The future of Texas’ political climate has been dominating the discussion in political circles for the past decade, as Democrats hope (and Republicans fear) that they are beginning to retake their former stronghold.
This is beginning to move from speculation to almost-sure reality as conservative U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz only narrowly defeated his opponent, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, and Democrats came within striking distance of retaking the Texas House in 2018.
Now in 2020, hoping to capitalize on these gains, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-12) has announced that Texas will be “ground zero” for the 2020 election.
Texas Democrats, smelling blood from the past session, are also organizing a bid to retake the Texas House, a crucial pickup for Democrats as the 2021 Texas House will redraw the state’s legislative districts for the next decade.
While Texas may have begun shifting to the left overall, there is at least one issue on which Texans are still overwhelmingly conservative: life.
According to a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, nearly 48 percent of all voters favor abolishing abortion after six weeks, while only 42 percent oppose such a measure.
Similar proposals were already passed in states like Georgia and Louisiana, but in the recent legislative session, those initiatives were killed by leadership in the Texas House. And worse yet, they weren’t even filed in the Texas Senate.
While the leftist narrative may claim that the support for life only comes from overwhelming male and Republican majorities, ultimately every group—except Democrats—was in favor of abolishing abortion.
Perhaps the issue of life is the Achilles’ heel that Republicans have been searching for as Democrats move further and further to the left on the issue.
The party has shifted in recent years from “Safe, Legal, and Rare” to “My Body, My Choice,” a mentality that only 37 percent of Texans favor, according to the same poll, meaning that the other 5 percent who disapprove of the six-week ban also oppose abortion at later stages of fetal development.
Further analysis of the poll shows that even more Texans are pro-life than the 48 percent who want to abolish it after six weeks’ gestation; 15 percent wish for it to be completely abolished, 31 percent want it abolished for all cases except for “rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger,” and 13 percent say the law should permit abortion in other cases “only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established”—meaning a grand total of 59 percent of Texans take a pro-life stance of some kind.
Though Texas may be shifting towards the left, if this poll from two fairly liberal institutions is to be believed, Texans still overwhelmingly support the right to life.
