The partisan gap in support for Roe v. Wade has grown larger between Democrats and Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center.
The new Pew study found that more than 40 years after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide, 69 percent of Americans say the ruling should not be overturned. Twenty-eight percent of Americans said it should be overturned.
According to Pew’s data, Democrats have consistently been more likely than Republicans to say the decision should not be overturned. Some 84 percent of Democrats (and those who “lean” Democratic) say the high court should not completely overturn the ruling — a jump of nine points from 2013 and 18 points from 1992.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of Republicans said the decision should not be completely overturned, a number consistent with Pew’s previous studies.
Pew noted that support for keeping Roe v. Wade in place “is somewhat higher than broader measures of public support for legal abortion.” In another recent Pew study, 59 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37 percent said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, told TheBlaze that “Americans are increasingly pro-life,” adding:
Polling continually shows that the large majority of Americans, eight out of ten, would limit abortion – at most – to the first three months of pregnancy. If you ask about Roe v. Wade, generically people will say they support it, but when you break the issue down and people come to know that Roe v. Wade created the abortion-on-demand culture that we currently find ourselves in, people are vehemently against it.
Mancini also highlighted the coming March for Life, an annual anti-abortion protest in Washington, D.C., later this month:
On January 27th tens of thousands of Americans will gather in our nation’s capital to march in memory of the 57 million Americans who lost their lives to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. We will continue to stand up for the dignity of every human life — and we look forward to the day when abortion is unthinkable and women fully realize that abortion isn’t empowering but rather harmful.
