The miasma of abortion public opinion

I’m really marinating in abortion public opinion lately for the research I’m working on (and a number of interviews about the current state of public opinion and policy) and one thing that I think is so important, but so  under-appreciated in media coverage is what weak, conflicting, and sometimes downright non-sensical attitudes people have on abortion.  People who pay attention to politics have strong opinions on abortion, but most people don’t pay a lot of attention to politics and for many of them, I think their opinion on abortion can best be summed up by some version of: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  Or, “ehhh, I don’t love it, but I think it should probably be legal and if you are going to ask me about specific policy proposals, I will show little thought or coherence.”  

Let’s start here: Fully 25% of Republicans (including Leaners) actually identify themselves as “pro-choice” in contrast to the 83% of Democrats who do so.  Only 3% and 1%, respectively, choose neither.  Why?  Because everybody “knows” you have to be one of these identities.  What’s most interesting to me is the number of Republicans who “know” they are supposed to be pro-life (almost 3/4) whereas when you look at all sorts of specific issues, well more than 1/4 of Republicans actually support positions that are clearly against what most “pro-lifers” advocate for.

How about this from Gallup:

Check out the nearly half of Republicans who say abortion should be generally legal in in the first trimester.  You know what I call someone who thinks abortion should be generally legal in the first trimester (when over 90% of abortions take place)?… Pro-choice. 

Now, it goes down dramatically in subsequent trimesters, but, its hard to argue that “generally legal in first trimesters; but not generally legal in subsequent trimesters” is not pro-choice.  In fact, that’s basically Roe.  Now, there’s all sorts of policy nuance that goes into 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions, but I would argue you can very much say it should not be “generally legal” but allow for generous exceptions (e.g., the actual European model) and be very much pro-choice. 

Or take this latest Gallup polling on abortion pills:

Not quite as high, only 41% of Republicans.  But, it’s a hell of an argument to say that you are “pro-life” but that abortion prescriptions should be legal.  But, 41% is a lot more than 25%.  

I’m sure there’s some anomalies with Democrats, too (though, honestly, much less so), but basically there’s a pretty fascinating thing going on with a non-trivial number of Republicans who clearly get that they are supposed to be “pro-life” but don’t quite get that that means they need to generally oppose 1st trimester abortions and abortion medications.

Plenty of other examples I’ll save for another day (or honestly, the book I’m working on).  But for now, I think the point is that there’s far less coherence on abortion attitudes, especially among Republicans– than is generally assumed.