The NPR Politics Podcast - Abortion Access Remains Popular As Biden Preps New Initiatives

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

American voters, including the crucial swing demographic of women in small cities and suburbs, continue to express support for abortion access. That's according to new polling from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Kathy. Yesterday afternoon I was lucky enough to see a fawn who had just been born stand up for the first time and run across the field. I'm hoping to be lucky again this morning. Maybe I'll spot a bear cub. Okay, this podcast was recorded at 1.18 p.m. on Wednesday, June 21st. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. And for example, I will have been to Sheetz by the time you hear this to get a cold beverage on my way back to the airport before flying back to New Mexico. Okay, enjoy the show. That took quite a turn. I did not anticipate that. I did not expect the sheet shout out. I will say I would rather see a baby deer than a baby bear any day. I was just going to say, as a kid from the city, just stay away from the bear cubs, you know?

Like, don't get too close to mamas. Never far away. I was just going to say I'd rather be at Wawa. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I like Wawa too.

A year ago this week, the Supreme Court overturned the precedent set in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that created federal protections for abortion access. The Dobbs decision stripped those protections and threw the power to regulate abortion back to the states. As a result, since abortion access faces near total bans in more than a dozen states and legal fights and others are ongoing in the courts. Domenico, one thing that our latest poll, the NPR PBS NewsHour Mayor's Poll, makes very clear is that this decision was and remains pretty unpopular. Yeah, it's what we've seen for quite a while on this, and it really hasn't budged. And 57% say that they oppose the Dobbs decision, which, you know, is essentially overturned Roe v. Wade and the guaranteed right to an abortion in this country. And there are some pretty key swing groups within that, that it makes it a

difficult path for some Republicans who are looking toward a general election. Who are the swing groups? Well, when you think about independents and independent women, women who live in small cities and suburbs, pretty big percentages of them say that they oppose this decision. We saw that this was a salient and motivating issue in the 2022 midterm elections. At the same time, 68% of Republicans say that they're in favor of this decision. So you've got a lot of people on the Republican side running in a Republican primary, and they're having to appeal to the most right wing in this country when it comes to abortion

rights. And that's going to make a pivot to a general election increasingly difficult. You know, it's an issue that it's also been pretty difficult, Tam, for President Biden to talk about. He tends to shy away from the issue. I'm still reminded of the fact that he barely made mention of the issue in his State of Union address this year, despite abortion being a huge issue in the midterm elections. And the White House seems to have really delegated this issue to Vice President Harris. That is going to change. I can tell you this weekend, this Friday, President Biden is going to give a speech to a bunch of groups that support abortion access and women in politics. And it's a big political event. And he will be speaking. And an administration official has at least given the wink and the nod to the idea that he will be taking yet more executive action on this. It's true that an 80-year-old man has not been the primary spokesman on this issue for the administration. The vice president has really taken

this on. The first lady has taken this on, as have some very high level staff in the administration. They've been leading conversations with state lawmakers. They've been out on the road doing listening sessions, trying to elevate the stories of women who were not able to get health care in moments of crisis, crisis like miscarriages, where they were in states where their doctors were afraid that they weren't sick enough to perform a procedure. The administration is approaching this anniversary with sort of a full court press in trying to elevate the issue, continuing on the legal front to fight for what access they can fight for. But it is challenging for them because the options are fairly limited. You know, abortion to me is a fascinating issue and how it has become such a bright line in our politics. And by that, I mean, not too long ago, there used to be a lot

of gray, especially in Congress, of how people felt about this issue. There used to be a significant number of Republicans who supported abortion rights and a significant number of Democrats who opposed abortion rights. House Democrats have legislation to codify a national right to abortion. Every single Democrat except for one, Henry Cuellar of Texas, is a co-sponsor of that legislation. Tim, how do you see this issue playing out in 2024, especially considering what we know about the midterms and how motivating it was there? Right. I've been talking to a lot of people in the last couple of weeks about this very question, talking to pollsters who work for Democrats, pollsters who work for Republicans, talking to political consultants. And I also spoke with Michigan

Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Her state had a ballot measure on the 2022 ballot to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. And she also won reelection in 2022 pretty easily against a candidate who supported a ban on abortion without exceptions. Whitmer said that she expects this is going to continue to motivate people based on what she experienced in 2022. The threat of women losing a right we've come to expect and rely on. And after 50 years of having it, it mobilized people. It enraged people. It coalesced people. And what I heard from people on the Democratic side is that they believe that America moved

in favor of abortion rights as a result of this Dobbs decision and as a result of something being taken away that had been taken for granted. But on the Republican side, they are chalking up the midterms as, well, you know, we didn't figure out what our message should be. We were afraid of our own shadows. And their sense is that 2024 could be different, especially if they can coalesce around a message that they present as reasonable, that finds that gray area that Domenico says exists. Yeah. And they haven't been exactly touting that, you know, this time around, you know, when Nikki Haley, for example, the former South Carolina governor is asked about how many weeks she would be in favor of, because that's really where the gray area is here. She

just sort of throws it back at the questioner and says this is a media obsession and that she's going to look for the position that most people hold. But Domenico, there is a fascinating dynamic happening in the Republican primary field in which obviously they're going to have to take positions against abortion rights because that is where the Republican primary base is. But the frontrunner, Donald Trump, who could take the most credit for the Dobbs decision and the justices he appointed to their court, isn't running to the right on abortion this time. Well, he isn't running to the kind of anywhere on abortion this time. He's sort of wants to be able to take credit to say that he's the

person who's responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned, but then doesn't want to go much further than that to say what he would sign into law or any bans, etc. That's enough, though, in a general election. Democrats and the White House were just giddy at the fact that he even said that he's the one responsible for Roe, because once there's a general election, if Trump does make it there, that is going to be played on repeat. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about the poll when we get back. And we're back and the Supreme Court is expected to issue their ruling in a closely watched case on affirmative action in college admissions, specifically whether it's permissible to take race into account to address a history of racially discriminatory policies.

Domenico, where did the poll come down on this? Well, this is kind of fascinating because affirmative action has obviously been talked about for a long time. What the poll found was that 57% of respondents said that they want to see affirmative action programs continue in promoting, hiring, and in college admissions, which I thought was pretty fascinating. Well, and Domenico, even possibly more fascinating than the top line number is when you go under the hood a little bit and look at who among the public really still favors affirmative action? Yeah, and there was a huge divide, obviously, politically, right? We always expect that, you know, eight or 10 Democrats were in favor of continuing these programs.

Six and 10 Republicans were against them. Independents were pretty split. But when you look at race, age and gender, there was also a pretty sharp divide. You know, 66 percent of non-whites wanted these programs to continue. 52% of whites said that they do. Still a majority, but obviously 14 points less likely than non-whites. When it came to age, those under 45, younger Americans, were 20 points more likely to say that these programs should continue. And on gender, there was a split with 62% of women saying that the program should continue. Only 50% of men and the divide was even more acute in the suburbs where women who live in small cities and suburbs were 14 points more likely than the men who live in those areas to say that those programs should continue. So some pretty interesting kitchen table discussions or no discussions taking place.

Once SCOTUS rules, I guess, then those discussions will heat up at the dining room table. You know, one last issue that was asked in the poll was on the issue of gender identity. Domenico, this is an issue where the Republican Party seems to be on the side of public opinion. Yeah, this is one area where Republicans have really seemed to move the needle, actually. Here, by a 61 to 36 percent margin, people said that the only way to define gender is by someone gender identity. But nine in 10 Republicans and six in 10 independents said that gender is defined really only by birth. So this is something where Republicans have really moved public opinion. A year ago, we asked about this in May of 2022. And the split was only 5142. So a 16 point net change from then to now. And you know, that's something where because they've been talking about it so much, there's been so much discussion about it in states that they seem to have moved the needle. But, Tam, it's not just about public opinion. It's also about policy. A lot of these states that are Republican led have advanced legislation affecting transgender people and the care they can receive. Absolutely. Thinking about Florida, also thinking about other state legislatures weighing in on drag performances. And obviously,

that's not necessarily about gender identity, but it is still in the same sort of realm of culture war around gender. What I will say, though, is leading into the midterms, there was polling that indicated that, yes, it's a big topic that's getting a lot of attention, especially in places like Fox News and those sort of headlines. But that in terms of like a motivating issue, like the one thing that you're going to the polls because you really care about, you know, it doesn't have much of a pulse in terms of like a motivating issue compared to the economy or access to abortion or education or some of these other issues that really motivate people. This is the one area, though, that seems to be at the tip of

tongues of people who we talk to who seem to see themselves as center-right or center-left when they're asked about the definition of woke, which Republicans continue to use over and over again, and when voters talk about their problems with the Democratic Party going too far, this gender identity, what pronoun to use, those kinds of things, those seem to be the area where Republicans have pushed, and that a lot of those sort of centrist older voters in some respects will say that they just think the Democratic Party has gone too far. And we saw that in exit polls in the 2022 midterm elections as well. And I'll say that the Biden administration has found it somewhat challenging to sort of hit the right balance on these issues when it comes to collegiate athletics and other issues like that. All right,

that's it for us today. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.