Public support for abortion rights swells in two years after Dobbs

(CN) — Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal right to abortion and returned the matter to the states, an even larger majority of Americans support legal access to abortion than did before.

New data from Pew Research Center shows U.S. citizens support a right to abortion by a nearly 2 to 1 margin. The data comes from an April survey of more than 8,000 Americans.

About 63% of survey respondents say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases. About 54% say medication abortions should be legal, and only 20% say they should be illegal. Among voters younger than 30, more than 75% say abortion should be legal.

The share of Americans who support legal abortion rose four percentage points since 2021 — one year before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which upended more than 50 years of precedent set by the court in Roe v. Wade . University of Arizona professor of government and public policy Samara Klar said that trend has been demonstrated by the successes of ballot measures enshrining abortion rights into the constitutions of seven states since 2022.

Because voters who support abortion rights are more likely to mobilize on the issue than voters who oppose abortion rights, Klar said, the debate may lend extra support to Democrat candidates.

“In an election like this where both Biden and Trump are sort of unpopular, having abortion on the ballot can mobilize people to come out and vote in favor of abortion rights,” she said in a phone interview. “And if you’re coming out in favor of abortion rights, probably you’re more ideologically liberal than conservative, so you may end up voting for a Democrat where you otherwise may not have done so without that ballot initiative.”

In November, Arizonans will vote on their own ballot measure to enshrine a right to abortion up until fetal viability.

Klar conducted a survey of her own among 800 Arizonans in March, and found similar results to Pew’s survey.

About 66% of her respondents say abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, while only 32% support abortion bans.

Despite a Republican-controlled Legislature, the Grand Canyon State this month repealed a near-total abortion ban dating to before the Civil War. The state Supreme Court had revived the 160-year-old ban, which includes no exception for rape or incest, in a 4-2 decision in April. On Monday, the court stayed its decision for 90 days to allow state Attorney General Kris Mayes time to decide whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But five Republicans in the state House and Senate joined Democrats to remove the ban from the books as soon as possible.

Klar said the ban’s return put Republicans in a difficult position, defending an ideological tenet of the party through a law they know most Arizonans find too restrictive. She said those Republicans likely realized that the ban only made their party look worse to undecided moderates, and figured returning to the current ban after 15 weeks would “keep abortion out of the headlines.”

“I think they were just trying to stop the damage,” Klar said. “I don’t think they were necessarily trying to make any strong statements about the issue. They were just trying to get it out of the news as quickly as possible. The longer that ban was in place, the more it would become a mobilizing issue for the election.”

Arizona Democrats say the abortion issue is what will finally flip the state to a Democrat-controlled Legislature. Klar said that’s possible, but wouldn’t attribute that solely to abortion.

“The Republicans have been losing seats every year,” she said. If the Legislature does flip, she said it will be a culmination of many factors that have been at play for years now.

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