55 percent oppose Supreme Court Roe decision: poll

A majority of voters say they oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said they disagreed with the high court’s decision, while 45 percent said they were in favor of the move. Additionally, 69 percent of voters polled said they believed the decision “has created turmoil,” while only 31 percent said they believe it “settles the law.”

“The decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade is opposed by a divided 55 to 45 percent majority but most would not have continued Roe’s 23-week viability standard and would favor reducing it to 15 weeks,” said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey. “Only 10 percent support the most liberal abortion policies through the third trimester and 37 percent support abortion only in cases of rape or incest.”

“The widest public support would have been for Justice Roberts’ position to revisit viability standard and while voters think state legislatures are the best forums to decide abortion policy, most voters do see political turmoil until these issues are better settled,” he added.

The poll’s findings appear to mirror other polls on reactions to the court’s decision. In a CBS News-YouGov poll released Sunday, 52 percent of voters surveyed said the decision was a “step backward,” while 31 percent said it was a “step forward.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark case, which legalized abortion at the federal level, punted the issue of abortion access back to state legislatures. A number of states with trigger laws, including Arkansas and South Dakota, have already moved to make the procedure illegal. In other states, the state legislatures could be the last line of defense to protect abortion rights.

The poll found that 44 percent of voters surveyed said they think it is better for abortion standards to be set by legislatures of each individual state, while 31 percent said it should be set by a congressional vote, and 25 percent said it should be set by the Supreme Court.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey of 1,308 registered voters was conducted June 28-29. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.

The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.