Most Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, new polls this week show, reflecting earlier results indicating that the nation wanted the abortion rights precedent to stand.
The high court struck down the landmark 1973 case last week, ending the constitutional right to an abortion that had lasted for half a century.
Three polls conducted after Friday’s court ruling found that about 60% of respondents disapprove of the decision.
A Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll in May found the majority of Texans did not think the court should overturn Roe. The survey was in the field shortly after the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe was leaked.
Mark Owens, the poll’s director and a professor of political science at UT-Tyler, said Wednesday that he expects Texans’ opinions would be consistent.
“What we saw, in the time between March and May, was the number of people who have an opinion about the topic,” he said. “That was our biggest change.”
Legality of abortion
Americans’ opinions vary widely on when abortion should be legal.
A CBS News/YouGov poll of Texans released Thursday, but partly conducted before the Roe decision, found that 56% of Texans think most abortions should be legal. The total was less than the 64% CBS found was the national average.
Conversely, 44% of Texans surveyed said abortions should be mostly illegal, compared with the national average of 36%. The poll had a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.
In Monmouth’s national poll, 36% of respondents said abortion should always be legal, 30% said there should be some limitations, and 10% said it should always be illegal. Additionally, 72 respondents said an abortion ban with no exceptions would bother them “a lot.”
Court support slips
The polls also showed that support for the high court is on the decline. In the NPR/PBS poll, 56% of respondents had little or no confidence in the court.
In the Monmouth poll, the court’s approval rating was stable after dropping 10 points in a May survey following the leaked draft opinion. A majority of respondents, 53%, said they disapprove of the job the Supreme Court is doing.
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