Most swing state Republicans and Democrats oppose criminalizing abortion, poll finds

With the future of abortion rights resting on November ballots, polling shows that clear majorities of both Republican and Democratic voters in six swing states reject the idea that the government should be criminalizing abortion care, and overwhelmingly want their elected officials to protect access to birth control.

The results of a new survey, from University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, show that most Americans in swing states — including up to 93 percent of Democrats and up to 70 percent of Republicans — do not want most abortion care to be criminalized.

In states where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are focusing their campaigns, most voters appear to be rejecting Republican-led platforms on reproductive healthcare.

Respondents were instructed that criminalizing abortion care could mean prison or fines for doctors or patients. But when asked who should be punished for what they believe is illegal abortion care, nearly half of the respondents who agreed that it should be a crime declined to answer.

Nearly half of states have restricted access or effectively outlawed most or all forms of abortion care in the two years after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, leaving decisions about reproductive healthcare up to individual states.

In Arizona and Nevada — swing states where voters will weigh in directly on ballot measures about abortion access this fall — bipartisan majorities do not want abortion to be a crime before a fetus is viable outside the womb, including roughly 70 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats, the survey found.

Less than half of Republican respondents in swing states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin do not believe abortion should be criminalized.

Large