Texans’ attitudes about abortion, measured on the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, were consistent with more than a decade of public opinion polling in Texas. A majority of Texas voters continue to oppose a blanket ban on access to legal abortion, but also express a range of attitudes about the timing and circumstances under which those abortions should be legally accessible.
While 37% of voters expressed support for the state’s trigger law banning abortions in Texas in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling (24% strongly, 54% opposed), only 15% of Texans agreed that “abortion should never be permitted” on a seperate item. In a battery of questions assessing the circumstances and timeframe under which a woman might be permitted to access a legal abortion, no more than 36% supported foreclosing all access to abortion under any of the seven cirumstances tested. Only 8%, 13%, and 11% of Texas voters, respectively, would ban access to abortion in the cases of rape, incest, or if the woman’s health was seriously endangered.
Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs has attracted attention for his call to reconsider other rights associated with the substantive due process doctrine, including the privacy rights used as the foundation for the right to use contraception. The latest poll found overwhelming agreement that “women who want to avoid becoming pregnant should have access to birth control,” unchanged from November 2015 UT/Texas Tribune Polling results. There were no substantive differences in the views of partisans.
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