constitutional and bad things aren't. Since abortion is good (to certain folks) it must be a constitutional right. That's not the role of the court and Dobbs recognizes that and returns the abortion question to the states and the people where it belongs. The court in 1973 stole that power for themselves and the dissent in Dobbs repeatedly makes this argument - abortion is good, allowing the states to make their own laws will make the sky fall and therefore it is a right. No wonder some people are confused and upset. The abortionists have lied to them for 50 years. Now they get the truth and they're befuddled.
What should be truly revealing here is that people who deign to call themselves Democrats want nothing to do with democracy.
Blogger Readering said...
Rasmussen skews conservative. Other surveys show Dobbs unpopular.
Probably why the NY Times is lying about the decision. Ignorant lefties see what they want to see.
Blogger Temujin said...
I just read a substack article from Naomi Wolf that had an interesting take on things. Interesting only in that it may be what the majority of Americans feel. She refers to an essay she wrote back in 1995 in which she stated "...that while I was pro-choice, I also recognized that the death of a fetus is a real death, and that an abortion always represents a loss'; that we as feminists risked becoming increasingly hard-hearted and soulless if we continued to embrace a discourse in which a fetus was merely “a clump of cells”,
That was the quote I wanted to link to yesterday. She is at least honest and that is how it should be considered.
Oh my God affirmative action is next on the chopping block!
Conversation with my 25 year old son last weekend:
If you kill someone who is in the process of killing you, that's all right. If you kill someone because they won't let you go to college, that's not alright.
That's how I think of abortion.
Ann--I don't get why you--a constitutional law professor--can't understand that there are many who do not want to outlaw abortion ("Safe, legal and rare") but who understand that Roe was--as law--a really bad decision, and a huge political sinkhole for the country. I don't get why you (apparently) don't feel that way. You don't seem to think that the ends justify the means on any other issue.
@boatbuillder
Read more of my posts carefully. Your premises are all kablooie.
Althouse comments, where I come to read sore winners.
I think a lot of people are hearing off-line that the decision has gone back to the states, that it's up to the voters. Maybe they get all worked up listening to dishonest talk on talk shows about abortion clinics closing forever everywhere. These people say something, and then they hear it's up to the voters, hear even that it's legal in their own state. That kind of experience reduces interest nationwide.
Now abortions are banned here in Wisconsin (Yay!!) so Althouse and others are strongly interested. What is the debate about or are we talking past each other?
I guess I'd ask why Planned Parenthood has shut down if abortions are only 3% of their business. And I've often asked why the numbers of unborn blacks being killed is disproportionate to their numbers in the general population and often wondered whether this showed that the original eugenic orientation of Planned Parenthood was still dominating practice at PP clinics even in 2022 and Whether that original white supremacy orientation coming from eugenics hadn't become systemic.
Well, I bet people can feel how when the abortion goes back to the states these questions become serious. Is Evers going to set the Dems up for this kind of accusation of anti-black genocide in Wisconsin by forcing open abortion clinics (located conveniently in or near the black community) and thus involving himself personally in continuing the destruction of the black community by destroying its numbers?
Mark said...
I think most people will accept the rationalization that early in their development fetuses are 'potential' rather than 'actual' children
And then they suffer a miscarriage and it becomes an actual gut-wrenching tragedy because they know she is an "actual" child, even when the miscarriage is 6-12 weeks.
We had 5. And 3 miscarriages I can recall. 2 of them exhibited as exceptionally bloody and messy periods about the time one was due. That was the body saying "something's really wrong here." One at 4 months. That one hit my wife and daughter hard. Me? Somewhat but not as much- I wasn't carrying a CHILD. She was. Not a fetus, not clump of cells.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 50% of Likely U.S. voters approve of the Supreme Court abortion ruling
Telephone, and on-line surveys??
Who-in-the-hell answers the phone from an unknown number??.....or for that matter participates in on-line surveys? That's gotta be a very small demographic. I can't believe the poll results represent any nation wide consensus.
In other news, "a study has shown.......".
When low information voters realize abortion has not been outlawed nation wide, and when pictures of chopped up baby parts begin circulating along with suggestions of 16 week limit, polls gonna look even more favorable.
It is up to the dems and the media to continue misleading average person. Naturally, tacking on elimination of gay or inter racial marriage and outlawing birth control.
Readering said...
Rasmussen skews conservative. Other surveys show Dobbs unpopular.
That hasn't been true for years. Like a decade+
Greg(to readering): "That hasn't been true for years. Like a decade+"
Something has to be known to be untrue for at least 80 years before readering catches on.
If an aborted fetus is not a human being, is it ok to use it as an ingredient for dog food, like horse, cow, chicken and fish?
Are the aborted fetus' currently being cooked and included in dog and cat food?
If a majority support at least some legal abortion, then why does the larger number support the SCOTUS decision? This is puzzling.
"Most of the responders, including almost all of the strongly disapprovers, don't understand what the Supreme did in this decision.
Went to lunch, with my (crazily) liberal 90 year old mom today..
She asked me if i thought it was "alright" that If a woman had a natural Miscarriage she would be arrested?
I ask HER, what the HELL she was talking about?
She said; that THAT was what was happening now!
That IF a woman had a Miscarriage, she would be placed under arrest!!!
So, i said; Where is it, that you think That is Happening?
And she said: "That's what they're DOING at Catholic Hospitals!! NOW!!!
So, i said: "The HOSPITAL is arresting them? WHY??"
And, she said "BECAUSE THEY HATE WOMEN!!!!"
{and, people wonder Why i have such a low opinion of liberals}
bentoak said...
If a majority support at least some legal abortion, then why does the larger number support the SCOTUS decision? This is puzzling.
1: Because Roe and Casey are a hell of a lot more than "some abortion"
2: All Dobbs does is kick it back to the States, where people can tell their elected Representatives what to do, or else
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