January 19, 2023
The Nuanced Abortion Views of Gen Z & Gen Y Registered Voters Indicate Majority Support for Limits on Abortion;
But ABSOLUTE Support for Jettisoning Biden’s Reckless Chemical Abortion Pill Schemes
“The generation most targeted for abortion reject the Biden Administration’s recklessness with their lives when it comes to Chemical Abortion Pills,” said Students for Life of America’s Kristan Hawkins. “Almost 9 in 10 take issue with the policies pushed by Biden’s team of abortion extremists who advocate for policies putting women at risk of injury, infertility, death, and abusers, who use the drugs on women without their knowledge or consent. And more than 9 in 10 support specific health screenings to protect them.”
WASHINGTON D.C. (01-19-2023) – Students for Life of America released its fourth, wide-ranging poll of the largest segment of voters in America – the Youth Vote (Gen Z & Gen Y) – conducted by YouGov-Vinea, finding once again that they reject the radical abortion extremism attributed to them. Again this year, almost 7 in 10 report they want limits on abortion. But by margins of more than 9 in 10, Gen Z & Gen Y voters reject the No Test, Online Distribution of Chemical Abortion Pills pushed by the Biden Administration that exposes them to injury, infertility, death, and abusers, who use the deadly drugs against women without their knowledge or consent.
And equally of note, a generation of environmentally conscious voters supports efforts to test America’s water systems and to require Red Bag Medical Waste disposal, so that the deadly harms of abortion don’t spill over into the water impacting aquatic and animal life, and the nation’s food supply.
“Just this week, West Virginia became the first state in the nation to introduce a bill to protect our nation’s water supply by requiring proper disposal of the chemically tainted blood, tissue, and human remains flushed into our wastewater,” noted Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins. “It’s just common sense. If you shouldn’t flush fish into our sewer systems, you shouldn’t do that to human beings either.”
The health and safety standards that were in place regarding the distribution of Chemical Abortion Pills were first reduced during President Obama’s tenure, and then gutted by the Biden Administration. But Gen Z and Gen Y don’t appreciate being asked to risk their lives and fertility to make it easier to sell abortion pills.
In the poll we found:
- Support for an Ultrasound Screening to Protect Women facing ectopic or late-term pregnancies: 91%agree this is somewhat to extremely important, with 40% choosing extremely important. (Chemical Abortion Pills don’t work well later in pregnancy or end an ectopic pregnancy, once established outside the womb. An ultrasound is used to determine location and length of pregnancy to save women’s lives, something Biden’s FDA no longer requires.)
- Support for Blood Test Screening to preserve a woman’s fertility: 93% agree this is somewhat to extremely important, with 41% choosing extremely important. (In the U.S., 15% of the population has Rh-negative blood. In an exchange of blood during birth, abortion, or miscarriage with a preborn baby, antibodies can form in a woman’s body that unless quickly neutralized can essentially sterilize her, as future pregnancies are attacked. The treatment is a shot called Rhogam that Biden’s FDA does not require to be administered, nor do they even require a blood test, giving women information they need to seek help.)
- Support for requiring In-Person Care to prevent abusers from getting the drugs to use against women without their knowledge or consent: 60% supported with 40% opposing. (Chemical Abortion Pills are abusers’ dream drugs, giving them the power to end a mother’s pregnancy without her knowledge or consent. In-person dispensing ensures that women are not being coerced and that they have information on things like blood type.)
- Support for an Environmental Assessment of the Nation’s Water Safety 92% agreed that this is somewhat to extremely important, with 30% choosing extremely important. Fewer than 1 in 10 wanted to ignore the potential dangers. (When the Clinton Administration pushed Chemical Abortion Pills on the Market in 2000, the FDA accepted a 1996 Environmental Impact report from the abortion advocates at the Population Council, rather than doing their own, or reevaluating as now more than 52% of abortions are committed with Chemical Abortion Pills, sending remains into the wastewater.)
- Support for requiring Red Bag Medical Waste procedures for proper disposal of tainted remains: 90% agreed this is somewhat to extremely important, with 30% choosing extremely important. (To learn more, read SFLA’s Citizen Petition currently with the FDA and What’s in the Water? Campaign.)
ON OTHER POLITICAL ISSUES: the youth vote holds many of the same nuanced views on the most discussed abortion policy today with a base of support for gestational limits, born alive protections, and keeping taxpayers out of the abortion business.
Looking at legislation that would limit abortion after a baby’s heartbeat has been confirmed, 38% said they could support a candidate who held that position, and 39% said they could support a candidate backing a bill to limit abortion at 15 weeks (almost 4 months of pregnancy). And more than 4 in 10 would consider supporting a candidate limiting abortion when a baby can live outside the womb.
But the power of the SFLA model could be seen in data on minds changed. When asked about efforts to “Codify Roe,” we saw a dramatic shift from support FOR to OPPOSITION when the voters were told about what that meant – abortion through all 9 months, taxpayer funded, for any reason, and prohibiting health and safety standards in the 50 states.
After they learned more, young voters changed their minds and the math flipped by 15 points as 37% supported “Codifying Roe” after learning more, down from 52%. Those opposing “Codifying Roe” rose from 22% to 47% — a 25-point shift, made possible in part as 26% undecided fell to 16%.
OTHER KEY FINDINGS:
EVENTS OF CONCEPTION DID NOT DEMAND ABORTION FOR ALL:
Despite claims that most voters insist on abortion when a child is conceived in rape and incest, the results indicated a strong base of support for preborn life no matter how a child was conceived. SFLA & SFLAction reject prejudice against people based on their age, sex, race, level of income, perceptions of their abilities, or the events of their conception. We reject shaming an innocent child for things outside their control, which do not diminish their humanity.
But how do our peers see it?
Looking at protections for women in a life-threatening pregnancy, where only one life can be saved, Gen Z & Gen Y by 32% said they could support a candidate who only advocated for that single exception in the law. When asked their views on support for a candidate who would allow abortion for reasons of rape and incest, as well as to save a mother’s life, that support raised only 2 percentage points, to 34%.
Taking the principled stand to advocate for people despite events out of their control didn’t change the level of overall support among the youth vote.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM AND AGENDA OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WAS NOT A WINNER:
Asked whether they could support a candidate who wanted abortion without limits and no restrictions of any kind, 4 in 10 reject that extremism, reporting that they are UNLIKELY (extremely to slightly) to give their vote. And 35% said that their vote was unlikely to go to someone promising taxpayer funded abortion, which is littered throughout our federal budget.
As noted above, in 2023, MORE young people now believe abortion should not be legal, now at 23% compared to 9% in 2022. The radical agenda of the Democratic Party is out of step even with those presumed to be their most ardent supporters.
FOR AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF POLL RESULTS, CLICK HERE
Methodology
In early January 2023, YouGov/Vinea Research interviewed 1,216 registered voters between the ages of 18-41 (Gen Z and Millennials) via a 5-minute online survey. The sample of 1,216 was then matched down to a sample of 1,000 to produce the final data set. Respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. The frame is a subset of a politically representative “modeled frame” of adults, based upon established methods for these types of surveys: using exit polls and surveys, weighting using propensity scores, applying logistic regression estimates, grouping into deciles, and post-stratification. The margin of error for this study is ± 3.37.
Hans Plate, President of Vinea Research, was the research liaison, working closely with SFLA and YouGov in all aspects of the research. To contact Hans for questions on methodology, survey design, and results, email [email protected].
CLICK HERE TO READ HAWKINS’ OP-ED at the National Review detailing how the pills can lead to injury, infertility, and even death to mothers as well as to the preborn.
To learn more about Chemical Abortion, go to This Is Chemical Abortion.
For an overview of where Students for Life Action worked to pass Chemical Abortion pill legislation in the last two sessions, click here.
For more on abortion as a federal issue, click here to read Hawkins’ recent letter to Congress.
For interviews, contact Kristi Hamrick at [email protected]
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Students for Life Action (SFLAction), a 501c4, along with its 501c3 sister organization, Students for Life of America (SFLA), make up the nation’s largest pro-life youth organization and a political and policy operation engaging people of all ages. Together they work to end abortion — the human rights issue of our day — and provide political, legal, and community support for women and their children, born and preborn. Headquartered in Fredericksburg, VA, SFLA has more than 1,300 groups on middle, high school, college, university, medical, and law school campuses in all 50 states. SFLA creates strategy, policy, and programming to connect those most targeted for abortion with people ready to help and builds a framework for political engagement on their behalf. SFLA and SFLAction have more conversations with those most targeted by the abortion industry than any other pro-life outreach in the world, reaching more than 2 million people across social media platforms each week and engaging in approximately 100,000 digital conversations per month. Over more than 16 years, President Kristan Hawkins has grown SFLAction/SFLA into an $18 million organization preparing for a Post-Roe America.