What Americans Really Think About Abortion
Abortion is back at the Supreme Court yet again. For the third time in six years, the justices will consider the constitutionality of a state law designed to restrict abortion — this time, a Mississippi ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Because the court is more conservative than it’s been in decades, many experts believe there’s a real possibility that the justices will use this case to overturn — or at least severely limit — the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 by Roe v. Wade. If the court were to overturn Roe, it would dismantle nearly 50 years of established abortion rights.
Public Opinion and Roe v. Wade
Roe may be one of the only Supreme Court decisions that most Americans can identify. In all likelihood, it’s more familiar to the average voter than the names of any justice currently serving on the Supreme Court. Ask Americans whether Roe should be overruled, and the answer seems pretty straightforward: Polls consistently find that a majority think the Supreme Court should keep the ruling in place. Surprisingly, though, trying to understand what Americans think about abortion rights — and how they’d react if Roe was reversed or reshaped — can feel like walking into a fogbank.
As we wrote in December, Americans have a complicated relationship to abortion and support a variety of restrictions, but at the same time, most Americans do not want Roe overturned. Americans’ views on abortion are hardly clear-cut. Majorities also support a variety of restrictions on abortion — including limits on abortion in the second trimester — that openly conflict with the Supreme Court’s rulings.
The Complexity of Abortion Views
Why is it so hard to distill views on an issue that’s been at the forefront of American politics for nearly five decades? The truth is that many Americans just don’t like talking or thinking about abortion. They also don’t know a lot about the procedure or restrictions around it, and when it comes to the politics of abortion, they see an endless loop. In interviews, people told me over and over again that they want the country to find a quiet middle ground — yet the debate keeps getting more heated and extreme. “I think people are tired [of this issue] and they hate it at election time,” said Tresa Undem, a researcher at the nonpartisan firm PerryUndem who studies attitudes toward abortion. “They think politicians are pandering for votes.”
Abortion as a Political Priority
Abortion also isn’t an especially high political priority for people, despite — or perhaps because of — its ubiquitousness. In a YouGov/The Economist poll conducted in October, only 4 percent of Americans ranked abortion as their top issue, coming in behind jobs and the economy, climate change, immigration, health care, taxes and civil rights. The following table summarizes key data points from the research:
| Topic | Data Point / Finding |
|---|---|
| Support for Roe v. Wade | Majority think the Supreme Court should keep the ruling in place |
| Support for doctor admitting privileges | 69 percent of Americans |
| Ranking as top political issue | 4 percent of Americans |
| Primary concerns above abortion | Jobs, economy, climate change, immigration, health care, taxes, civil rights |
For example, a 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 69 percent of Americans favored laws requiring abortions to be performed only by doctors who had admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, even though the court ruled in 2016 that those laws place an unconstitutional burden on women’s right to abortion. Given the longstanding, intractable division on abortion, one might think that Americans hold murky views because they’re actively, even painfully, wrestling with the matter. But that’s not what I found when I dug into the issue.