From the Texas Politics Project:
Since the political rise of the pro-life movement in the 1990s, it’s often been suggested that elected Republicans were less seriously committed to banning abortion than their public pronouncements may have conveyed. The rationale behind this logic was purely political: such a change to health, reproductive, and women’s rights would upend normal politics, resulting in a not-wholly, but largely, gendered political revolt against the GOP. But with Texas’ passage of one of, if not the, most restrictive sets of abortion laws in the country, impacting 85% of abortions in the state and sending women to Oklahoma (!), it would appear that this particular theory of a just-below-the-surface political equilibrium on abortion policy is about to face a serious test.
The reasons for the Texas GOP’s leap forward on abortion restrictions after a decade of chipping away at access are likely many, and worthy of their own piece of analysis (but the partisan sorting of college and non-college educated voters; the change in composition of the supreme court; the recent fending off of Democratic challenges in the state; and the chance to reinforce existing electoral advantages through redistricting in an increasingly competitive state are some possibilities that come to mind), but looking directly ahead to the next set of Texas elections in 2022, the sudden change in the reproductive health landscape begs the question: where do Texas voters stand on abortion?
Below, we collect some observations to answer this question based on a decade of relevant University of Texas polling.
Go read the rest, but to do the spoilers: Texas is pretty evenly divided between those who call themselves “pro-choice” and “pro-life”, very few people actually want to ban all abortions as SB8 did, the more restrictive the anti-abortion law from the Lege in recent years, the greater the opposition to them, and maybe – just maybe – this could come back to bite the Republicans, if not in 2022 then soon. Check it out.