LISTEN: Data from the Pew Research Center finds 63% of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. A group that advocates for abortion access in Georgia is reaching out to voters in communities in Macon, Athens and Savannah ahead of the November election. GPB’s Ellen Eldridge reports.
Data from the Pew Research Center finds 63% of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and additional research by the Amplify Georgia Collaborative, including information from Emory University's Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast (RISE), said this includes most Georgians as well.
Members of some supportive communities believe they are in the minority when it comes to supporting reproductive rights, Amplify Georgia Campaign Director Roula AbiSamra said. That's why a new billboard and sticker decal campaign is targeting Georgia voters in Macon, Athens, and Savannah ahead of the November election.
The data used to determine the statistics of how Georgians lean on this issue comes from both a statewide poll, representative of all Georgia voters, and a three-city poll representing all voters in the metro areas of Athens, Macon and Savannah, AbiSamra said.
HIT Strategies conducted the poll on behalf of a coalition of partners led by the State Innovation Exchange, which includes 9to5 Georgia, New Georgia Project, Amplify Georgia Collaborative, and The Southern Economic Advancement Project.
Georgians are a lot more united in their views and values around reproductive freedom than is usually presented, she said.
Polls show a majority of Georgians believe that individuals — not the government — should make decisions regarding their health care.
"‘Deeply divided’ is the words that we hear a lot of the times," she said. "In fact, there is a lot of agreement that the government does not need to be making decisions for us about abortion, birth control, in vitro fertilization, when we decide to have kids or how."
A group of doctors who oppose abortion filed a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone. They won a sweeping victory before a federal judge in Texas, and a more limited victory in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the Supreme Court unanimously recently ruled that they did not have grounds to sue the agency.
“The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone. But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justifiable case or controversy in federal court,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the decision.
He went on to suggest the plaintiffs express their objections in other ways, including by political or legislative means.
In a June 13 statement, Georgia Life Alliance Executive Director Claire Bartlett said in response to the ruling: "Today's Supreme Court ruling that doctors do not have standing to challenge the ubiquitous availability of chemical abortion drugs is incredibly disappointing ... it is paramount that the Georgia legislature pass the Women's Health and Safety Act when it reconvenes in January."
Concern is growing statewide about the potential criminalization of both patients and providers in Georgia, where the law prohibits abortions around six weeks into pregnancy, AbiSamra said.
"Even people who say, 'I'm not personally comfortable with abortion,' say that that is how they feel (and) that they don't want the government standing in the way of people being able to access their own health care," AbiSamra said.
This was about 80% of Georgians who agreed that when a person decides to have an abortion, the government should not be standing in the way of that decision.
"The person who is best placed to decide whether somebody accesses an abortion is the person who's pregnant," she said. "Definitely not politicians. That was more than any other kind of decision maker that we proposed as the possible person."
Editor's note: This story was updated to provide additional context.
