In a piece in The New York Times' Upshot blog, Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at U.C.L.A., notes a surprising degree of 'harmony' (her word, not ours) amongst the public when it comes to abortion attitudes. In particular, she writes that "public opinion about women’s choices during their pregnancies yields surprising points of agreement across party lines." In arriving at this conclusion, Vavreck analyzes two approaches to asking Americans about their abortion attitudes from the American National Election Studies (ANES) – an esteemed academic survey undertaken during every election since 1948. The University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll has utilized the same two approaches in asking Texans about their abortion attitudes, most recently in the October 2014 survey, providing an open invitation for comparison. Attitudes in Texas largely reflect the attitudes Vavreck finds in the national data, though Texas attitudes evidence  a higher degree of polarization between Democrats and Republicans on the issue.  (This polarization has been on display in recent days in the legislature – for example, in the Texas Senate's passage of legislation prohibiting insurance coverage for the cost of abortions.)

The standard ANES abortion question asks Americans to pick one of four options that best encompasses their abortion attitude: (1) By law, abortion should never be permitted; (2) The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger; (3) The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest or danger to the woman’s life but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established; and (4) by law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice. Among Americans, Vavreck writes:

The data showed that very few Americans, roughly 12 percent, believed abortion should never be legal under any circumstance. One in five Republicans placed themselves in the “never legal” camp, while only 1 in 13 Democrats said this, but on average, few people believed in a total ban.

On the opposite side, nearly 60 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans said abortion should always be legal. There is more support in both parties and among independents for legal abortion in all cases than there is for a total ban. But this is also where we see the biggest partisan gulf among the four outcomes — a 30-point difference between Democrats and Republicans.

The numbers in Texas are strikingly similar to the national numbers, but different in some important ways. Overall, 13 percent of voters believe that abortion should never be legal, including 20 percent of Republicans and the same 1 in 13 Democrats (it's actually 1 in 12.5, to be exact). But while 59 percent of Texas Democrats believe that abortion should always be legal (the same as Democrats nationally), Texas Republicans are less open to abortion access than their national counterparts: 18 percent believe in unrestricted access to abortion, compared with 30 percent of Republicans nationally. So the 30-point gap that Vavreck notes between the parties balloons to 41-points here in Texas.

But that's not the whole story, because "the A.N.E.S. fielded a more specific battery of questions in 2012, using seven different circumstances to ask whether respondents believed abortion should be legal or illegal or whether they weren’t sure." The UT/TT poll employed a similar approach in the October 2014 Poll (most recently). The exceptions tested included the following situations:

• The woman's own health is seriously endangered.
• She became pregnant as a result of rape.
• She became pregnant as a result of incest.
• There is a strong chance of a serious defect in the baby.
• The family has very low income and cannot afford any more children.
• She is not married and does not want to marry the man.
• She is married and does not want any more children.

Nationally, the ANES found that 80 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Republicans think that a woman should be able to obtain an abortion if her life is in danger. In Texas, 73 percent of Republicans agree, the same as the rest of the country, but among Texas Democrats, 90 percent think that a woman should be able to have an abortion if her life is in danger, 10 points higher than the national numbers. (As we noted during the 2014 election campaign in Texas, the results for this particular question do amply illustrate that in a literal sense, Republicans tend to favor many fewer reproductive choices for women.)

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So while Texans don't diverge from the rest of the country too greatly when it comes to their opinions on abortion, it is interesting to note a greater degree of polarization in Texas than in the nation – in both the low percentage of Republicans open to unfettered abortion access, and in the high degree of Democratic support for abortion rights in the most dire of circumstances.