The Ethics and Public Policy Center and Judicial Confirmation Network suspected that many who support Roe do so because they are under the false impression that if Roe were overturned, abortion would become illegal in the United States. If the public were properly informed that overturning Roe would simply return the abortion issue back to the states to decide the matter for themselves, public support for Roe would decrease. To test their hypothesis they hired a national public relations firm, Ayres, McHenry & Associates, to conduct a poll that would gauge the genuine public support for Roe v Wade, as well as other abortion-specific questions. The findings are quite significant to our understanding of the supposed public support for abortion rights.

 

To discover if their suspicions were correct, respondents were asked twice to declare their support, or lack of support for overturning Roe: the first time without being informed, and the second time after being informed that overturning Roe would merely return the issue of abortion back to the states, allowing them to decide their own positions on abortion. The poll results confirmed the suspicions of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Judicial Confirmation Network.

 

Prior to being informed of the import of Roe, 34% of respondents supported overturning Roe, while 55% did not. After being informed that overturning Roe would merely return the issue of abortion back to the states to decide, support for overturning Roe increased to 43%, while opposition decreased to 48%. The margin narrowed from 21% to 5% in favor of not overturning Roe. That is quite a shift! I think the media and pro-abortion advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood are largely to blame for the perception that overturning Roe would ban abortion in the U.S.

 

I will discuss what this poll tells us about how Americans really feel about abortion in a separate post.