Abortion Has Never Been Just About Abortion

As recently as 1984, abortion was not a deeply partisan issue.

“The difference in support for the pro-choice position was a mere six percentage points,” Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, told me by email. “40 percent of Democratic identifiers were pro-life, while 39 percent were pro-choice. Among Republican identifiers, 33 percent were pro-choice, 45 percent were pro-life and 22 percent were in the middle.”

By 2020, Abramowitz continued,

73 percent of Democratic identifiers took the pro-choice position, while only 17 percent took the pro-life position, with 10 percent...