Almost Half Of Texas Voters Want To Ban Abortion After Six Weeks, Poll Shows

A little under half of Texas registered voters want to ban abortion after six weeks, a poll released Wednesday shows.

The poll, conducted by the University of Texas and Texas Tribune, reveals that about half (48 percent) of Texas voters want to abolish abortion six weeks into a pregnancy. Of these voters, 51 percent were men and 46 percent were women. The percentage also was split three ways between 68 percent of Republicans, 27 percent of Democrats, and 41 percent of Independents.

The poll also reveals that 42 percent of Texans do not support abolishing abortion after six weeks. That percentage is composed of 38 percent men, 45 percent women. Texan voters who do not want to ban abortion after six weeks are also 25 percent Republican, 63 percent Democrat, and 39 percent Independent.

While 15 percent of Texans believe abortion should never be allowed, 37 percent believe that “a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.”

Co-director of the poll, Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said that most Texans are “kind of in the middle.”

“They don’t think you should be able to get an abortion on a whim,” Shaw said. “But they support it for strong circumstantial reasons. When you add in a secondary dimension — at what point are we talking about? — then it becomes very interesting.”

“Although this is an issue where there are religious and ideological underpinnings, they are complicated by circumstances and by what point you are in a pregnancy,” Shaw added. “Timing seems to matter, and it’s where medicine is really complicated.”

The poll follows the news that the Waskom, Texas, city council outlawed abortion procedures and declared the city a sanctuary for the unborn. The move was pushed by Right to Life of East Texas and precedes another bill Texas lawmakers are pushing, which would require doctors to care for babies born alive following botched abortions. Abortions are not permitted in the state of Texas after 20 weeks, The Washington Post reports.

Waskom sits on the Texas and Louisiana border and is the first city in Texas to declare such a measure. There are no abortion clinics in Waskom.