Hispanic Views on Abortion Drive Interest in SCOTUS Debate

Hispanic Views on Abortion Drive Interest in SCOTUS Debate

PRRI data from 2018 shows that Hispanic Americans are slightly more opposed (48%) to abortion legality than supportive (45%) of it. A majority of Americans (54%) believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases. According to NBC News, division on this issue could indicate the Hispanic community will be more interested in the debate over when to replace the late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. “Even though there are Latino and immigrant voters that don’t always understand the role of the Supreme Court, they do understand there is impact in their life. I think the DACA movement educated a lot of people on the process of the Supreme Court,” says Grecia Lima, national political director for Community Change Action.

Brownstein: What the Supreme Court Fight Means for the Senate Majority

In a new piece for The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein examines PRRI data on how Americans feel about abortion legality in states with close Senate battles and what that means for the future of the U.S. Supreme Court. “State-by-state polling results from 2018 and 2019, provided to me by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, show 56 percent or more of adults favoring abortion rights in Colorado, Maine, and Arizona, where Republican incumbents are endangered,” Brownstein writes. In other possible Senate battleground states, like Georgia and Texas, support for abortion legality is under half. “Support dips to 49 percent in North Carolina and Georgia; 48 percent in Texas, Montana, and Kansas; and 47 percent in South Carolina,” notes Brownstein.

Biden Expands 2020 Spending

According to PRRI’s latest report just under half (47%) of Americans in battleground states view former Vice President Joe Biden favorably, compared to a slim majority (52%) of residents of Democratic states, and four in ten (39%) residents of Republican states. According to The Hill, the Biden campaign is expanding their financial focus to increase spending in Iowa and Georgia. “Resources spent on states that fall outside the six battlegrounds will be the focus of scrutiny if Biden loses a close election in one or two swing states,” Jonathan Easley and Amie Parnes write in The Hill.

Emma Green: Is This Really the End of Abortion?

PRRI data from 2018 shows that 38% of Americans say it is somewhat or very likely that abortion could be made illegal in their lifetime, despite the U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade legalizing the practice. In The Atlantic, Emma Green writes of what could happen to abortion legislation if the U.S. Supreme Court gains another conservative judge, which would give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the court. “The almost universally shared goal of the anti-abortion movement is to see Roe overturned so that the question of abortion can return to the states, where voters can directly influence whether their legislatures permit or regulate the procedure. Getting to this moment, in which the conservative justices on the Court may begin fully reimagining abortion jurisprudence, took years of careful planning,” Green writes.

Join PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones for Virtual Discussions of ‘White Too Long’

On Friday September 25, PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones will participate in a virtual conversation at the 2020 Religion News Association conference. Jones will appear alongside evangelical activist and FreedomRoad.us founder Lisa Sharon Harper, Dr. Khyati Joshi, Professor of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Adelle Banks of the Religion News Service. On Wednesday September 30, Jones will appear as a guest of the Arizona State University Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict to discuss his new book “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.”