Opinion | Why Democrats should ignore history and rally Latinos to vote for abortion rights – By Julio Ricardo Varela (MSNBC) / Aug 23, 2022
Second- and third-generation Latino Americans are far more supportive of abortion rights than Latino immigrants.
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer, polls historically showed that Latinos in the United States were generally opposed to abortion.
In 2019, for example, a Public Religion Research Institute survey noted that just 45% of U.S. Latinos favored the legalization of abortion in almost all cases. That same survey concluded that “Hispanics are the ethnic group with the most complex and least supportive views on the legality of abortion,” adding that “Hispanics (23%) are more likely than the general population (15%) to think abortion should be illegal in all cases and less likely (19%) than all Americans (23%) to think it should be legal in all cases.”
That opposition might be waning, if findings from a recent comprehensive poll of Latino voters are any indication. In a UnidosUS/Mi Familia Vota survey of 2,750 eligible Latino voters released Aug. 10, 76% of respondents agreed with the following statement: “No matter what my personal beliefs about abortion are, I think it is wrong to make abortion illegal and take that choice away from everyone else.” Subgroups of Latino voters also agreed with that statement, including 76% of Catholics, 68% of non-Catholic Christians and 55% of Republicans. Seventy-two percent of Latino men agreed, and 85% of Latina women did.
