Record share of U.S. electorate is pro-choice and voting on it
A record-high 32% of U.S. voters say they would only vote for a candidate for major office who shares their views on abortion. The importance of a candidate’s abortion stance to one’s vote is markedly higher among pro-choice voters than it was during the 2020 presidential election cycle, while pro-life voters’ intensity about voting on the abortion issue has waned. Also, voters’ greater intensity on the issue today compared with 2020 is explained mainly by Democrats, while Republicans and independents have shown little change.
U.S. adults who are pro-choice are also significantly more likely now than two decades ago to say it is important that any future Supreme Court nominees share their views on abortion.
These results come two years after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked draft decision foretold the court’s plan to abolish constitutional protection for abortion.
At the same time, Gallup finds Americans’ support for abortion rights and identification as “pro-choice” holding at the historically high levels seen since the Dobbs decision was leaked. [Continue reading…]
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas led the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that slapped down a lawsuit seeking to take a popular abortion pill off the market.
Handing pro-abortion supporters a rare win from the country’s highest court, Kavanaugh wrote that the case’s plaintiffs, a pro-life group of doctors who vehemently oppose abortion by any method, didn’t have the authority to challenge the FDA over an issue that did not impact them personally.
“Plaintiffs are pro-life, oppose elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Because plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone, plaintiffs are unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA’s regulation of others.”
It was the first major ruling on abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court since its conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022—a decision that set the U.S. back decades in reproductive rights at the federal level. [Continue reading…]