Gallup has been tracking Americans’ opinions on abortion since 1975, making it a valuable resource for analyzing attitudes on the issue. The latest survey, conducted in May and released on Wednesday, shows that Americans are less supportive of the right to abortion now than they were after the Dobbs leak in May 2022, but more supportive than they had been in the years leading up to Dobbs.
In 2021, 49 percent of Americans identified as pro-choice, while 47 percent identified as pro-life. Immediately after the Dobbs leak, the pro-choice side had a 16-point advantage, with 55 percent identifying as pro-choice and 39 percent as pro-life. Now, one year later, that advantage has been cut in half to an eight-point margin, with 52 percent identifying as pro-choice and 44 percent as pro-life.
When it comes to abortion policy, Gallup found that the country is now evenly split between those who favor expansive versus restrictive access to abortion. A slight plurality, 49 percent to 47 percent, say abortion should be legal in only a few or no circumstances. Gallup has always found a big split in Americans’ views on the legality of abortion by trimester of pregnancy: they say it should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy and illegal in the last six months. In the latest survey, 69 percent of respondents say it should be legal in the first trimester, two points higher than last year. But by a 55 percent to 37 percent margin, Americans say abortion should be illegal in the second trimester, which starts at the 13th week of pregnancy, and only 22 percent say abortion should be legal in the last three months of pregnancy.
A majority of Democratic voters now say abortion should be legal under any circumstances, with 60 percent in favor, a ten-point jump from 2021. However, Gallup’s polling continues to show that voters’ motivations on the issue are more nuanced than much of the media would have you believe. While there is a big divide in public opinion on abortion by trimester, it may matter more whether pollsters mention if a ban includes exceptions than whether they only mention the precise point in pregnancy at which a ban kicks in. For example, a May 2022 Fox News poll found that 50 percent of voters favored a law that would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, except in the case of a medical emergency, while 46 percent opposed it.
Ultimately, issue polling is often tricky and only provides a window into how voters think, not necessarily how they will act. In 2022, pro-life ballot measures all failed, while pro-life governors who signed heartbeat bills or laws generally protecting life at conception fared well, often running far ahead of Republican Senate candidates, and Republican House candidates won the popular vote by three percentage points. These results suggest that abortion is just one issue among many motivating voters.
