During the Campaign of 1972, abortion emerged as an important campaign issue as several notable cases wound their way through the court system. A spring 1972 report by the President’s Commission on Population Growth and the American Future urged the liberalization of abortion laws and making contraceptives available for teenagers to limit unwanted pregnancies. Nevertheless, Republican president Richard Nixon, running for a second term, expressed strong opposition to these recommendations. Despite strong pressure from women in the Democratic Party, presidential nominee and South Dakota senator George McGovern tried to avoid taking a firm stand on the issue by arguing that abortion laws should be left to the states. An August 1972 Gallup poll found that 64 percent of the American public believed that a decision to have an abortion should be left solely to the woman and her doctor.
The 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, sharply limiting the ability of states to prohibit abortions, turned abortion into a hot-button issue for subsequent presidential campaigns. Relying upon the privacy rationale in the 1965 Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut that struck down a Connecticut ban on the sale of contraceptives to married women, the high court extended the right to privacy, established in the Griswold ruling, to adult women choosing abortion in the first trimester of a pregnancy, while also allowing for abortion in the second trimester in cases when maternal health is at risk. Although many women’s groups applauded the Court’s decision, many social conservatives regarded the decision as an assault on the sanctity of life, and as another example of the Supreme Court making law rather than strictly interpreting the Constitution.
In the Campaign of 1976, legal abortion and the Roe v. Wade decision became major campaign issues. Now a major force in the Republican Party, social conservatives managed to push through a strong anti-abortion plank to the party’s platform. During his primary challenge to President Gerald Ford, former California governor Ronald Reagan openly advocated a constitutional amendment banning abortion in all fifty states. During the primary battle and general election campaign, President Ford only supported a constitutional amendment that returned to the States the authority to regulate abortions. Interestingly, the Democratic presidential nominee, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, expressed his opposition to abortion while simultaneously opposing a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortions or returning to the states regulatory responsibility regarding any restrictions that might be imposed on the controversial procedure.
The Campaign of 1980 signaled a major split between the Republican and Democratic parties on the abortion issue. Beginning with the 1980 Republican National Convention and continuing through all subsequent GOP conventions, Republican platforms have included a call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion. Every Democratic convention since 1980 has reaffirmed support for the Roe v. Wade decision. As social conservatives grew in importance within the Republican Party, Republican presidential candidates found themselves subject to a “right to life” litmus test. The growing importance of women voters to the Democratic Party, on the other hand, placed great pressure on Democratic presidential candidates to hold a “pro-choice” position.
Despite the divergent positions of the Democratic and Republican parties on the abortion issue, little evidence exists that the abortion issue had much effect on swing voters from the Campaign of 1980 through the Campaign of 2008. However, considerable evidence exists that abortion has played a major role in mobilizing activists and core voters by both the Republican and Democratic parties. For instance, during the Campaign of 1992 and Campaign of 1996, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party used the pro-choice issue to mobilize women by emphatically warning that a Republican president would have the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn the Roe decision. In the Campaign of 2000, the Democratic Party and their nominee, Vice President Al Gore, devoted time and resources to highlight his strong pro-choice position. Whether or not this effort influenced the outcome of the election is unclear. Republican nominee George W. Bush, during this campaign, avoided most discussions of abortion, noting that Roe v. Wade was “settled law.” Similarly, in the Campaign of 2004, the Republican Party devoted large sums to target social conservatives in Ohio and other battleground states, emphasizing Bush’s traditional values, including his more outspoken role as a critic of legal abortion. The success of the Bush reelection campaign in targeting pro-life social conservatives proved crucial in Bush’s narrow electoral vote victory.
By the Campaign of 2008, the abortion controversy became overshadowed by the specter of failing financial institutions, sizable increases in the ranks of the unemployed, and an upsurge in home foreclosures. However, new attempts by states to tightly regulate abortion in the wake of the 2010 Republican victories at the state (and federal) level, combined with a conservative Supreme Court willing to restrict abortions, has consequently reignited this debate. In the Campaign of 2012, Democrats claimed that the GOP was waging a “war on women,” and in an attempt to distance himself from his party’s hardline position, GOP nominee Mitt Romney broke ranks with his party’s platform and suggested that he would not support a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution that did not permit exceptions for rape and incest. Both political parties have vowed to make abortion a theme in the Campaign of 2016, although as of this writing the abortion issue has been largely ignored owing to the strange tenor of the preprimary polemics focusing on controversies involving immigration, terrorism, gun control, and religious freedom. That said, Democrats continue to advocate the pro-choice position and to advance the “war on women” narrative. The entirety of the GOP field remains committed to the pro-life position, with almost all of the candidates supporting a federal ban on all abortions after twenty weeks.
See also Campaign of 1980; Campaign of 1992; Campaign of 1996; Campaign of 2000; Gender Gap; Moral Majority; Red Meat Issue; Wedge Issue
Alvarez, R. Michael, and John Brehm. Hard Choices, Easy Answers: Values, Information, and American Public Opinion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Fiorina, Morris P. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Hillygus, D. Sunshine, and Todd G. Shields. The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Wald, Kenneth D. Religion and Politics in the United States. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1997.