This week, Townhall reported that a poll found that an alarming number of likely Ohio voters would support an amendment to the state’s constitution to make abortion and transgender surgeries easily accessible, even for children. This proposed amendment is yet another radical push by pro-abortion supporters in the fallout of Roe v. Wade.
In other states, pro-abortion supporters have pushed for changes to their state’s constitution to protect abortion. This has occurred in both Colorado and Michigan.
PerryUndem, a nonpartisan research firm, conducted a poll on Americans’ views on abortion rights. In the poll, the firm asked respondents if they’d support different versions of an abortion amendment like one recently passed in Michigan (via FiveThirtyEight):
The researchers asked 4,037 registered voters if they supported a constitutional amendment establishing reproductive freedom. Half of the sample read an amendment identical to the ballot measure that passed in Michigan in 2022; the other half read the same amendment except the researchers removed language that allowed the state to regulate abortion after viability, or when a fetus can live outside a woman’s body.
PerryUndem found that respondents who received the version of the ballot measure with no government regulations included were 15 percentage points more likely to say they would “definitely” vote for it: Forty-five percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with no restrictions, while 30 percent said they would “definitely vote yes” on the version with a viability restriction. The results were particularly pronounced among Democrats and women of reproductive age (ages 18 to 44), who were much more likely to support the version of the amendment without restrictions.
“Ten years ago, even five years ago, people would for sure have supported a viability requirement,” Tresa Undem, a co-founder of PerryUndem, said. “People are saying, ‘I don’t want the government involved in this at all.’”
In the poll write-up, PerryUndem noted that “the opinion landscape is shifting post-Roe, particularly around abortion as a voting issue.”
“Some poll questions in the past have picked up on the sentiment of wanting the government out of these decisions. More and better questions need to be developed to measure these sentiments accurately and track change in the future,” it added.
Last month, a Gallup poll showed that the majority of Americans oppose abortion in the late stages of pregnancy. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said it should be legal in the second trimester of pregnancy, and 22 percent said this for the third trimester of pregnancy as well. This, Gallup noted, is the highest recorded since 1996. In its write-up, Gallup pointed out that the “middle position” on abortion has always been the lead response, but Post-Roe, the number of those wanting abortion on demand has increased.
