The polling is conclusive and overwhelming.
On Tuesday, at a Republican press conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked three times about the big story of the week: A draft Supreme Court opinion, leaked to Politico, that exposed the Court’s intention to overturn Roe v.Wade. McConnell was furious about the leak. But each time reporters asked him to talk about abortion, he refused to engage.
Morally, this reticence seems bizarre. For half a century, Republicans have campaigned on promises to expunge Roe. They said millions of unborn lives were at stake. Now victory is at hand, but McConnell won’t talk about it. Why not?
The answer is simple: He knows this issue is bad for his party. Roe infuriated pro-life Americans and made pro-choice Americans complacent. Republican candidates could use the issue to rile up their base without risking an electoral backlash. But if Roe goes down, Americans who want to keep abortion legal will have to vote that way. And those Americans are a political majority.
Surveys conducted on Tuesday, after the draft opinion was leaked, conform to this pattern. And a new Politico poll indicates that if the Court dumps Roe, supporters of legal abortion will retain their dominance and turn to Congress for protection. Nearly 50 percent of voters want Congress to pass “a bill to establish federal abortion rights granted through Roe v. Wade, in case the Supreme Court overturns the ruling.” Only about 30 percent oppose that idea.
In poll after poll (with rare exceptions), most Americans say most abortions should be legal.