Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface: The Shutdown
- Acknowledgments
- Tides of Consent
- 1 Opinion Flows
- 2 What the Public Wants from Government
- 3 Left and Right Movements in Preference
- 4 The Great Horse Race: Finding Meaning in Presidential Campaigns
- 5 Between the Campaigns: Public Approval and Disapproval of Government
- 6 On Politics at the Margin
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Left and Right Movements in Preference
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface: The Shutdown
- Acknowledgments
- Tides of Consent
- 1 Opinion Flows
- 2 What the Public Wants from Government
- 3 Left and Right Movements in Preference
- 4 The Great Horse Race: Finding Meaning in Presidential Campaigns
- 5 Between the Campaigns: Public Approval and Disapproval of Government
- 6 On Politics at the Margin
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1972, a year before the famous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision on abortion, a woman seeking a therapeutic abortion faced a much different situation. Abortion was illegal in nearly all jurisdictions. But one state at a time, things were changing. State legislatures were liberalizing the law to recognize the reality of medical practice at the time. Women were having safe legal abortions because doctors supported their decisions and, to skirt the law, were willing to call the procedure something else.
When the states acted they faced organized opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. On the other side were physicians and old-line organizations supporting family planning such as Planned Parenthood, then not a great deal more controversial than the Girl Scouts. The public support for abortion liberalization we did not know as well as we now do; it was not as controversial as it now is. But it seems clear that large numbers of supporters were women, women who were well educated, played tennis or golf at the club, and voted for the Republican Party. Support for abortion (and family planning generally) came, that is, from the part of America that had higher income, was better educated, and lived in the suburbs. These are descriptions that are roughly accurate also for the Republican Party.
Support for abortion rights in 1972 was not “liberal” and definitely not Democratic. The Democrats were then more solicitous of the views of the Catholic Church, which had long been, if not an ally, the religious home of many of the ethnic voters who were Democrats. Abortion was a medical issue and only secondarily a religious one.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tides of ConsentHow Public Opinion Shapes American Politics, pp. 58 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004