{"id":185317,"date":"2018-07-11T14:34:49","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T19:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=185317"},"modified":"2018-07-13T11:45:31","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T16:45:31","slug":"polls-roe-v-wade-inaccurate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/polls-roe-v-wade-inaccurate\/","title":{"rendered":"Majority of Americans don\u2019t know what Roe v. Wade actually means"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>)\u00a0Justice Kennedy\u2019s announcement that he is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court has dramatically raised salience of sanctity-of-life issues. Supporters of legal abortion<\/a> and their allies in the mainstream media are working tirelessly to generate opposition to a constitutionalist nominee who might vote to weaken or overturn the Roe v. Wade<\/em> decision. One key talking point among many abortion-rights groups is that Roe <\/em>is a decision that enjoys broad public support and should be considered settled. Indeed, a flurry of polls released in recent days by NBC News\/Survey Monkey<\/a>, Kaiser Family Foundation<\/a>, and Quinnipiac University<\/a> all purportedly find that over 60 percent of respondents support Roe v. Wade<\/em>.<\/p>\n

These polls are all misleading for several reasons. First, a significant number of Americans are unfamiliar with the Roe v. Wade<\/em> decision. A Pew Research Center poll<\/a> taken in 2013 found that only 62 percent of respondents were aware that Roe v. Wade<\/em> dealt with abortion. Seventeen percent thought Roe v. Wade <\/em>dealt with some other public-policy issue and 20 percent were unfamiliar with the decision. Furthermore, even many who realize Roe v. Wade<\/em> dealt with abortion fail to understand the full implications of the decision. Many wrongly think that overturning Roe v. Wade\u00a0<\/em>would result in national ban on abortion, instead a reversal of Roe<\/em> would return the issue to the states.<\/p>\n

READ: 3 reasons why Roe will fall, despite past Supreme Court decisions<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Additionally, many polling questions, including the recent questions by NBC News\/Survey Monkey, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Quinnipiac University all fail to inform respondents that Roe v. Wade<\/em> effectively legalized abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy and makes it difficult to place limits on late-term abortions. Historically, there has been very little public support for second-trimester or third-trimester abortions. For instance, a Gallup poll<\/a> that was released this June found that only 28 percent of people thought second-trimester abortions should be legal and only 13 percent thought third-trimester abortions should be legal.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Crisis Magazine<\/em> published a useful article by Mark Stricherz<\/a>, which analyzed polling on Roe v. Wade<\/em>. He looks at the polls conducted during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito in the mid 2000s. A Gallup poll at this time described Roe v. Wade<\/em> as the decision that \u201clegalized abortion\u201d giving respondents the incorrect impression that abortion was always illegal beforehand. The Pew Research Center survey described Roe v. Wade<\/em> as having \u201cestablished a woman\u2019s constitutional right to an abortion, at least in the first three months of pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the Gallup and the Pew Research Center found that support for Roe v. Wade<\/em> was over 60 percent. However, when the Los Angeles Times<\/em> described Roe v. Wade<\/em> as the decision \u201cwhich permits a woman to get an abortion from a doctor at any time\u201d \u2014 support fell to 43 percent.<\/p>\n