What does public opinion say about abortion? Missouri's case

In the United States, the debate around abortion has been continuously on the news with a particular intensity ever since Roe v. Wade decision came out in 1973. Therefore, political agendas have spent a significant amount of space on it, as public opinion battle between Republicans and Democrats continues growing. Similarly, this issue tends to mobilize citizens within religious ideologies, such as Christians (Catholic and Evangelicals) who mostly oppose abortion and liberal women’s movement, who support it.

In a poll by Gallup (2019), it can be seen the evolution of the public’s opinion from 1975 (two years after the Supreme Court decision) to the present year. In general, there is an evident division between those who think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances (21%) and 53% who think it should be legal only under certain circumstances. Yet, those who think it should be legal without any restrictions are not far from the opposite side (25%). Therefore, it may be deduced the main dispute is among the far right and the moderate or the center’s opinion.

However, the growing ideological polarization between Democratic and Republican Party elites allows asking how abortion became a partisan issue. According to Greenhouse and Siegel (cited by North, 2019), Republican Richard Nixon during his 1972 presidential campaign, began staking out anti-abortion positions as part of a strategy to appeal to Catholic voters and other social conservatives.[1] The shift to opposing abortion rights was part of a larger effort to paint the Republican Party as pro-family in a way that would help mobilize socially conservative voters (North, 2019).

On the other hand, it was only after 1988 that more Democrats than Republicans were supporting access to abortion (Figure 2). During his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton framed his speech famously saying that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Hillary Clinton used the same language in her 2008 presidential campaign.

Moving forward, on the PBS NewsHour, NPR, and Marist poll (2019), it is shown that sixty-three percent of Americans favor laws that allow abortions in cases of rape and incest. Also, 86 percent support laws enabling abortion if it protects the life or health of a woman. Opinions are sharply divided by party: 36 percent of Republicans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 76 percent of Democrats (Pew Research, 2018).

Nevertheless, the previous data varies from one state to another. There are big differences in people’s attitudes about abortion from state to state, especially in those where abortion laws are more restrictive.

Particularly in Missouri, normally viewed among Bible Belt states, 6 out of 8 representatives are Republicans and two senators from the same political structure. That may be showing how biased the perception among political elites can be[2], pushed by a highly conservative group. Although politicians often do what voters want (Vavreck & Tausanovitch 2019), when it comes to increasingly controversial issues such as gun control, marijuana legalization, and abortion; it seems that they are not taking into consideration all of their constituents and ‘minorities’ are suffering the consequences.

In 2014, according to a survey by Pew Research, the percent of adults in Missouri who say abortion should be legal in all or most cases was 45% visibly close to the 50% that answer it should be illegal in all or most cases (with a 5% who responded “don’t know”). Those numbers provide an insight of the division surrounding the topic, which intensified by Donald Trump's election in 2016, and on the other side, by the new emphasis on women's rights reflected in Women's Marches and the #MeToo movement.

In other words, those results are displaying an uncomfortable and maybe a not so obscure truth: in policy processes, the majority rules and holds the power to define the problem and set the agenda. In Missouri, public opinion is unmistakably split, letting us appreciate the dynamic between power, framing, and decision-making coming together to restrict abortion.

Overall, the future of abortion policies across the United States is likely to be in the hands of the 2020 elections and elections are in the hands of those who help shape the information the public (voters) receive. Media and groups with electoral clout are among the contenders’ target populations, characterized as powerful[3]; therefore, these groups have the ability to affect the current path of this issue. Kingdon (2014) points out, the players in the game that are outside the government, especially interest groups, affect the governmental agenda more by blocking potential items than by promoting them. 

Finally, the Judicial Power is expected to keep playing a greater role in the policy process by blocking laws that restrict abortion and legislative pieces that go against Roe v Wade. 

Word cited page

Broockman, David and Skovron, Christopher “Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion among Political Elites,” American Political Science Review 112(3), 2018.

Hartig, Hannah. “Nearly Six-in-Ten Americans Say Abortion Should Be Legal in All or Most Cases.” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/17/nearly-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2019.

Inc, Gallup. “U.S. Abortion Attitudes Remain Closely Divided.” Gallup.Com, https://news.gallup.com/poll/235445/abortion-attitudes-remain-closely-divided.aspx. Accessed 12 Oct. 2019.

Kingdon, John W. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Second edition, Pearson new international edition, Pearson, 2014.

Kreitzer, Rebecca J., and Candis Watts Smith. “Reproducible and Replicable: An Empirical Assessment of the Social Construction of Politically Relevant Target Groups.” PS: Political Science & Politics, vol. 51, no. 4, Oct. 2018, pp. 768–74. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1017/S1049096518000987.

Lax, Jeffrey and Phillips, Justin. “Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness.” The American Political Science Review, vol. 103, no. 3, 2009, pp. 367–86.

Nelson, Thomas E., and Zoe M. Oxley. “Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion.” The Journal of Politics, vol. 61, no. 4, Nov. 1999, pp. 1040–67. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.2307/2647553.

North, Anna. “How Abortion Became a Partisan Issue in America.” Vox, 10 Apr. 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/4/10/18295513/abortion-2020-roe-joe-biden-democrats-republicans.

NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist. Poll Results. http://maristpoll.marist.edu/npr-pbs-newshour-marist-poll-results-6/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2019.

Pew Research Center. “U.S. Public Continues to Favor Legal Abortion, Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 29 Aug. 2019, https://www.people-press.org/2019/08/29/u-s-public-continues-to-favor-legal-abortion-oppose-overturning-roe-v-wade/.

Pew Research Center. “Views about Abortion by State - Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.

Vavreck, Lynn and Tausanovitch, Chris “It May Not Seem That Way, but Politicians Often Do What Voters Want,” The Upshot, New York Times, July 17, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/upshot/politicians-mostly-follow-voters.html

---

[1] On public policy language, this is called “framing”, the transmission of persuasive appeals; whether those messages are deliberately constructed to manipulate opinion or do so only incidentally. (Nelson and Oxley, 1999)

[2] Broockman and Skovron (2018) argue that “politicians can misperceive constituency opinion dramatically and systematically enough to contribute to significant, one-sided biases in representation such as asymmetric.”

[3] According to the theory of social construction of target populations, there are four ideal type groups: advantaged, contenders, dependants, and deviants. Each one is created by the intersection of power and deservingness. (Kreitzer and Watts Smith, 2018)