In the past one always got the impression that the Democratic Party’s message on reproductive rights was a bit muted. Now it appears the Democrats are taking the ball on the issue of abortion and running as hard as they can. It was certainly front and center at the Democratic National Convention.
I suspect much of this has to do with the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973). That was a game changer, and I believe that for a couple of reasons.
Something unique happens when you take away an important freedom people have been exercising for quite some time; it is what psychologists refer to as “psychological reactance.” You add a little gas to the affective fire and you motivate people to fight back when you remove a human right.
Dobbs v. Jackon also was a 5-3-1 vote (Roberts wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment) on purely ideological lines. This is one of the rare cases in American politics where if you are not happy with it, you know who to blame.
Did Dobbs Register in the Public?
Pew Research does a great job of measuring public sentiments about abortion over time. Figure 1 illustrates the percentage of Americans who say abortion should be legal or illegal in all or most cases from 1995 to April of 2024.
The distribution was even around 2009, but has changed significantly since then. Presently, 63% of respondents say abortion should be legal, while 36% say it should be illegal. The trend in the increase in those who say abortion should be legal continued post-2022, but it’s hard to say how much Dobbs v. Jackson played a role in this. It certainly looks like that may be the case.
It is easy to surmise that a change in opinion like this will affect electoral outcomes. Candidates who think abortion should be legal should start winning more elections. The problem is we do not see much evidence the American voter is capable of doing their part in this process.
Psychological Reactance
Removing a perceived reproductive freedom like the right to an abortion is likely to cause a serious psychological reaction. We live in an individualistic society; people who think of themselves as independent and autonomous will not respond well to the restriction of a personal freedom.
The theory of psychological reactance presumes the response to the removal of a freedom will be strongly affective and motivational. People will be mad and want to do something about it. If that is the case, where should we look for evidence?
The nexus of action in democratic and electoral politics shows up in social identities and partisan loyalties. Gallup offers a measure of the percentage of people identifying themselves as either pro-choice or pro-life, and they have been doing this since 1995. You can see the temporal patterns in Figure 2.
It is very consistent and evenly distributed until you see a shock at the time of Dobbs v. Jackson in 2022. On May 2, 2022, an initial draft of a majority opinion to overturn Roes v. Wade, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked to the press. It was the dominant news story for several days. The percentage of people classifying themselves as pro-choice jumps up to 54%, whereas the percentage of pro-life identifiers jumps down to 41%. That is a significant shift.
Reproductive freedom is exercised by younger women. While others care about it as a right too, for them, it’s personal. The Gallup results show that in just one year, from May 2021 to May 2022, pro-choice identification increased by nine percentage points to 61% among women; 12 points to 67% among adults aged 18-24, and nine points to 58% among adults aged 35-54. The percentage of people identifying as pro-choice did not change among Republicans, independents, men, or older Americans.
We also see a big change in motivation. Pro-life identifiers have consistently claimed, much more so than pro-choice identifiers, that they will only vote for a candidate who agrees with them on this issue. This changed just in the last year. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) ran a survey in July of this year, where the results showed that for pro-choice identifiers, 33% of registered voters claim they will only vote for a candidate who agrees with them. It was 23% for pro-life voters.
This is also the first time in a long time that KFF has found that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that abortion is the most important issue in their vote for president. They also found that Democratic women in states with abortion-related ballot initiatives are more likely to vote than in states without abortion measures.
Does any of this Matter?
These are meaningful changes. Identities, whether partisan or any other group affiliation, tend to be very stable; and dramatic shifts are rare; when you see changes taking place, it’s best to pay attention. Democratic women getting fired up and driven to participate in a policy change may actually matter at the margins, especially at the state level where referenda over abortion rights take place.
