Public Religion Research Institute (PRI) just published the results of its latest polling on abortion: Abortion Views in All 50 States: Findings from PRRI’s 2023 American Values Atlas. One point is highly significant:
Majorities of residents in blue states (70%) and red states (57%) and nearly two-thirds (64%) of residents in battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Another significant datum is that TIME Magazine, a bastion of the MSM, found this and ran with it: New Poll Reveals Real Dividing Line Between Abortion Supporters and Opponents.
Across nearly every faith and in all but five states, a majority of Americans support at least some access to abortion. That's a major conclusion of a new massive survey of 22,000 people from the Public Religion Research Institute.
I partly disagree, though, with their next point:
But the survey's most revealing insight is the group in which anti-abortion sentiment remains strongest: white Christian nationalists.. . .
It’s a quiet chasm, but one that speaks to the latent threat of white Christian nationalism that Democrats and more than a few Republicans have been reluctant to confront head-on.
It’s not “revealing” at all; it’s been obvious (well, obvious to those of us who obsess over these things) for a long time. However, TIME is correct about its importance, which is confirmed in an interview the reporter had with PRRI’s president Melissa Deckman:
In states with total bans on abortion, a staggering 53% of residents say they still support abortion rights in most or all cases. Put plainly: this aspect of democracy is not working, and it reveals a huge gap in our understanding of our neighbors.
The threat here is not just to reproductive rights but also to the GOP brand for a generation. “I'm someone who studies Gen Z, and I'm telling you, Gen Z women are not buying anything that the GOP is selling these days. Part of it's linked to their stance on abortion and LGBT rights,” Deckman says.
Put plainly, indeed. But let’s go back to the datum which caught my eye: In the battleground states where the presidency will be won, thanks to the Electoral College, abortion support is very high, high enough to make Biden to win those states, if the campaign focuses on that.
And the campaign is doing just that. Politics Biden campaign continues focus on abortion with new ad buy, Kamala Harris campaign stop in Philadelphia (CBS News — another MSM):
President Biden's campaign is launching a new seven-figure ad buy Thursday centered around abortion, a centerpiece issue for his campaign, as it attempts to link restrictive state abortion bans to former President Donald Trump.
It will run on the two-year anniversary of the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion on the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe v. Wade and transferred decisions about abortion access to the states.
The importance of abortion rights is clear:
A CBS News battleground state poll of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed that at least 60% of voters in each state were following the news about restrictive abortion bans in Arizona and Florida.
although there is still a lot of work to do:
However, not all voters blame Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In Wisconsin, where current state law prohibits abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, 40% blamed Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the poll found, while 44% didn't give him credit or blame.
Voters in these three competitive states also ranked other issues, such as the economy, democracy and crime, as higher factors than abortion.
But at least we know how to make the case for Biden going forward — pin the blame for the loss of women’s rights to life and health on the man who boasted about making it happened: The great orange shitgibbon. Which the Biden campaign is doing. Example: Biden blames Trump for Florida's 6-week abortion ban, says women nationwide face health crisis.
Another prong — this is a multipronged pitchfork — is getting abortion protection on the ballot for November. This is happening already Arizona and Nevada. In the 2022 election, Michigan voters put abortion rights in the state constitution. In Pennsylvania earlier this year, the state supreme court upheld the right to abortion. In North Carolina, abortion is still legal with more limits and is already a hot issue in the governor’s race. I can’t find any movement (yet) in Georgia for protecting abortion rights, and in Wisconsin there is a battle heading to the Supreme Court over whether to uphold an 1849 law similar to the 1864 Arizona that their supreme court reinstated and which just got repealed (finally).
In short, abortion might well be the issue most likely to save our democracy from the Republican autocracy and from a Christian Nationalist theocracy. Here is TIME with the last word:
But Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Muslims alike are all fine leaving the decision with patients and their health providers. That may explain why, when put to voters, protecting abortion rights has prevailed at the ballot box every time it’s been put there since the Dobbs decision. And it’s why, heading into the final push toward November, most Democrats have decided that abortion is not an inconvenient distraction best left on the shelf. White Christian nationalism and its loud minority may now be the albatross on U.S. policy making, but it’s a pretty useful demagogue, too.
Ironic, isn’t it?