Many Republicans support abortion. Are they switching parties because of it?

GOP leadership has floundered on the issue, and members have conflicting answers on party loyalty

Carter Sherman
Sat 13 Jan 2024

The first time Carol Whitmore ever had sex, she got pregnant.

It was 1973, and Whitmore was a teenager. Whitmore’s parents were in and out of trouble with the police, Whitmore said. When they told Whitmore they would help her raise the child, she thought, nope.

Instead, Whitmore got an abortion. That same year, the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in Roe v Wade.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/abortion-republican-voters-presidential-election

Abortion is decriminalized in Mexico, but the social and cultural stigma remains

Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide in September, but reproductive rights advocates grapple with the challenge of “social decriminalization.”

Nov. 2, 2023
By Isabela Espadas Barros Leal

MEXICO CITY — Every recovery room at Fundación ILE, an abortion clinic in Mexico City’s Roma Sur neighborhood, is equipped with a small bed, blankets, sanitary pads and a turquoise journal.

The journals are filled with letters written by women minutes after having had abortions.

Some of them detail the reasons they chose to undergo the procedure. Others have messages of encouragement for the next women who will be in their position.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexico-abortion-legal-social-cultural-stigma-remains-rcna123029

Why many IVF patients worry about the antiabortion movement

Perspective by Julianna Goldman
July 29, 2023

Whenever anyone asks whether I’m done having children, my answer is: “Yes, but … .” That’s because, although my husband and I have two young children, we also have six potential babies. The latter are embryos created years ago through in vitro fertilization and now frozen in liquid nitrogen in a Maryland lab.

While I mostly feel like our family is complete, I haven’t been able to bring myself to decide what to do with those frozen bundles of our DNA. The decision has become even more fraught since last year when the Supreme Court stripped away the federal right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It’s unclear how Dobbs could affect autonomy over the estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos nationwide, but it’s a worry.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/07/29/dobbs-abortion-ivf-embryos-impact/

Majority of Kenyans against abortion, new study shows

Monday, July 03, 2023
By Angela Oketch, Health and Science reporter

Nine out of 10 Kenyan adults say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, a new study shows.

A 24-country study by the Pew Research Center found that attitudes varied widely across countries, with religiously unaffiliated adults, people on the ideological left and women more likely to support legal abortion.

Continued: https://nation.africa/kenya/health/majority-of-kenyans-against-abortion-new-study-shows-4291138

03.07.2023

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Nonreligious Americans Are The New Abortion Voters

By Daniel Cox and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
JUN. 29, 2023

When Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, many white evangelical Protestants didn’t just see the Supreme Court’s ruling as a political win — it was a spiritual victory. For decades, religious conservatives have been singularly focused on ending the constitutional right to abortion, a priority that few other demographic groups shared. White evangelical Protestants — a group that has, since the 1980s, voted overwhelmingly for Republicans — were much more likely than other religious groups to say that abortion was a high priority.

The fall of Roe appears to be changing that. In 2021, the share of religiously unaffiliated Americans (a group that includes atheists, agnostics and people who identify with no religion in particular) who said abortion was a critical issue started to rise. And for the first time in 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the share of religiously unaffiliated Americans who said that abortion was a critical issue was higher than the share of white evangelicals who said the same.

Continued: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nonreligious-americans-are-the-new-abortion-voters/

29.06.2023

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Support for legal abortion is widespread in many countries, especially in Europe

JUNE 20, 2023
BY JANELL FETTEROLF AND LAURA CLANCY

Majorities in most of the 24 nations surveyed by Pew Research Center this spring say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But attitudes differ widely across countries – and often within them. Religiously unaffiliated adults, people on the ideological left and women are more likely to support legal abortion.

A median of 71% of adults across the 24 countries surveyed believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while a median of 27% believe it should be illegal.

Continued: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/20/support-for-legal-abortion-is-widespread-in-many-countries-especially-in-europe/

20.06.2023

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‘We need to read the room’: GOP divided on abortion as Democrats unite for 2024

Democrats center abortion rights in early stages of presidential campaign while Republicans waver over unpopular position

Lauren Gambino in Washington DC
Sun 30 Apr 2023

Hours after Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign on Tuesday, his vice-president and 2024 running mate, Kamala Harris, delivered a fiery call to action for voters alarmed by the loss of constitutional protections for abortion.

“This is a moment for us to stand and fight,” she said to a packed auditorium at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington and her alma mater. To the “extremist so-called leaders” rolling back access to reproductive rights, Harris warned: “Don’t get in our way because if you do, we’re going to stand up, we’re going to organize and we’re going to speak up.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/30/republicans-divided-abortion-democrats-united-2024-election

What the data says about abortion in the U.S.

JANUARY 11, 2023
BY JEFF DIAMANT AND BESHEER MOHAMED, Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center has conducted many surveys about abortion over the years, providing a lens into Americans’ views on whether the procedure should be legal, among a host of other questions. In a Center survey conducted after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to end the constitutional right to abortion, 62% of U.S. adults said the practice should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. Another survey showed that relatively few Americans take an absolutist view on the issue.

Here is a look at data on the number of legal abortions that take place in the United States each year – and other related measures – from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, which have tracked these patterns for several decades. The latest data from both organizations is from 2020 and therefore does not reflect the period after the Supreme Court’s recent decision.

Continued: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/01/11/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/

11.01.2023

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The Fall Of Roe v. Wade Is Going To Hurt You In Ways You Can’t Foresee

Neha Sharma
Aug 26, 2022

As a family medicine doctor with a focus on reproductive health, including abortion care, I have been fighting against this outcome for years, and I’ve already seen a steadily increasing stream of patients who have needed to fly for compassionate abortion care. I’m lucky to live and work in New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul recently signed several laws further codifying and protecting abortion access. Connecticut was the first to pass similar protections, and states like California and Massachusetts are working on legislation. But this is a stark contrast to what Americans in other parts of the country are facing, even though access to high-quality, evidence-based health care should not be based on where you live.

So let’s explore what’s coming next, thanks to the fall of Roe: worsening health care disparities, higher maternal mortality rates, criminalization of pregnant people and their doctors, lack of medical care for people experiencing pregnancy complications, attacks on routine medical care for people who can become pregnant, and broad assaults on human rights currently in place for marginalized groups.

https://thenetionalnews.com/the-fall-of-roe-v-wade-is-going-to-hurt-you-in-ways-you-cant-foresee/

How the Supreme Court recalibrated the abortion debate in just 3 words

By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
Sun July 17, 2022

It's not just that US Supreme Court majorities upheld Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban and overturned Roe v. Wade. The opinion also skewed the crux of the conversation going forward -- with just three words.

"Unborn human being" is the term Associate Justice Samuel Alito adopted from the Mississippi statute, thereby replacing the key phrase in the landmark 1973 Roe ruling that spelled out a constitutional right to abortion: "potential life."

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/17/us/abortion-religion-dobbs-roe/index.html