When the Supreme Court's draft opinion in Dobbs was leaked in early May, abortion was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, and focus turned to what Americans think about the issue.
While a majority of Americans said abortion should be legal in some cases, according to a Pew Research Center survey, a minority—19 percent—said it should be legal with no exceptions. Shockingly, a growing number of mainstream Democrats fall into this category.
Former Rep. Tim Ryan was advancing this view back in 2019, according to National Review.
In the spin room after the debate, I asked Democratic presidential candidate Tim Ryan, a congressman from Ohio who claimed until 2015 that he was pro-life, if it should be legal to for a physically healthy mother to abort a physically healthy baby at 23 weeks into pregnancy. “Well, very few and far between are later in pregnancy. 99 percent of them are I think 21 weeks and under. We don’t know the circumstances of every pregnancy,” Ryan said. “The government should not be involved at all.” Not even in the third trimester? “Well, we don’t know what’s going on. So let the woman make the decision. Keep the government out of it,” Ryan replied. (NR)
More recently, during a Pennsylvania Democratic Senate debate this spring, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman was asked if he supported any limits on abortion, to which he replied, "I don't believe so, no."
New York City Mayor Eric Adams also falls into this category of abortion support—an extremist view even CNN didn't attempt to downplay.
CNN's chyron person must really, really hate Eric Adams. https://t.co/BDa7Nqxrdv
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) May 19, 2022
And now, Georgia's Stacey Abrams, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, refuses to say she supports any limitations on abortion.
An increasing number of Democratic officials and candidates are openly admitting they don’t support any legal limit on abortion at any point in pregnancy.
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) June 26, 2022
Here’s Stacey Abrams today: https://t.co/MWuRwKGuop pic.twitter.com/JJJN6fpjeP
Other surveys show these Democrats are out of touch with where the majority of Americans are on the issue of abortion.
According to Marist, 71 percent of Americans want significant limits on abortion, while an AP-NORC poll found that 80 percent of Americans think abortion in the third trimester should be illegal in most or all cases.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturns Roe and Casey, kicking the issue back to the states.