With abortion rights likely to become one of the major issues in the 2024 election, a new poll shows that Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the United States strongly support legal abortion, even in situations where a pregnant woman wants an abortion. For any reason.
The poll by AAPI Data and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that nearly 8 in 10 Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. They also support federal government action to preserve abortion rights: Three-quarters of AAPI adults say Congress should pass a law ensuring access to legal abortions nationwide.
By comparison, an AP-NORC poll last June found that 64% of US adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 6 in 10 US adults overall say Congress should pass a law ensuring access. To abortion.
AAPI adults are more likely than Americans overall to identify as Democrats, which may partly explain why they have higher levels of support for legal abortion than the general population. But even among Democrats, AAPI adults are more supportive of legal abortion later in pregnancy. AAPI Democrats are particularly likely to support legal abortion without any limits — more than half of this group say abortion should be legal in all cases, compared to 40% of Democrats overall.
AAPI Republicans are also more likely to support a law ensuring access to legal abortion nationwide than Republicans overall. More than half (57%) of AAPI Republicans believe abortion should be legal in at least some cases, compared to 38% of Republicans overall. About half (51%) of AAPI Republicans also believe Congress should pass a law ensuring access to legal abortion nationwide, while only 32% of Republicans overall want that to happen.
Although AAPI voters are a rapidly growing demographic with a particularly large presence in states such as California, Texas, and New York, their attitudes often cannot be analyzed in other polls due to small sample sizes, among other issues. This poll is part of an ongoing project focusing on Americans' opinions of AAPIs.
High turnout in districts with large AAPI communities could help Democrats in competitive House districts, and a broader conversation about whether nonwhite voters are shifting to the right could further court AAPI voters. The poll results suggest that abortion could be a powerful issue for Democratic candidates looking to reach out to AAPI communities, and a challenge for Republicans.
“It saddens me how politics got involved in this, and they shouldn't have,” said Debra Nanez, a 72-year-old retired nurse in Tucson and a voter unaffiliated with any political party. Nanez identifies as Asian, Native American, and Hispanic. “It's a woman's body. How can you tell us what we can do with our bodies, what we can keep and what we can't keep? It's ridiculous.”
Although an October 2022 AP-NORC poll found that more than 4 in 10 Americans generally trust Democrats to do a better job handling the abortion issue, while only 2 in 10 have more confidence in Republicans, The poll released Thursday shows that the trust gap between the two parties is even wider for AAPI adults. 55% of AAPI adults trust Democrats on abortion policy, while only 12% trust Republicans.
According to the survey, more than half of AAPI adults were born outside the United States. For many of these immigrants and their first-generation American children, abortion is not only viewed as health care, but it can also be viewed as a right not afforded to them in their home countries, said Varun Nikori, executive director of AAPI Victory. The Alliance, a progressive political advocacy organization.
“I think it has to do with a kind of attitude in our country of origin, but also a strong feeling that we have rights and that we have access to health care, and now we don't want to lose something that we had,” Nikori said. “And maybe we also came to this country to get “Health care is better than we had before.”
Nearly 6 in 10 AAPI adults do not want Congress to pass a law that preserves states' ability to set their own laws allowing or restricting abortion, and only 14% support passing a law banning access to abortions nationwide.
Joy Mayer, 24, is a health care consultant in Florida, where abortion is banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy. She said that because other nearby states like Alabama and Georgia have more restrictive abortion laws, she would have to travel far to have the procedure.
“I'm 24, and some people my age might have kids, but if I got into this position to be pregnant, I don't think I would feel ready,” she said. “So, that would be something I would have to think about.”
Mayer, who was born in China and has lived in the United States since she was an infant, had made plans with a friend in California in case she needed an abortion. Flying across the country may take longer than driving to the nearest state that offers an abortion, but she said she wanted to know she would be with someone who could care for her during her recovery.
“Even if there was a closer situation, would I want to do it alone and really have to get through this physical and emotional pain on my own? Not really,” Mayer said.
The survey of 1,172 Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults was conducted February 5-14 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based Amplify AAPI panel, designed to be representative of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. Island residents. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Brewer and Thompson Defoe write for The Associated Press.
