Saturday, May 06, 2006

Latest Harris Poll on Choice -- Mixed Results

The latest Harris Poll on Roe v Wade offers a mixed result for choice advocates. A pollster's own headline usually doesn't tell the entire story and Harris's is no exception. Harris touts it's poll as showing that "Support for Roe vs. Wade Declines to Lowest Level Ever".

Well, kinda.

Harris has been doing this sort of poll since the Court's Roe decision in 1972. Support for Roe has ranged from 50% to 65% (in 1991); last year support was at 52%. This year, only 49% said that they supported the Roe decision.

Now, before I go on, my earlier post today on Roe was done before I knew about the Harris poll (h/t to Santorum Blog for learning me about it). But, the point is apt -- I don't think most people really know the meaning of Roe. To most -- nay, to all but a sliver of a minority -- the holding in Roe is simply that a woman can terminate a pregnancy within the first three months of gestation. They don't understand -- or have never been told -- that at the heart of Roe is a determination of the exitence of a personal liberty/privacy interest in the happeings of our bodies and lines o'er which the State cannot step without damned good reason.

Okay, I digress. So, only 49% say that they "favor" Roe (which is explained by Harris as holding "that states laws which made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy were unconstitutional" -- see what I mean?). But I don't understand what people mean when they answer a Poll question about whether they "favor" a Supreme Court decision, or not. Do they mean that their personal preference is not to have an abortion, that the decision should be overturned, that the woman should have more than three months (I could go on).

The real meat of that Harris Poll points up the vagueness of the "favor" issue: Fifty-five percent of respondents want restrictions on choice to remain unchanged or to be reduced. (So, who are those six percent who oppose Roe but don't want choice restrictions made tighter?)

Anyway, that's the good news. The percentage of people who say that they prefer choice restrictions stay the same or be reduced, has remained relatively constant over the years of the poll at a fat and solid 55%. (As you might imagine, I think things that are fat and solid are generally good things.)

So, yeah, those "favoring" Roe dipped below 50% for the first time in this year's poll (the margin of erro being 3% could mean that it remained the same as last year's 52%), but, nevertheless, a goodly majority still don't want to change things.

One slightly black, or at least grey, cloud in this poll, however -- only 35% would strongly oppose their state adopting a South Dakota total ban. While 52% would strongly/somewhat oppose, and only 25% strongly support, that only 35% would strongly oppose it is a little worrisome.

Frankly, the support/overturn Roe poll that REALLY concerns me is the one I hope we don't see taken -- the one that Chief Justice Roberts would take after oral argument on a case.

AND, this leads me back to the insidiousness of Schumer, Rendell, and the DSCC supporting Casey. Casey was an enthusiastic supporter or Roberts and, worse for women, I think, Alito.

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