As Madeline has been following, there's no shortage of polls asking respondents what they think about Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision which found a constitutional right to abortion. When examining respondents views not only on the decision, but also on legal abortion, the findings are compelling and complex.
On Wednesday she highlighted a Marquette University Law School poll which indicated 50 percent of adults oppose overturning the decision. It's pretty telling how 29 percent of respondents indicated they haven't heard anything or haven't heard enough about the issue to have an opinion about overturning Roe. That's not an insignificant number.
Madeline on Friday wrote about a poll out of Fox News, which showed 65 percent of registered voters want the Court to let Roe remain.
Her coverage also delved into the Fox News poll findings on legal abortion, which was that there is a complete split. Forty-nine percent say abortion should be legal all or most of the time while 49 percent likewise say it should be illegal most or all of the time. A plurality, at 38 percent, say abortion should be "illegal except under certain circumstances."
It's key to go over what living under Roe v. Wade entails, along with its companion case of Doe v. Bolton, was handed down the same day, which is that states are under particularly tight constraints from passing their own abortion legislation, especially before towards the end of pregnancy.
That's why it was such a game changer that the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month allowed a Texas law to go into effect when it restricts most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, at around six weeks.
While Doe is the lesser known case, it is why the United States is one of the very few nations which allows elective abortions past 20-weeks.
The text of Doe points to health exemptions which must be made when it comes to states regulating and restricting abortion, even and including later in pregnancy. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that the Court "agree[d]" that "medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health."
Justice Blackmun continued by noting that "This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment. And it is room that operates for the benefit, not the disadvantage, of the pregnant woman."
It's worth highlighting that Fox included a "For reference" question from 1998 which read "This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision called Roe v. Wade which made abortion in the first three months of pregnancy legal. Do you think the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade or let it stand?"
Such a question notably leaves out those above details about Doe.
The breakdown of the Fox News poll results on the abortion question were as follows: 29 percent said "abortion should always be legal," 20 percent said it should be "legal most of the time," 38 percent said it should be "illegal except under certain circumstances," and 11 percent said it should be "always illegal."
When it comes to those results, measuring support for Roe and Doe is no longer so neat and simple.
Madeline reported on an NBC News poll from last month as well. While 54 percent do say abortion should be "always legal" or "legal most of the time," with 31 percent and 23 percent respectively choosing those stances, the single most selected response was the 34 percent who said it should be "illegal, with exceptions."
I also wrote about Gallup, which released their annual abortion poll in June. That poll revealed that "Americans remain much more likely to believe abortion should be legal "only under certain circumstances" (48%) than to favor it being legal "under any circumstances" (32%) or "illegal in all circumstances" (19%)."
A May 2018 poll from Gallup revealed that 60 percent of adults think abortion should be legal in the first three months, 28 percent of adults think it should be legal in the second three months, and just 13 percent think it should be legal in the last three months.
In 2019, the Institute for Pro-Life Advancement, which is an initiative of Students for Life of America, found that "51 percent [of 18-34 year olds] said that they opposed Roe, when they understood it allows for abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy."
While polls may claim such high support from the public for keeping Roe v. Wade, the reality appears to be that it's not so simple.
