Issues

On social issues

Social issues have long figured prominently in presidential politics, sometimes trumping all other issues for primary voters. Debates over the rights of same-sex couples and abortion have been particularly contentious topics in recent elections.

Advocates for expanding the rights of homosexuals and lesbians scored a victory in 2011 when the ban on gays serving openly in the military was lifted, fulfilling a campaign pledge of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, several states in recent years have granted same-sex couples the right to marry, including New York, which became the largest state to do so in June.

A Senate panel in November approved the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies same-sex couples federal benefits, on a strict party-line vote. However, the repeal measure will have little chance of getting through the Republican-controlled House. The Obama administration earlier in the year announced it would no longer defend the law against legal challenges. Much of the GOP presidential field supports a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Abortion has often been a litmus test of candidates for voters on both sides of the issue. The president's authority to make lifetime judicial appointments, including to the Supreme Court, has lent White House campaigns particular weight with activists.

In Mississippi, voters in November rejected a ballot measure that would have declared that life begins at conception. Supporters of the proposal had hoped to use it as a vehicle to challenge the Supreme's Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in December overruled a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to lift an age-restriction on the Plan-B morning-after pill, which teenagers can currently only obtain with a prescription. The morning-after pill has been criticized by anti-abortion advocates.

- USA TODAY research