May 9th, 2024 – Why broad labels fail to capture nuances in Texans’ views about abortion access

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party, because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is, these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:35] Jim Henson: Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Happy to be joined by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. Happy late spring, early summer.

[00:00:46] Josh Blank: Yes. Early summer, I think.

[00:00:48] Jim Henson: I think, I think we’re at least today decisively into early summer.

So to get to it, we’ve been digging into the results of the April, 2024 UT Texas politics project poll for the last couple of weeks. And we released that poll last Wednesday and we’re recording this podcast on Thursday, the following Thursday. Last week we had Darren Shaw on for our customary discussion of mostly election related results in the poll.

And you and I, Josh, took a look at. You know, what the results tell us about where some of the key groups are, key groups of voters are in terms of the Trump Biden race, kind of in the follow up to that podcast and that poll, that cluster of poll results. And for people listening, you’ll find that in the blog section of our website at texaspolitics.

utexas. edu. And, you know, if you’re following the election and you were interested in last week’s podcast, this kind of drills down. And.

[00:01:47] Josh Blank: Yeah, you know,

[00:01:48] Jim Henson: interpret some of that data a little further, and it’s

[00:01:50] Josh Blank: a lot of numbers. I mean, like, you know, again, we love numbers. It’s a lot of numbers. And I mean, one of the great values of this resource is this poll is the fact that, you know, we can go back and say what was going on in April 2020 between the same two candidates, but we can also go back and see what was going on in, you know, in, you know, in June and February of 2016 or 2012 and kind of make a little bit more, put a little more context in terms of, I think a lot of hot takes that come out whenever, you know, there’s a poll results.

[00:02:15] Jim Henson: Well, and I think, you know, and we talk about this a little bit in the post, uh, or at least we, we wave at it and we’ve talked about it a little bit before in the podcast. It is interesting. In terms of the opportunities presented for us to leverage that data, that we do have this rematch, right? I mean, the rematch is a very interesting,

[00:02:35] Josh Blank: yeah, no, I mean, if I, if I, if I take away the whole kind of like, you know, I think lack of enthusiasm, I’m feeling about it as I think most people seem to be feeling about it in the polling data, you know, just as a, as a researcher and as someone who does is like, Oh, this is kind of cool.

[00:02:49] Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does give us the ability to say. Here’s the Trump Biden race with one incumbent in 2020, here’s the Trump Biden race with the other guy, the incumbent, in, in 2024, and we’ll obviously continue to do that. That said, today, we’re going to pivot to look at some policy attitudes, and I suspect we’ll do this for a little bit until the next poll, allowing for current events.

And we want to focus on a topic in the policy area that’s, you know, is already part of the 2024 campaign. So we’re not, we’re not completely leaving here. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the topic is abortion policy. Now we’ve, you know, we pulled a lot in this poll on abortion attitudes, a lot of trend with, you know, different attempts to probe attitudes with definite, you know, probe attitudes, the underlying attitudes in a different, in different ways.

And then also a lot of questions over time about, you know, policy proposals in play at a particular time. And I think we had a slightly different approach this time, or, you know, it was a variant, a variation on this approach that we included. So we included several questions related to abortion in part, knowing that this was one of the, you know, it’s going to be one of the issues on the table for the election and more on the table, less on the table is going to depend on.

how successful people trying to get in on the agenda are, right. But some of these questions were, so some of these questions were repeats of what we’ve been tracking for quite a while. But there were also a couple of new questions. And I said, the goals were a little different. I mean, look, one goal that was.

Consistent that’s, you know, you’ve alluded to in terms of our overall approach now that we’ve been doing this for so long and we have such a well of data, we wanted to continue to track trends, see if there were big changes that might be attributed to a shift in attitudes or to the terms of the discussion.

Or, to the terms of the discussion and the aftermath of Dobbs, uh, the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and the politics that have fallen out of that. And that’s, you know, pretty standard fare. I mean, we track trends in complex policy areas to see if, you know, attitudes are changing and, and. The degree to which this seems to correspond or not correspond to events, changes in policy, et cetera.

Right. Yeah. Which, you know, part of the service. Right. But, you know, I think we did something a little more complicated this time that I think we, to my memory, we kind of talked about before, but we hadn’t really fully fleshed out in the poll to some degree. And that is, we, you know, we wanted to look at how the common labels that are used to describe different Broadly speaking sides air quote in the abortion sets.

Yeah, positions map onto attitudes about legal access and policy. And we do this by act by asking questions about practical situational judgments about women’s access to abortion. And, you know, we wanted to begin to think about what this kind of mapping exercise might tell us about post Dobbs political and policy debates around abortion access.

And maybe, you know, a little more distance, you know, distantly, but more complicated, the potential competition in people’s minds and in the law between the rights of a pregnant woman and the rights of her fetus.

[00:06:24] Josh Blank: Which is something that I think is, you know, a discussion that’s, I think, you know, we, we talk about this a lot.

We’re, talking In some ways we’re, we’re junkies, you know, we’re really like we’re, we’re deep into politics. And so a lot of times, you know, one of the difficult part is that we ask about things, you know, almost too early, you know, but you can see this, this sort of discussion is really coming to the fore a little bit.

The IVF decision in Alabama, right. Was one that really brought to, I think, a lot of people’s attention, this notion of, you know, essentially fetal rights and what that’s going to mean in sort of this new environment. And that raises a whole bunch of other questions. And this really is sort of our first foray to sort of.

Start to scratch it some of this, because, you know, even if this is not a policy we’re talking about at the moment, it definitely seems like something we’re gonna see coming into the public space more and more. This competition over rights.

[00:07:10] Jim Henson: Well, I think, you know, we hadn’t really talked about this, but I think one of the interesting things that I keep kind of mulling and don’t know exactly what to do with, you know, is the degree to which the the legal regime and the Approach of Roe v.

Wade structured so much of our thinking about the issue and so much of how we pulled about it and how others pulled about it before we were doing this.

[00:07:41] Josh Blank: No, that’s right. I mean, you know, I mean, we can get caught up on trends and the thing that’s great about having trend questions. It really does give us, you know, more leverage and understanding the data.

But it’s also been the case that since. The Dobbs decision. We’ve had to rethink how we ask questions about abortion. And on the one hand, we do want to hold on to some of these items that we think get an underlying attitude. And some of these items that we think, you know, are worth, you know, that still have value even in the changing context, if anything, maybe have more value because of the changing context.

But some of the questions that we’d been asking for years are just blown up because they just not really as meaningful anymore under the new sort of, yeah, no, I think

[00:08:16] Jim Henson: that’s right. And I think we’re in an interesting zone of feeling both. Or confronting, I shouldn’t say feeling, there’s feelings involved, I guess, but, but, you know, confronting this, both the change in the situation, but also like what the implications of that are and the change, you know, how that may, it’s also, I think for us made a step back and think of, you know, and I think a lot of polls, people that conduct polls are doing this, how we even structure, how we’re approaching the attitudinal landscape.

[00:08:44] Josh Blank: And I mean, I don’t know if we’ll get into a ton of this, but you know, we’re going to talk about sort of the, the questions we asked and that doesn’t even speak to all the questions that we’d. Try to think up, but couldn’t figure out a good way to ask. No, I think that’s because there’s a lot of challenges in this space.

And I think, you know, for, for the questions we ended up with, which I’m pretty happy about and are pretty robust in terms of the ground they cover. There were probably, you know, five or 10 others that we didn’t ask that we, you know, not for lack of trying to figure out how to do it, but because it’s actually still so, I mean, complicated, obviously, but also, uh, Yeah.

Okay. I was like the question. I mean, this is terrible. Now I was gonna say the question wording on these are especially pregnant, right? Like, there’s a lot of baggage that goes along with word choice in these questions that really do. I think, you know, if you’re being at least pretty considerate about what you’re, what you’re trying to accomplish here, you have to kind of step back.

And I think at some point, you know, in some of these, we had to, like, just say, you know what, this isn’t going to work,

[00:09:38] Jim Henson: right? I mean, look, it’s our, it’s our process to be as thoughtful as we can about it. All the questions we ask, but, uh, you know, the abortion batteries are always, always the quest, you know, if we are trying anything new, they are always the ones I think that we labor over, you know, in the top tier of things we labor over a lot.

There’s a lot, but

[00:09:58] Josh Blank: again, not to keep analogy, the labor and the, yeah, that’s right. I think, you know, just, just to make a broader observation, I think that’s often case when you have policy areas that have moral components attached to them that just automatically creates more complexity.

[00:10:11] Jim Henson: Well, yeah, I think that’s right.

So, You know, not to make a mystery out of this, you know, we’re going to unpack a lot of numbers and a lot of questions. So I think we don’t always do this. And again, this is one of those things where just somebody happens to have been or has been a student in the internship course that I teach where they do this research project.

I’m always telling them, you know. In the kind of assignment that they are given, you know, don’t make a mystery of it, you know, don’t make your, don’t make your reader wait to see what the conclusion is. It shouldn’t be, uh, Oh, aha. That’s what they’re trying to say. So just very quickly, I mean, I want to summarize kind of what some of the takeaways from what we saw, and then we’ll, we’ll kind of unpack them and do some exposition on that.

So a few points one, as before, we’ve seen not much movement in core attitudes. Right.

[00:10:59] Josh Blank: Not much movement. Basically, we’re trying to say, you know, in the wake of Dobbs and the change in the legal regime in the state and in a lot of other states. Right. But the core attitudes have stayed relatively constant.

[00:11:12] Jim Henson: Right.

[00:11:13] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I mean, you know, and this is something that I think, you know, we should be comfortable with just real quick. And part of the reason we think, you know, this makes sense is because people’s abortion attitudes tend to be a little bit more elaborated. You know, they’ve something that they probably thought about.

It’s not like a new policy area for a lot of people. They tend to be reinforcing. So, you know, the presence or absence of strong religious associations tend to also correspond with partisan associations and ideological associations that all push people in one direction or the other. And so, therefore, we don’t expect the underlying change to necessarily produce, let’s say, people who formerly were partisan.

Pro life now of us saying, Whoa, now I’m pro choice. It’s like, no, that’s not, that’s not what we would expect to have happen here.

[00:11:53] Jim Henson: Yeah. And I think interestingly, one of the places where I think we, the stability makes manifest is where we do see change. Yes. And that’s, for example, in the, and where we’ve seen, we see changes in the responses we get in the poll, but they seem very plausibly to be Responses that are not changes in core attitudes, as you’re saying, but changes in response to the environment.

And the key thing is this question we ask about strictness of state laws,

[00:12:18] Josh Blank: right? So this is the one area where we have seen, you know, we’ll come back to the specific numbers, but ultimately more voters in Texas say they want to see the state’s abortion laws being made less strict, essentially more or less since the DOPS decision went into place and the trigger law went into effect.

Uh, there’s a sharp decrease in the number of Republicans who say that the law should be more strict. This is important here. You see those, do those two things make sense? And, and I think you’ve already laid it out. I just want to hammer it home. The idea is, is that people say like people’s attitudes didn’t change.

The laws did. Right. And this is a question specifically asking about the laws.

[00:12:51] Jim Henson: About the level of, yeah. And just to be clear, you know, I mean, we asked. And we’ll elaborate this, but just to make it clear, you know, it’s one of the questions that we talk about, and we ask this in a few policy areas recurrently, you know, do you think abortion laws in Texas should be made more strict, less strict, or left as they are?

I think really kind of the big takeaway, or the thing we’ll focus on a bit, is that the survey revealed that behind some of the core labels or positions that are often used to sort voters and to characterize very broad. You know, often purportedly binary positions, pro life, pro choice, the rights of the fetus, the rights of the woman, that in these areas, people have much more nuanced judgments about when and why a woman should have access to a legal abortion, when you actually give them more detail to provide a judgment about, and we’ll spin that out.

And to my mind, I mean, these results take us back to the complexity at the heart of the now overruled Roe v. Wade opinion, which kind of structured abortion law and the debate for Several decades until Dobbs was passed that we see in this, you know, how public policy inevitably wrestles with balancing what most people see as roe did as the competing status of a pregnant woman and the developing embryo or fetus gestating in her body, and it’s a moving, you know, shift.

[00:14:17] Josh Blank: And I’ll add to that, you know, within the context of an individual’s own sort of moral, religious and other judgments that have to be applied to that situation.

[00:14:26] Jim Henson: Right. And so in that sense, the, if there’s a big takeaway today, it’s that these labels are pretty general and don’t really hold very well in a certain level.

So now, so let’s, so why don’t you give us a quick, a quick overview of the questions that were on this poll that we’re dealing with.

[00:14:43] Josh Blank: All right. So the, the relevant questions, you know, on, on this most recent April. UT Texas politics project poll include an item serving the demographic section serving the back of the poll that asked people whether they would describe themselves as pro life or pro choice or neither.

There’s this question we already talked about the strictness of the current laws and whether the respondent, the voters, think they should be more strict, less strict, or left alone. We have some new questions about whether state government was doing too much, too little, or the right amount to protect the rights of pregnant women.

We also asked, do you think the constitutional rights and protections should be granted at conception? So this is this idea about sort of fetal rights and then we asked a million dollar question that sort of seemed a little bit odd and then and then Donald Trump said something about it, you know, sort of as we were releasing, which is asking level of agreement or disagreement with with the notion that a woman who has an abortion should face criminal penalties such as fines or jail and I could turn around a lot of people say, well, nobody wants to put women in jail.

Well, what’s that? And we want some people do right. And then I think the real, you know, meat of, of what we’re doing here is a, is a battery that we’ve run multiple times now, which is what we’re doing is we ask. I’m just going to read the question and make it simple here. We say in each of the following circumstances, how much time do you think a woman should have to obtain a legal abortion?

And then they’re provided with, uh, seven different circumstances. So I’ll go through what they are and then they have a choice. They can say a woman should never be able to have a legal abortion in that circumstances. They should be able to have one within six weeks of pregnancy. Within 12 weeks of pregnancy, within 24 weeks, within 36 weeks, or at any time during the pregnancy.

And this really is, you know, trying to hit where a lot of policy discussions both have been in the past on these idea of like six week bans, 12 week bans, 20 week bans, but also where we are now, which is to the extent that, you know, some legal abortion access needs to be elaborated in some way. Some laws in some places, this really is the question about when and why.

And so what are the circumstances? Let me go to the circumstances real quick. So the circumstances are the woman’s health is seriously endangered. The woman became pregnant as a result of rape. The woman became pregnant as a result of incest. There’s a strong chance of a serious heart attack. Birth defect in the baby, then the next three are the family has very low income and cannot afford anymore.

Children, the woman is not married and does not want to marry. The woman is married and does not want anymore. Children. Now, I should say about these seven. We did not write these originally. These actually came from a historical battery, which is if they feel a little anachronistic, you know, I mean, they do to me, I think just in some sense about the way we talk about these things, but we do think that they do get at the attitudes relatively well without adding too much more complexity to it.

Okay. Okay. So that’s sort of the meaty battery with that. We think that battery allows us to do is again. It allows each voter regardless of the broader kind of labels they take on or policy position. They espouse it. Well, let’s let’s let’s rubber meets the road here. Should a woman be able to access legal abortion in the circuit in each of these circumstances?

If so, for how long? should a legal abortion be available. Right.

[00:17:28] Jim Henson: So for you guys want to, you know, help people out. I mean, that’s a lot. If you want to look at this, um, if you go to our website, if you go to texaspolitics. utexas. edu, go to polling and then go to our data archive, you’ll find the top line and the crosstabs to this for the April poll along with everything else.

This is questions

[00:17:47] Josh Blank: Q33 through Q37. So you’ll

[00:17:49] Jim Henson: be able to, you know, If you want to kind of just look at all these, please, uh, we invite you to do so. So what does all this mean in practice? And this was kind of the question and, you know, and we kind of, this was fairly purposive. What do these mean in practice to voters, you know, who embrace or endorse a, a label or a position, right?

That is whether pro pro life or pro choice. Fetal personhood, fetal rights versus rights of a pregnant woman within these different, within these different frames. So let’s, let’s start a little bit like, let’s start with the pro life position. So pro life is the, we take this as the anti abortion position, but it’s most pro life advocates term of choice.

Is why we in that circumstance, we use that language. So talk, let’s talk a little bit about what that data look like.

[00:18:36] Josh Blank: Sure. So first of all, how

[00:18:37] Jim Henson: many pro life identifiers are there in the sample?

[00:18:39] Josh Blank: Yeah. So in the sample of registered voters, 38 percent identified it as pro life by contrast, 41 percent identified as pro choice.

To be clear, this is a Republican leaning sample. It’s a conservative leaning sample as always, because it’s a sample of Texas voters. We’ve asked this pretty much on every survey going back quite a while now. And regardless of, you know, what people may say in terms of describing the state as pro life or pro choice or whatever, when we look at a measurement of registered voters, it tends to lean slightly pro choice.

Okay. If that’s surprising, you can look at the data. We can talk about it over email. So 38 percent of, again, of the voters identify as pro life. Now we look at those seven circumstances, what we’re going to focus on here. So 14 percent of all of the pro life voter voters say that they would never allow legal abortion access.

In each of those seven circumstances. So first and foremost, when we say, okay, here’s all the circumstances, only a minority of a minority of voters say never.

[00:19:36] Jim Henson: Right. And that’s 14 percent of the 38 percent right now. Yeah. We’re just talking about pro life

[00:19:41] Josh Blank: identifiers. So 14 percent say never in each of the circumstances.

Now, I think it’s fair to say, well, but the first ones are the top one that most people would say have a problem with would be that woman’s health is seriously endangered. Obviously, you know, you could say if you’re pro life, that’s not a reasonable, you know, you’re. Basically peed in life against each other.

That’s a tough one. So let’s take that out 19 percent of pro life voters would prohibit abortion in each of the other six Circumstances 29 percent now, then the next sort of category we look at is sort of the four circumstances, which we say is sort of the three choice circumstances. The woman is married and does not want more Children.

The woman is not married and does not want to marry and the family has very low income and it cannot afford any more Children. For lack of a better term. I’m just going to I’m going to put it. I’m calling these the choice, the choice circumstances. I think I don’t love

[00:20:22] Jim Henson: it, but I don’t know how else to put it.

I think you’re giving a talk and talking about this a couple weeks ago. I said, and I didn’t make this hard and fast, but kind of non emergency. Now that’s, you know, I could see people would quibble with that too, but I was trying to find a way and I know you are too. That’s why I’m trying, I’m trying to find a way to get away from the choice, not choice language.

Yeah. I mean, you know, that’s one thing about us being at least among the earlier people to use this, this question structure is that characterizing these different things actually introduces some of the same kind Complexities that we’re talking,

[00:20:59] Josh Blank: I mean, I’d say in the other four circumstances, what you could argue is that something happened outside of the person’s control, whether it be a crime or a medical emergency, whether for the pregnant person or for the right, that’s not something that anybody chose to happen.

It happened, right? I’m taking the pregnancy is a given. The other three circumstances are more about context in which the pregnancy happened, but not necessarily

[00:21:20] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:21:21] Josh Blank: Again, a crime or a health emergency. So that’s why I’m calling them the, you

[00:21:24] Jim Henson: know,

[00:21:25] Josh Blank: I’m just, I’m just trying to justify for other people. I know you understand.

I mean, I’m just, just, just looking ahead. So the choice, your circumstance, so if we look at just so, and this is important because the birth, the birth defect one is an interesting kind of intermediary in between the two, right? The, the. The other items, you know, about rape and incest and health of the mother tend to have very high shares of voters endorsing some degree of access.

What’s interesting is the birth defect is close, although not as high. And then these other circumstances are clearly different. If we were going to go and be fancy social scientists and do a factor analysis, the three choice circumstances would probably, we say, load together. They would vary pretty similarly with each other.

And we see that in the data here with even less sophisticated methods. So again, among pro life identifiers, even if we just look at the three. Choice circumstances, only 61 percent would prohibit any access to abortion in all three of those circumstances, which means the other 40 percent would allow some access at some point.

So I think it’s sort of important to know what does this mean again, and we’ll make this a little faster as we go along here, but more pro life voters would allow for some legal abortion access than prohibit it. In four circumstances, right? When the health is in danger, 76 percent would allow for some kind of access at some point.

In the case of rape, 69 percent of pro life voters would allow for access at some point. In the case of incest, 65 percent would allow for some access at some point. In the case of a fetal defect, 58 percent would allow for some access at some point. You know, again, about 70 percent was prohibited in the choice cases, but between 25 and 28 percent of pro life voters Life voters would allow some legal access in even these sort of other situations.

Yeah. You know, take one other angle on, again, this sort of same group we asked in this poll, basically, whether or not constitutional rights and protections should begin at conception. 40 percent of voters said that they should. This is this idea of sort of fetal personhood and fetal rights. Again, these numbers are actually pretty similar, right?

More voters who believe the constitutional rights begin at conception would allow for some legal abortion access and prohibit in those same four circumstances. So in the case of health, 77% would allow for some access, 72 percent in the case of rape, 68 percent in the case of incest, 63 percent in the case of fetal defects, similar shares, about 30 percent would only allow for abortion the first six weeks.

In that scenario, about 30 percent would allow for anywhere between 12 and 36, which shows a lot of variance here, even within this group, right? Talking about this issue, which again, very difficult, right? Between 53 and 58 percent would prohibit abortion in the choice circumstances, but between 39 and 43 percent would allow some access, mostly earlier in the pregnancy, right?

And so, you know, just to say, just so to take a quick takeaway on these groups, when we start talking about like pro, you know, pro life, I say, you know, fetal person, a conscious rights of being a perception at conception. Well, once you start bringing up the specific circumstances and time, what you find is a lot of variants here.

And really, I would say, you know, a lot of deviation from what is seen as a binary prohibitionist position, right?

[00:24:16] Jim Henson: You know, as we’ve talked about, it’s kind of hard to like figure out what that number is. But the takeaway there is that the share of people that are unconditionally, uniformly pro life, if pro life is to mean under no circumstances should a fetus be aborted.

[00:24:31] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:24:33] Jim Henson: Is really depending on it’s whether you look at the pro life identifier or, you know, the under the common underlying thought that a fetus should have rights at conception, you’re really looking at only between 10 and 15 percent who are absolutely right.

[00:24:50] Josh Blank: Doing the math in my head, I’d say maybe 15 and 20, but, but what I also say, you know, it’s interesting that I hadn’t done that math until right now, but when we look, this is

[00:24:56] Jim Henson: what I was talking about before we go on, I mean, it’s kind of, once we parse it out this much, you have to really kind of think about,

[00:25:01] Josh Blank: yeah, and, and people don’t like when you do the percentages of the percentages and stuff in terms of writing, but, but you know, it’s interesting, but yeah, that’s right, but that number, that 15 to 20%, it actually coheres very, very clearly with the question that we were asking historically about abortion, which is a very, Which we’ve talked on this podcast before.

It’s a four point question in terms of four response options. Essentially, the two endpoints are essentially no, no abortion ever. And then one never and whenever, never and whenever in the middle is a whole mess. But what’s interesting is that the share endorsing never in almost every poll ever conducted is about.

15 to 16 percent ranges. It can go from 14. It can be maybe if you look at just Republicans, sometimes it bumps up to about 21. But the fact is that we’re, but the fact that we’re seeing, again, in a group that’s already a subset, who’s already identified as pro life, what do we end up with in terms of the electorate?

About 15 to 20 percent on the total prohibitionist. So about one in five of all voters would say this,

[00:25:54] Jim Henson: right? And so, yes,

[00:25:56] Josh Blank: but that’s a separate, that’s a separate sort of discussion than the one that we’re having here, which is just to say, I think that’s something gets focused on a lot

[00:26:01] Jim Henson: and maybe closer to one in 10 then of pro life.

Or, you know, more or less.

[00:26:06] Josh Blank: Yeah, and so I think this is one of these discussions, you know, right now, just because of the simple Obviously what we’re talking about here is complicated, right? In the simple version, it’s real easy to say only X percent of voters would prohibit abortion in all circumstances.

But what’s interesting here is that even the voters who are, I would say, you know, amenable to Prohibitions restrictions on abortion. Once you probe those attitudes a little bit, you find out that they’re not absolutist in those, in those positions. And

[00:26:33] Jim Henson: that’s really kind of what we were curious about.

[00:26:35] Josh Blank: It is what we were curious about.

Now there’s another side to this.

[00:26:38] Jim Henson: So let’s look at the pro choice folks,

[00:26:40] Josh Blank: right? And this is sort of important because I think, you know, one of the things that gets sort of lost in this debate is if on the one side you have this idea that there is this, uh, groundswell of support for a complete prohibition on abortion, which the simple look at the data, you know, does not support, but now even a more complicated look at the data shows isn’t even supported among sort of the groups of voters who you’d think of as being supportive.

The flip side of that is this argument that essentially it’s a partisan argument, but I’ll just make it here because it says, which is it, you know, Democrats and pro choice voters are for abortion up to, and basically to the point of birth. You know, that essentially, you know, late term abortions, kind of the term of art.

And the

[00:27:15] Jim Henson: political term of art is abortion on demand.

[00:27:17] Josh Blank: Abortion on demand and late term abortions, partial birth abortions, all that kind of stuff. And you know, what you’re going to find here is not surprising, which is a lot of nuance among pro choice voters too. So pro choice voters make about 41 percent of the electorate.

Not surprisingly, fewer than 9 percent said a woman should never be allowed to attain an abortion in each of the seven circumstances we’ve looked at. However, The sheriff’s saying that a woman should be able to obtain an abortion any time point during the pregnancy very significantly right from 68 percent when the woman’s health is seriously dangered all the way down to 29 percent for a married woman who doesn’t want to have a child.

What that means is that there’s actually significant variation and significant support even among pro choice voters for some time limits. Depending on the circumstance. So 29 percent of pro choice voters would allow for some time limits. Essentially, these are the voters who said, you know, up to six weeks, six to 12 weeks, 36, and didn’t choose at any time, whenever.

Right. And so these people actually specifically chose a time window. 29 percent of pro choice voters said that there should be some kind of time limits when the health is endangered. 47 percent in the case of rape, 45 percent in the case of incest. 41 percent in the case of fetal defect, but 56 percent in the case of, you know, low income family, 55 percent in the case of, you know, an unmarried person doesn’t want to basically get married or have a child unmarried and 55 percent in the case of a married couple who just doesn’t want any more kids, which means a majority of pro choice voters said there can be some kind of time limits in these elections.

When we look at the people who said constitutional rights don’t begin at conception. So it’s 36 percent of voters again, same thing. The share saying a woman should basically be able to have legal abortion at any point during the pregnancy ranges from 29 to 69 percent with the share endorsing tight and limits rating, you know, ranging from a low of 26 percent in the case of a health condition to 54 percent in the choice circumstances again.

So the majority of those voters who don’t believe. That constitutional rights begin in the womb still nonetheless believe that there can be time limits on when a legal abortion can happen, you know, the last one on this one I’ll go through is, you know, among the voters who say the texas abortion law should be less strict, which is 45 percent of the electorate right now, the share saying a woman should be able to have a legal abortion any point ranges from again 28 to about 66%.

Again, these are pretty consistent numbers. You’ll notice across the board, which I think is could be good for policymakers. Just going to say that out loud because it’s sort of ranges on both sides are pretty consistent. And again, 29 percent would allow for some time limits in the case of a health crisis, 53 percent in the case of the choice here, circumstances and sort of ranging in between about forties for the others.

And so again, that shows a fair amount of variation on the pro choice side when it comes to, you know. What, where they would allow for. Well, and this is where you calling it

[00:30:01] Jim Henson: choice is actually helpful, right? Because, because really what you see here is that even among, you know, in one way or another embrace explicitly a position that is meant to maximize women’s autonomy and choice within the rhetoric of the movement, more than half will embrace some kind of limit.

In these choice your circumstances,

[00:30:24] Josh Blank: I should say, you

[00:30:25] Jim Henson: know, and those limits are generally probably in the, in the 20 after 24 weeks in the sort of 24 to 36.

[00:30:32] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, one of the real challenges in this in constructing, you know, these question batteries and it’s something that kind of falls out of this and we’d sort of, you know, did very, I would say informal pilot testing with various people and one of the difficulties that you find is sort of this question of the range between the very end of pregnancy.

See. Yeah, sort of the idea of complete choice. And so, you know, a lot of the time, and this is sort of what makes these questions difficult in some ways, is that the difference between a circumstance and a fetus at 24 weeks versus 38 weeks is just a different, it’s just a different question, right? And I think, you know, and people definitely read the question differently and have to think about it.

And it was, I should say, when you look at all of this. Data and you look at the distribution of it across time and circumstances, especially among the sort of the quote unquote pro choice leaning groups or whatever, you know, a very small cell is that cell that says, you know, like up to 36 weeks. It’s sort of, you know, they either get pushed over into the anytime or they get pushed back into these sort of other earlier times in the pregnancy, right?

Right. And that speaks to the fact that, you know, I mean, One, interestingly enough, kind of not really useful now, but it does speak to the power of the partial birth framing, right? Late term abortion part, that, that whole thing really did speak to something that clearly touches people in a very specific way.

And even people who are ostensibly pro choice, but at the same time, if you’re somebody who is, you know, identifies as pro life, it’s not so much the timing because you definitely want it to happen early in the pregnancy. That’s also clear in the data,

[00:31:59] Jim Henson: right?

[00:31:59] Josh Blank: But the circumstance itself clearly does matter.

It’s not a blanket, you know, just never.

[00:32:06] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I think you going back to the more traditional four point abortion question and us kind of parsing this all out, you know, one of the things that is interesting as we We’ve talked about this a bit, that it can be easy when we do six polls a year and you’re going from poll to poll to poll to poll to poll and kind of, here’s a step back and you, in regard to that, to the traditional four point abortion question, this is, to my mind, what we always suspected.

[00:32:34] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:32:35] Jim Henson: You know, it’s what always made me so, just so Uncomfortable with the vagueness of the two midpoints in that abortion question, right? I mean, you’ve you know, you’re alive. You’ve heard me bitch about that for years, you know But I mean this is kind of what we needed to get at I think right so You know the big takeaway, I mean as is often asserted by Proponents of abortion rights voter attitudes are much more nuanced than is generally acknowledged and on both sides

[00:33:04] Josh Blank: That’s right

[00:33:04] Jim Henson: both sides or at least within you know, both, you know within the groups of people that embrace these general Characterizations, it’s almost like the opposite of what we often talk about which is Voters not necessarily having deep attitudes on things, nuance

[00:33:22] Josh Blank: thoughts,

[00:33:23] Jim Henson: whether you like the results, don’t like the results, whatever you make of them, there’s a lot of nuance in these results.

And it’s, there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of relatively consistent intellectual structure to it. Whether you be, whether you agree with the person’s beginning point or not, and whether you’re. So, you know, you’re looking at people that identify themselves as pro life, but admit of a lot of exceptions to that commitment, a lot of qualifications, nuances to that.

Or you’re somebody that is pro choice, but you give them these and you see another rent, you know, more examples of admitting of nuance. Now the pro choice position by its nature admits of more variance because it’s just a little more of a monolithic. It’s a broader position than the relative.

[00:34:12] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:34:13] Jim Henson: Specificity and narrowness of the pro life position. And that’s not a judgment. That’s just a logical description to my mind. There may be an unfair,

[00:34:21] Josh Blank: maybe unfair. I mean, in some ways, I mean, I, you know, I’m not saying it is because of the way that the, the politics of it has manifested itself in the way it’s manifested in policy makes it not unfair, but I mean, looking at the actual data, you’d say.

Kind of unfair.

[00:34:35] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, what do you mean by that? Say more about that.

[00:34:37] Josh Blank: Well, I mean, just, you know, just thinking about the, I mean, I think it’s important because of two, I mean, one thing’s right. So one, you know, we can say. One, I think the fact that the pro life movement has been conceived of as being, you know, so monolithically opposed to access to any abortion is probably a disservice to that movement in some ways, right?

Now, part of that has to do with the fact that the life of the mother obviously clearly matters, right? I mean, you can see that in all the data that we’ve asked about in multiple questions, whether this format or other questions, you know, when the woman’s health is in danger, there are very few people who say, well, too bad.

Yeah. Right. And I think that that’s something that one would be useful to acknowledge it, even just in the current policy discussions we’re having where these sort of clarifications need to be made, because honestly, there’s not a lot of opposition to making sure that women’s lives are protected during childbirth.

Right. But I think as we move forward, it’s also important to take that same, I think, nuance that has been sort of absent there. Right. And think about the next The next discussion, which is this idea of, you know, fetal personhood, which is why we ask this question about, you know, do you think the constitutional rights basically begin at conception?

Now, you know,

[00:35:44] Jim Henson: Part of that is that there are these other, you know, some other slightly unexplained unexplained I should some not widely expected spin off issues like,

[00:35:52] Josh Blank: uh,

[00:35:52] Jim Henson: in vitro and yeah, there’s, yeah,

[00:35:54] Josh Blank: there’s other other reasons to ask this question, but also to the extent that the next sort of phase in this potential policy discussion or fight or battle would be well, okay, do fetuses have rights if they do have rights?

What? How do we balance the rights of a fetus with the rights of a full grown living woman who’s carrying that fetus? Right,

[00:36:12] Jim Henson: again, not to be a broken record. It’s but you know, it just basically is. Okay. We have now discarded one national framework for balancing those two rights in Roe. And we’re now finding out that actually we now have to re confront that issue, whether it’s at the state level, whether it’s deciding whether it’s going to be at the federal level.

Well, and this is Ironic is the wrong word, I guess, but this all seems to underline to me that however imperfect it was as a legal regime, the Roe framework, which had one of its foundations, the notion of, Balancing government interest in protecting the rights and autonomy of women with the interest of what in The decision was called a potential life

[00:36:59] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:37:00] Jim Henson: and that that state interest increased as a pregnancy progresses

[00:37:05] Josh Blank: Right

[00:37:05] Jim Henson: and that seems to be How a lot of voters on both sides view this, but their starting point balance is heavier weighted in one on one side or the other.

Well, I think what, you know, going through, I think,

[00:37:17] Josh Blank: yeah, no. And I think going through this data, what it really uncovers. I mean, it’s sort of, you know, it’s in some ways it uncovers something totally banal and very like common in American politics. Like, boy, there’s a lot more overlap in people’s views than the political discussion would have you think.

And really, it is this idea that on the one hand, you know, you’re dealing with. This, I mean, obviously rephrase, and I think even what you just said was wrong, right? Which is that you have this one side that has a starting point that’s so prohibitive on the one hand, which just let’s take a pause. Not true.

Right. The data even in and of itself actually discounts that possibility. Well

[00:37:52] Jim Henson: keep going. You

[00:37:53] Josh Blank: know, and well, I guess it depends. I mean, it’s tough because of the split. Well, I don’t, I don’t

[00:37:56] Jim Henson: disagree with that characterization, but I don’t think, you know, in terms of saying, well, I think the way I got it wrong, but maybe I didn’t let you say about what I got wrong.

But, I mean. I, you know, I think it’s the relative, that’s why I said relative weight.

[00:38:07] Josh Blank: Well, I, I, I’m not undermining. Let me, nothing you said was wrong. No, let me reinforce what I was saying is that, you know, this idea that there’s one side that has a completely prohibitionist position and there’s another side that has a completely, you know, essentially liberal in this, whenever at any time during the pregnancy position, that in and of itself is a disservice to all the voters because the vast majority.

Are probably somewhere in that in between that, right, even

[00:38:30] Jim Henson: though they embrace one label or the other one.

[00:38:32] Josh Blank: That’s the thing. And this is why I think it’s so, you know, if you were to look at our poll right now, and you are, you know, you know, staunchly pro life to an extreme, you’re part of the 16 to 21 percent who say never.

You might look at this poll and say, Hey, look, 40 percent of voters. Said the constitutional right should begin at conception to 30 percent 6 percent who say they shouldn’t and therefore going forward going to the next legislative session. We need to enshrine fetal rights into the texas constitution because clearly this is where the voters are, but then you say, yeah, but what does that mean?

Because ultimately the rights are only meaningful vis a vis the person who’s carrying that baby in that. Time period right and when we look at actual attitudes about that it turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of weight given to the pregnant person in a lot of these circumstances and so this is you know again it’s so easy.

I mean someone thinks about doing all this is it’s so easy to see how. This debate has become so ossified and so unproductive, because in some ways you are taking the two most extreme positions that nobody holds, right? I mean, in terms of, you know, on average, right? No, like a very small share of people hold these and you’re making them to be the exemplars of both sides positions.

And therefore there can be no negotiations, which is crazy.

[00:39:46] Jim Henson: Because people may declare that that’s their position. But I mean, I think that’s one of the interesting things about this. They may declare that position, but in practice, it’s not really their position

[00:39:55] Josh Blank: now,

[00:39:56] Jim Henson: as we at least as we understand

[00:39:57] Josh Blank: practically or function as the

[00:39:59] Jim Henson: Yeah, exactly.

So to sort of wind up on sort of the more mundane elements of politics, I mean, in a very Yeah. General kind of way or very loose kind of way. This does underline why There is an advantage right now for democrats to talk about this and there’s a real desire on republic among republicans Not to talk about it.

[00:40:22] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I mean it’s interesting in the sense that you know, you can see that It’s a lot more challenging for, for Republicans because of the fact that, and we talked about this before, the status quo has changed. I mean, ultimately, if you’re in a state like Texas and there’s no abortion access, if you’re a Democrat, you can be for any abortion access.

And you’re probably in line with most voters because most voters think there should be some abortion access, right?

[00:40:42] Jim Henson: Yeah, because this, you know, what that does is takes us back, and there’s a good place to end to that strictness question that we flagged in the beginning and the movement that we’ve seen in that.

[00:40:50] Josh Blank: Yeah, right. The share of Texas Republicans who want more strict abortion laws has declined from 55 percent in April 2021 to 26 percent three years later. That’s And

[00:40:59] Jim Henson: remember, April 2021 is when The most prohibitionist Texas laws are being processed in the legislature. Right.

[00:41:07] Josh Blank: 26 percent three years later.

That’s a huge drop, right? Shares who want them less strict has increased from 9 percent to 26 percent over that same period. And approval of the status quo has gone from 29 percent to 35%. So some of those Republicans went from strict into sort of, this is fine now, but more of them went into the make it less strict.

And generally people just, again, move now. We should expect this. I mean, this is the idea of the policy thermometer, our, you know, our colleague, Chris Leslie, you know, You know, rights about this idea, the way the government’s gonna res, you know, the Hulk’s gonna respond to the government’s, you know, policy in a way that makes sense.

And we see that here as the laws have changed, but it is remarkable how much even Republican views have changed overall. The, the share of Texas voters who say that the laws should be less strict has increased from 33% to 45% over that same time period. And again, a lot of that’s gonna be driven by, again, these Republican voters because Democrats already had right, relatively liberal views of this.

So as of this, April, also the plurality of Texas voters, 42% say that the state is doing. Too little to protect the rights of pregnant women. So that’s the other side of this, right? And this is sort of an increasing question again, I think is people are seeking for the state to better clarify what these exceptions look like when people can access legal abortion, what a health emergency actually looks like.

Yeah. I mean, the

[00:42:16] Jim Henson: discussion of, you know, the Texas medical board issuing, you know, right. And so this is something we’re going to track issuing rules to regulate the implementation of the most recent round of laws.

[00:42:24] Josh Blank: Right. And this is something we’ll probably continue tracking, you know, as time goes on and see what happens with this.

[00:42:31] Jim Henson: So, uh, you know, there’s kind of a night, I mean, this is very complicated and, you know, one can sort of look at this in a lot of different ways. And frankly, I’m still kind of thinking about what I really think about all this other than that. I’m pleased with the results we got, right? I mean, as a, as a

[00:42:46] Josh Blank: interpretive research

[00:42:47] Jim Henson: exercise, I mean, I think this told us what we wanted it.

We’re finding, you know, we get a view that we wanted to get from this in terms of what we’re trying to estimate here.

[00:42:57] Josh Blank: I mean, what’s, what’s interesting, you know, we’re just without getting into discussion, you know, looking ahead, it is going to be interesting to see, you know, whether and how the state. And who, what entities in the state clarify the state’s current abortion laws.

You know, there’s a lot of local movements right now to prohibit the movements of, you know, pregnant people, you know, for the purposes of gaining abortion, which previous point that we’ve done. It should is pretty unpopular. And so, I mean, what’s, what’s interesting is, you know, this is an area where I think Republicans in particular having a really difficult time because ultimately they’re being asked, well, how many weeks and when?

And there’s not really a good answer that doesn’t turn off at least some of their voters one way or another or potentially mobilize democratic voters at this point,

[00:43:40] Jim Henson: you know, there’s an interesting thing about what the silence means on the part of Republican opinion leaders and elected officials. And I don’t want to get overly cosmics, the wrong word, but there’s a lot of avoidance going on here.

A

[00:43:55] Josh Blank: lot of

[00:43:55] Jim Henson: avoidance

[00:43:56] Josh Blank: and

[00:43:56] Jim Henson: avoidance that is understandable in political terms. But there’s another thing going on here. You know, you think about how difficult some of these debates over these abortion laws have been on the House floor.

[00:44:09] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:44:09] Jim Henson: And in retrospect, I mean, this really provides another example of why that’s so right.

Or, you know, gives us another view of why this, so it’s an interesting backdrop. To what we think about in the more mundane, very inside baseball notion of, well, you know, we need to help members avoid hard votes. This is like the substance of a hard vote.

[00:44:33] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah. And I was in a

[00:44:35] Jim Henson: way, I think, especially for Republicans.

[00:44:38] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I mean, the reason, you know, to reinforce the Republican thing and say why it’s less so for Democrats, for Democrats, because of the change in status quo, any increase in access is a victory, whatever it is. Right. And the fact is, if you’re a Democrat in Texas right now and the legislature comes back and they wrestle out a 12 week period, that’s a huge victory over where we are right now, even though it’s significantly less than where the state was, you know,

[00:44:59] Jim Henson: Or, you know, for that matter, exceptions.

[00:45:01] Josh Blank: Yeah. Exceptions. Well, yeah, anything. I mean, I’m even making a blank. Yeah, sure. Any exceptions, anything. I mean, anything would be a victory for Democrats given how close, you know, the elections are, and especially nationally, this is where, you know, you’re really seeing a lot of consternation around this. I think if you’re a Republican, what you’re worried about is you are worried about.

That 15 to 21 percent who are completely prohibitionist and where you do see the prohibitionist position overtaking the access position is where you’d expect to see it actually among extremely conservative voters. And so, you know, if you’re someone, if you’re a Republican right now, one, you’re thinking about Republican primaries and you’re thinking about, you know, coalitions for primary challengers, you know, expanding abortion access even minimally is not something that, you know, you’re looking to do because you’re creating a primary challenger.

But also I think even the national election, even how close things are, you know. Is as bad as things are looking for Joe Biden right now, can Donald Trump afford three to 5 percent of the Republican coalition to stay home if he comes out saying, I think 24 weeks is good for the national, it’s a good national number, right?

It sounds round, you know,

[00:46:00] Jim Henson: which is why he’s avoiding, which is why he’s so studiously avoiding taking any position other than that. It’s up to the states and, and hanging out there. And yeah, some states may punish women shrug.

[00:46:10] Josh Blank: Yeah. Which, yeah, you know, not very popular.

[00:46:13] Jim Henson: It’s an, yeah, not popular, but, but an interesting play in the rubric that you’re talking within the.

[00:46:18] Josh Blank: Well, yeah, for him, he can say, well, that’s yeah. The states are,

[00:46:21] Jim Henson: you know, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s a classic Trumpian, but a lot, obviously a lot of political, a lot of politicians, obviously political tactic, which is, but Trump is very good at it’s like, well, you know, this could happen and I’m, you know,

[00:46:36] Josh Blank: I’m sure they’ll fix it if it’s not good.

Yeah.

[00:46:37] Jim Henson: Sort of not up to me. So, uh, With that, thanks Josh. This was, you did a lot of work prepping for this and good discussion on this and I think I would really urge people to go and look at the data and we’ll be putting out some version of a digestible compilation of all this in the next couple of weeks probably.

So keep an eye out for that. And with that, thanks again to our excellent production team in the Dev Studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. Again, that URL, texaspolitics. utexas. edu, if you want to go look for some of this data. Some of it will be included in a post on our website, if you’re listening to this on one of the podcast platforms at that website, but we’ll probably also, you know, it’ll be too much data to cram in the, in one post, but we’ll, one post with the podcast link, but.

We’ll have pointers to where this data is. So thanks to you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.