A new Hill-HarrisX poll finds voters’ views have shifted on certain aspects of abortion compared with a similar survey from three years ago.
Thirty-three percent of registered voters said abortion should be legal in limited circumstances such as rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, down from 41 percent who said the same in a September 2018 survey.
Twenty-five percent of respondents said abortion should be legal under most circumstances until the point of viability or the third trimester, down 2 percentage points from 2018.
Twenty-three percent of voters said abortion should be legal in all circumstances — up from 18 percent three years ago — and 19 percent said it should be illegal in all cases, an increase of 5 points.
Among Democratic respondents, 34 percent of Democratic voters said abortion should be legal in all cases and 12 percent said it should always be illegal.
On the Republican side, 11 percent said abortion should be legal in all cases, with 27 percent saying it should always be illegal.
The legal battles over abortion rights are moving to the Supreme Court this year, with the justices slated to hear arguments in December over Mississippi’s new abortion law. The Biden administration has urged the Supreme Court to uphold the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
The Supreme Court recently decided not to block a Texas abortion law that’s now the most restrictive in the nation.
The most recent Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 948 registered voters from Sept. 21-22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
—Gabriela Schulte
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