Two Misconceptions About Abortion

1. White folks are the most 'pro-life' 2. 'Pro-life' folks are economic conservatives

One thing that I’ve always appreciated about doing data work is that the results constantly challenge the tidy boxes that I want to put people in. There’s a term in psychology called a heuristic - it’s just a mental shortcut that people use to help them understand the world without spending a whole lot of mental energy.

We use them all the time in the political world. It’s hard for most folks to think about really complex issues like free trade or the Israel-Palestine conflict, so they listen to someone they trust on those issues and just parrot those positions. I think we all do this, at one point or another. Most of us don’t even realize it’s happening.

I think abortion is one of the issues that has become this weird Rorschach test for the political world. If you favor abortion with very few (or no restrictions) that must mean you are a far leftist who supports someone like Bernie Sanders. If you want to make abortion completely illegal, then you are a Republican who votes for Donald Trump. That’s the heuristic, at least.

Let’s blow that up a little, though. Views of abortion certainly track with things like political partisanship but it’s not a perfect correlation. The political landscape of the United States is just a lot muddier than that. Here’s what I mean.

The Nationscape Survey is huge - over 477,000 respondents. It poses a number of statements about abortion. They are really simple. For instance, “never permit abortion” - the response options are support or oppose. Can’t get more blunt than that. No nuance.

Who is the most likely to support a total ban on abortion? Strong Republicans at 50%. Okay, that clearly tracks with the predominant thinking on abortion. But then you take a look at the bars that are slightly less red and realize that things aren’t so cut and dry. For instance, just over a quarter of “not strong Republicans” and “lean Republicans” are in favor of a total ban on abortion. That’s no different than the share of Independents. The real outlier here are strong Republicans - they are much different than moderate Republicans on this.

For Democrats, the share that wants to ban abortion completely is lower. That’s apparent in this data. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a very small portion. In fact, 18% of strong Democrats are in favor of a total ban. That compares to 15% of “not strong Democrats” and 12% of “lean Democrats.” Again, less support than the GOP, but it’s not like zero Democrats favor a ban on abortion.

How about race? I don’t know about you but when I think about pictures of the March for Life in Washington, DC I conjure up images of lots of white folks. That’s also what I think of when I think about important events in the movement, like the Summer of Mercy. Those were almost completely white crowds who were protesting in Wichita. But, again, that’s just not backed up by the data.

In fact, the group that is easily the most likely to support a total ban on abortion is Hispanics, by a significant margin - at nearly one third. The next closest group is Black respondents at 28% and whites are even further behind at 24%. One of the biggest narratives that emerged from the 2020 Presidential Election was how the Democrats lost ground in heavily Hispanic areas like South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley. I think that abortion played a key role in that erosion of support.

Let’s throw ideology, partisanship, and race into the analysis and take a look at which groups are the most likely to favor a total ban on abortion.

For me, Hispanics stand out from these heatmaps big time. Look at the top row for Hispanics - this is ideological conservatives. Let’s compare that to whites.

• Conservative Republican:

  White: 42% in favor vs Hispanic: 53% in favor

• Conservative Independent:

  White: 33% in favor vs Hispanic: 61% in favor

• Conservative Democrat:

  White: 34% in favor vs Hispanic: 40% in favor

That conservative and independent number just jumps off the screen for me. Sixty-one percent of conservative independent Hispanics favor a total ban on abortion. This is not a small sample size thing, by the way, there are over seven hundred of them in the Nationscape. Hispanics are just way more likely to favor an abortion ban than other races, especially white Americans.

Let’s add age to the mix now, too. This is Democrats (in the left panel) and Republicans (in the right panel) broken down by both age and race. The sample here runs from the youngest adults to those who are seventy years old.

It’s probably easier to talk about Republicans first, because there is not a ton to report. The lines from 20 year olds to 40 year olds is basically flat. That means that middle aged Republicans have the same view of abortion as the youngest voters. There’s some evidence that older members of the GOP became less hardline about abortion, but it isn’t a huge shift outside of the Asian trend line.

Democrats are much different. Among the youngest Democrats there’s not much appetite for an abortion ban. However, that changes quickly as the sample gets older. For instance, just 17% of Hispanic Democrats in their late teenage years favor an abortion ban, it’s about 30% of Hispanic Democrats who are in their late thirties. There’s also that same increase in support for Black and white Democrats, too. A white Democrat who is 37 years old is twice as likely to support a ban as a white Democrat who is 18 years old.

One of the narratives that one hears often in the abortion debate is that pro-life folks only care about babies until the moment they are born. The implication here is that these folks are conservative Republicans who don’t support policies that make life a bit easier for folks at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Well, is that really true?

I divided the sample into those who favored a proposal to never permit abortion (in the orange bars) and those who favored a proposal to always permit abortion (in the blue bars). I calculated how they feel about a whole host of issues that run the gamut from fiscal to foreign policy. The narrative really falls apart in this analysis.

For instance, among those who want no restrictions on abortion, about half would support allowing the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. Almost a third support building a wall on the Southern border. Thirty-seven percent think that the United States should deport all illegal immigrants. And 42% were in favor of school vouchers.

Among the people who wanted a total ban on abortion there are even more surprising results. For instance:

• 67% favor debt free college.

• 77% favor paid maternity leave.

• 67% favor raising the minimum wage to $15/hour.

They also report majority support for legalizing marijuana, the Green New Deal, the DREAM Act, and raising taxes on the wealthy. That doesn’t strike me as a uniformly conservative group of people. In fact, they seem downright left wing on social programs.

Let’s take it a step further and just isolate partisanship in this equation. So, the below graph is just Democrats broken down by their view of abortion.

Among Democrats who favor abortion without restriction and those who want a total ban on abortion, there’s less than a five percentage point gap in their support of the following proposals:

• Abolishing private insurance

• Debt free college

• Federal jobs guarantee

• Paid maternity leave

• Raising the minimum wage to $15/hour.

How about Republicans? This is the same analysis of above.

When it comes to the aforementioned social service policies, there is a bit of daylight here. For instance, 67% of Republicans who are in favor of abortion without restriction support debt free college. It’s just 53% of those who want a total abortion ban. There’s a very similar gap on the issue of raising the minimum wage. However, on paid maternity leave - the gap is basically non-existent.

I think the typology that is emerging from this analysis is that Democrats have a few similar view of social service programs regardless of how they feel about abortion policy. There’s strong support for paid maternity leave, debt free college, and raising the minimum wage.

Among Republicans, there’s a bit of a divide. Pro-life Republicans tend to be more conservative on these social programs than those who favor abortion without restriction. However, it’s really important to point out that among Republicans who favor a total ban on abortion: 72% support paid maternity leave, 53% want to raise the minimum wage and the same share want debt free college. That’s really strong support for these programs among a very conservative voting bloc.

I think there are two key conclusions from this analysis:

1. Hispanics are pretty conservative on abortion. That’s true across the board in ways that are not replicated in other racial groups. The Democrats should tread lightly when it comes to abortion rhetoric. The Republicans can use the issue as a wedge. It will likely yield them votes in 2024.

2. The share of Americans who are pro-life and want a smaller social safety net just isn’t that big. The idea that there’s just tens of millions of Americans who want a woman to have a baby then don’t support the government making it easier to raise that child finds no support in this data. Lots of pro-life Republicans do want to raise the minimum wage and offer some type of paid maternity leave. That narrative hasn’t really caught on in the larger discourse.

With Dobbs, it’s clear that abortion is not going away. But it’s not this “Red Sea” type issue that cleaves the parties cleanly. The average American is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. Those stories are just harder for the media to tell - thus, we are left with simpler narratives for a complex world.

Code for this post can be found here.