Poll: Most Texas voters support abortion access in cases of rape, risk of birth defects

Texas law allows abortion only when a woman faces a "life-threatening condition." But the overwhelming majority of Texas voters support legal abortion access for pregnant women in cases of rape, incest or serious risk of birth defects, for which the law does not make exceptions, according to a new poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.

The survey of 1,200 voters in the state this month found 73% support permitting women whose babies have a "strong chance of a serious birth defect" to terminate their pregnancies. Among Texans surveyed, 17% would limit abortion access in this case to the first six weeks of pregnancy, 14% would limit it to 12 weeks, and 27% would allow it at any point in the pregnancy.

Even more Texas voters — 80% — support some form of abortion ban exceptions for rape or incest, though 22% of those surveyed support such access only up to the first six weeks of pregnancy.

More:Texans have had 26,000 rape-related pregnancies since Roe v. Wade was overturned, study finds

The poll also found that Texas voters are divided on the state's abortion bans: 45% want state laws to be less stringent while 21% want laws to stay the same and 27% want them to be made more strict.

The poll was conducted through the online survey platform YouGov and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.89 percentage points.

Coming days after Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley suggested the state should expand exceptions to its abortion ban, the poll also casts a new light on battles over abortion bans and exceptions that have drawn national attention to Texas in recent months.

In a Friday interview with The Dallas Morning News, Haley spoke about Kate Cox, a Dallas mother of two, who became the first woman to ask for a court-approved abortion in more than 50 years. Cox and her husband sought a legal abortion of a fetus with full trisomy 18, a severe genetic condition, and which doctors said had "virtually no chance" of surviving until birth.

More:'Emotional torture': Austin woman's story of a doomed pregnancy amid abortion ban

Cox's lawyers argued that she qualified for the state's medical emergency exception because her doctor said the pregnancy put Cox's health and fertility at risk. Cox and her husband wanted a third child and had been told that continuing the pregnancy could make it less likely that she would eventually succeed in conceiving and delivering a healthy baby.

A Travis County judge approved Cox's request, but after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the decision, the Texas Supreme Court said she didn't qualify for a legal termination. Paxton and all nine justices are Republicans.

Cox left the state to terminate the pregnancy.

“They should make sure no woman in that situation ever goes through that again,” Haley told the newspaper. "It’s OK to put laws in place, but let’s not be so blinded that we don’t fix them when we see there’s something that needs to be adjusted.”

The Texas Supreme Court is also weighing a lawsuit that a group of 20 women who experienced severe pregnancy complications filed against the state and the Texas Medical Board. All of the women were denied abortions despite facing fatal fetal diagnoses, life-threatening health risks or both.

More:20 women sue Texas, saying abortion ban endangered their health

Neither of the abortion bans passed by the Republican-majority Texas Legislature in 2021 and 2022 make exceptions for fetal anomalies, but in July 2023 the Legislature added an affirmative defense for doctors who terminate ectopic pregnancies or provide abortions after a woman's water breaks prematurely in a nonviable pregnancy.

While Democrats have made abortion access and pregnancy complications a central tenet of their election campaigns this year, Republicans have avoided addressing the issue almost entirely.

Despite support for exceptions, most Texas voters don't want abortion bans to become less strict

The discrepancy between high support for some exceptions and moderate support for looser bans shows a fundamental truth of complicated political issues such as abortion, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Policy Project.

"The results show how the tendency to put people into two camps on the issue ... is misguided and clouds the complexities of abortion access in practice," Henson wrote in an email to the American-Statesman.

Voters may not be informed about the finer points of legislation in place on abortion, or they may not consider specific cases when forming their overall views, he said.

"A respondent might be inclined to oppose access to abortion, but not think about the issue primarily in terms of cases where they feel more conflict, like situations involving rape or incest," Henson said. "One of the reasons we periodically ask the more detailed question is to get at the nuances and cross-pressures that people gloss over in order to avoid internal conflicts."

Regardless of Texans' opinions on abortion, the issue is unlikely to swing elections in Democrats' favor, poll results suggest. The Texas Politics Project survey found abortion is the top issue for just 4% of voters in the state, with border security, immigration, political corruption and inflation taking up the top four spots.

More:Will Kate Cox's case reframe the political debate surrounding abortion in Texas?