Actually, Abortion Isn’t “Polarizing.”
As is probably self-evident by now, a pet grievance of mine, which motivated me to launch this newsletter, is the fact that our political discourse hinges on some misguided notions about what is, and isn’t, popular with voters, and why. Broadly speaking, these narratives make two crucial mistakes. First, there’s a misperception that voters are ideological, with coherent and organized beliefs. In reality, most voters are partisans, but not ideologues. They play for a political team, but their views across specific issues are often inconsistent, malleable, and even contradictory. For this reason, what is and isn’t “popular” is highly dependent on framing and context. Second, public opinion is not a one-way street from voters’ hearts to elected officials’ ears. It’s a conversation between elites and the mass public that often flows in the opposite direction. What’s “popular” is hugely dependent on whether, and how, political leaders choose to own and frame an issue.
One such issue is abortion. In late January, anti-abortion activists held their annual demonstration in Washington, D.C. Vice President JD Vance attended and declared in his address to the crowd that “America is fundamentally a pro-baby, a pro-family and a pro-life country.” It’s not, of course, and any casual observer might already know that, simply because we often hear that abortion is a “politicized” or “polarizing” topic, and that language suggests that voters in America are narrowly and bitterly divided on this issue. The thing is: that’s off-base, too. I delved into voters’ abortion attitudes in a national poll of 1,759 registered voters that we conducted at Change Research in January of this year. Here’s what I found.
The vast majority of Americans are pro-choice. They just would not describe themselves that way.
Per a 2024 Gallup poll, 54% of Americans identify as “pro-choice,” while 41% identify as “pro-life” (5% have no opinion). These binary labels do paint a picture of a divided public that’s narrowly in favor of abortion rights. But if you go deeper, the story changes.
One of the most common questions used in surveys to assess abortion attitudes asks people which of the following statements best represents their views:
Abortion should be legal in all cases
Abortion should be legal in most cases
Abortion should be illegal in most cases
Abortion should be illegal in all cases
In our January poll, a combined 61% of voters nationwide believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases. A combined 33% say it should be illegal in most/all cases; 6% are unsure. For folks who follow public opinion on this issue, those numbers are probably very familiar; they are incredibly stable over time. And while it’s hard to achieve 61% consensus on most anything today, even that number is somewhat misleading; the consensus is actually higher. In addition to asking the legal/illegal question, we also asked people to sort themselves into one of these three categories:
I personally support a woman’s right to an abortion and believe it should be legal and available
I am personally against abortion but I do not believe government should prevent a woman from making that decision for herself
I personally believe having an abortion is wrong and should be illegal
47% of voters nationwide are personally pro-abortion rights, falling into that category that most of us associate with the term “pro-choice.” But another 33% say that while they’re personally against abortion, they do not believe the government should make it illegal to obtain one, and that’s also a pro-choice position. Only 20% of voters believe—in the abstract—that abortion should be illegal.
(Incidentally, if you’re curious about how people who voted for Trump answered this question: a combined 59% are either personally in favor of abortion or personally against it but don’t believe government should outlaw it.)
Most Americans support legal abortion in almost all circumstances in which someone might elect to have one or medically require one.
The only circumstance in which a majority of voters do not support legal abortion is an elective abortion after fetal viability when there is no medical emergency or fatal fetal abnormality. That type of abortion constitutes less than 1% of all abortions nationwide, according to the CDC.
Even most people who indicate in the abstract that abortion “should be illegal in most/all cases” are in favor of making abortion legal in most circumstances.
I took a look at those exact same questions, but focusing only on the people who say, in the abstract, that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. These voters only withhold support for legal abortions when we frame the circumstances in terms of how far into pregnancy they occur, rather than as medically necessary or as a response to a criminal act. When abortion is presented without contextual cues (medical necessity, life-long consequences for personal freedom and agency), it’s much less popular, but when that context is provided, support is far higher. To put it plainly: even the people who say they believe abortion should be illegal in most cases actually support abortion in the majority of cases we tested.
Voters know very little about when abortions take place.
So much of the discourse, and the divide, about abortion access has to do with how far into a pregnancy someone is when they obtain one. According to CDC estimates, roughly 94% of abortions in the U.S. take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. Only 15% of voters can correctly identify that statistic.
The majority of voters — men and women, across party lines — believe less than 60% of abortions in the U.S. happen in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
The plurality of voters — men and women, across party lines — believe less than half of all abortions in the U.S. happen in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
Why is this the case? There’s certainly not one cause or explanation, but I will note that because the majority of voters support the right to a legal abortion, anti-choice activists tend to play in a particular lane: ginning up anger about abortions that happen near or after fetal viability while creating a misleading impression of how commonly those happen. The only concrete mention of abortion in the 2024 GOP platform was a commitment to “oppose Late Term Abortion,” a term that has absolutely no medical meaning. The truth is, abortions after fetal viability are exceptionally rare, only legal in six states and the District of Columbia, and primarily occur because of a fatal fetal abnormality or severe medical danger for the mother – circumstances in which even a majority of voters who say abortions should be mostly/completely illegal support the right to a legal abortion.
What does all this mean?
The problem with labels like “pro-choice” and “pro-life” is they allow people to self-sort based on their own abstract associations around abortion, as well as plenty of misinformation about when and why they happen. Most Americans believe abortions should be legal in most circumstances, full stop. Even people who say they believe the opposite, when asked about specific circumstances, approve of legal abortion in most cases. And this illustrates perhaps the most frustrating aspect of public opinion research: as much as conservatives like to crow that “facts don’t care about your feelings,” the reality is, our feelings often don’t care about the facts. Values-infused narratives take hold and crystallize, and they endure even when people are confronted with evidence to the contrary. Our best approach, then, is not to defensively quote the CDC website to voters when they attack us for “late term abortions,” nor is it to credulously concede that Americans are as divided on the issue as they believe themselves to be. We have to tell a compelling story, proactively, relentlessly, and confidently.