Most polls on abortion break up responses into three categories:
- Should always be illegal.
- Should always be legal.
- Should sometimes be legal.
The first two are obviously clear enough, but the third encompasses a very wide range of views. For example:
- Should be illegal except in cases of rape and incest.
- Should be legal early in a pregnancy but illegal after 13 weeks.
- Should be generally legal but not in the third trimester.
These are very different things, and it doesn't help much to mush them all together into the broad category of "sometimes." For example, here are the figures from Gallup presented in the traditional way:
The "sometimes legal" category is the biggest by far, but this presentation gives you no idea of whether these people are mostly for or mostly against abortion. The answer, it turns out, is that by a wide margin they're mostly opposed to abortion. Here's the same chart, but with the middle category broken into "legal under most circumstances" and "legal only in a few circumstances":
This provides a better picture in at least three ways. First, it tells us that conservative abortion sentiment has generally been ascendant over the past two decades. Second, it tells us that abortion views truly started trending more liberal after 2019. Third, it tells us that abortion views got more conservative in 2023, the first poll taken after the Dobbs decision was handed down. This is very much not the conventional wisdom, and it should give us pause about the notion that Dobbs prompted a backlash against abortion restrictions.
I'm not thrilled with this since I liked the conventional wisdom—and in truth there's still some scattered evidence that national opinion became a little more pro-choice in the wake of Dobbs. However, most of the responses to abortion polling showed the opposite, and I'd rather know that than continue kidding myself that my side has made big gains over the past year.
POSTSCRIPT: It's worth noting that the Dobbs decision certainly prompted stronger feelings about abortion on both sides. How much stronger? I don't think anyone knows for sure. But if it prompted more change in intensity on the pro-choice side it might still be true that, in practice, views on abortion have pushed reproductive politics in a more liberal direction over the past year.
It's also the case that, thanks to the early leak of the Dobbs decision at about the time Gallup was in the field in 2022, we should compare 2023 to 2021 to get a clean presentation. If you do that, the liberal position gained a couple of points and the conservative position lost a couple.
In any case, it's clear that Dobbs either helped the conservative position or, at most, helped the liberal position very slightly. There was certainly no big backlash.
Conventional wisdom is that Dobbs cost the Rs a chance to have a "normal" midterm pickup year in 2022.
Also, how do referendums like Kansas and Ohio fit with this narrative?
To answer your question, they don't. I don't have the time, but Kevin's methodology looks sketchy and his conclusions are nonsense.
"There was certainly no big backlash."
When that's where you end up, it means you should start over.
Agree 100%
No, they do fit the narrative, because even people who favor more abortion restrictions do not favor the sorts of draconian bans the Right has been rushing to pass anywhere it can.
They don’t. It’s just another “Kevin takes the contrarian view” post.
Kevin makes the point that feelings on abortion exist on a spectrum with a wide range of views. He gives a few points on the spectrum and adds that many more exist.
This seems hard to argue with.
Next, Kevin decides that because abortion positions exist on a wide spectrum, it would be 'better' to analyze abortion positions by grouping this broad spectrum into two opposing camps. He argues that using 2 camps is better than 3 because it provides a different narrative that he can build a story around.
This....makes no sense at all.
Actually he divides the topic into 4 categories, and since they exist along a spectrum he is able to combine them in pairs. I think it is an interesting question why the polling he presents does not match how people actual vote on the issue. But dividing the Sometimes into mostly yes and mostly no is a step forward. I suspect the bigger problem is that it isn't clear what people see the border as being between mostly yes and mostly no.
The border tends to be “can I see myself or my loved ones needing an abortion for a reason I would accept?” and everything that causes a yes to that question makes that person more amenable to legalizing abortion… sometimes.
So basically, the border is “abortions should be legal sometimes and only for people whose reasons I approve of.” Which of course is hard to translate into a national or statewide policy. And alas, no pollster has the balls to ask that question out loud…. But I’d be willing to bet that that would have the biggest percentage of all if actuallly asked.
Yes, of course you can group the broad spectrum.
But he doesnt divide them into 4 groups, instead he divides them into two groups. Look at his chart and his narrative. 2 groups.
What doesnt make any sense is deciding that using 2 groups is 'better' than 3 groups because you prefer the narrative.
Its also not clear that hes correctly grouped the 4 categories into liberal and conservative. Based on the actions of many conservative state legislatures, it seems like a stretch to include the 'legal in a few circumstances' as conservative.
This misapplication likely explains why Kevins narrative doesnt match election results and feels so counterintuitive.
The point is that the vast majority of "sometimers" oppose Dobbs. And Dobbs, now that it exists, creates the dividing line between the pro-choicers (however limited) and the relatively small group of true abortion extremists.
Huh. Maybe what happened is people's views didn't change that much, but the weight that pro-choice voters put on those views when voting went up quite a bit.
Pro-life voters have always had that as a primary, and since they got what they wanted-reversal of Roe v. Wade-they are less motivated by it.
bingo
Yes. The backlash was a political, group response — Dobbs got more pro-choice voters to show up — not a change in individuals’ positions. In line with the thesis I favor, that most voters have rather fixed preferences for parties and issues, but some vote reliably and some sporadically. Elections are won by the side that gets their sometimes-voters to the polls.
I'm not sure how much was turn out vs. how much pro-choice sentiment became a predominant motivation in one's vote. Given the measly ~80K votes that Hillary lost by, I've often wondered what would have happened if Scalia hadn't died. The forced-birth side are highly motivated, single issue voters, and they knew what that SC seat meant. Conversely, any liberal who voted for Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders as a write in instead of Hillary wasn't thinking. That was a once-in-the-rest-of-my-lifetime opportunity to regain control of the court, and that alone was worth voting for Hillary. I know there was grumbling on the Progressive Left that Merrick Garland wasn't "exciting" enough for them, but I firmly believe there was no choice that Obama could have made that wouldn't have netted more conservatives in opposition than motivated liberals in favor. The liberal side just never saw it with the same single-minded intensity as the conservatives.
Until now, now that we finally have proof that the opposition really would and really have taken this right away. (And how many more R appointees to get rid of same sex marriage? 1? 2 tops ...) I think (hope) that the Left has finally gotten through our heads -- argue all you want in the primaries, but but don't screw around in the general. It's not a nuanced choice between 4 or 5 options, it's binary so treat your vote that way.
What people are against is the insane Republican crackdown and criminalization.
For example most European states do ban abortions after 15 weeks but have a raft of exceptions including mental health and economics so in practice you can get one. Rare but legal seems to be the main position.
Also you ignored the spike in "Always Legal" and plunge in "Never legal" in your first chart to make you point. If you add the Always legal and half the sometimes legal that is pro-choice you get a majority even by your own metrics.
I agree. The overreach is simply batshit insane. As you say, I think the average American wants an abortion law that looks something like: first trimester, for whatever reason you want; second trimester and later for serious medical complications (fetal deformity, threat to mother's health, etc.). This notion that even if there is no chance a fetus will survive when born, or if carrying a pregnancy to term could possibly kill a woman or render her infertile, she has no choice but to go through with the whole thing, I think just strikes most people as nuts. Which it is.
And now we're seeing towns and counties outlaw traveling out of state for an abortion.
This is essentially the compromise that Roe + Casey already had in red states. Which SCOTUS and red states have been actively blowing up since 2021 with Texas’s bounty hunter law.
Since 2019 there has been a ~10% shift toward "always legal" which, given the issue, seems pretty significant. The raft of extreme state restrictions. like Texas, started getting rolled out in 2020 and that may have been as influential as Dobbs.
We'll see what happens when congressional Republicans start seriously pushing for a nationwide ban. That's really what's on the line in the 2024 election.
Politically, the third term abortions, when the life of the mother or baby is not at risk, create difficult optics. For example, in New Jersey, a woman can legally have an abortion, for a non medical reason, basically right up to delivery.
While you may believe the aforementioned is a moral outcome, I think politically, these very rare abortions do not poll well.
This has nothing to do with ‘heartbeat’, or six-week bans; or vigilante laws, or laws against assisting/transporting/informing.
Politically, seeing women bleed out on the ER floor is creating difficult optics too.
Also, I fail to see anybody in NJ so offended by third trimester abortions pushing to ban them there. It’s almost as if third trimester abortions that aren’t related to health issues are infinitesimally small in number.
Also, fuck off with your concern trolling.
For example, in New Jersey, a woman can legally have an abortion, for a non medical reason, basically right up to delivery.
And I can, legally, drink 100 gallons of motor oil. No law against that in my state. What a world!
No woman, anywhere, ever, has carried a pregnancy for 26 weeks, much less up to the point of delivery, and then gone "Oh, this is really making me look fat. Time for an abortion!" It's a complete canard that dishonest hacks rely on because they want to change the subject. Late term abortions are 1. incredibly rare and 2. *always* the result of a terrible defect or other complication that would make carrying it to term unacceptably dangerous.
Wut?
1% of abortions happen after 21 weeks, pretty much exclusively for health reasons.
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/index.htm
Maybe you should sit down for a bit...
Depends on what you define as backlash? Did it change public opinion writ large? Appears not! Did it make people who feel strongly about the right to abortion more likely to vote in elections where the presidency isn’t on the ballot? Appears so! Did it it make people who are pro-life more complacent and less likely to vote in off season elections? Maybe.
Yes.
I don't get this. "Legal under most circumstances" is pretty much "always legal".
Now, "never legal" and "somtimes legal" cannot be bunched up together!
Honestly, most people fall in the "sometimes legal", that's quite obvious. Do you want to abort a healthy baby after 8.5 months. Of course not, no one wants to allow that. Every body is on a spectrum of "no except for some strict restrictions" to "no except for some less strict restrictions."
You have to define what you mean by "few" in the 2nd graph. Is it: no abortion after 6 weeks? Or no abortion except in the case of the rape of a minor? Or no abortion after 15 weeks. For instance, would you place the French framework (no abortion after 14 weeks with some exceptions) in the "legal under most circumstances" or the "legal under few exceptions" and if the latter, would you really say that the French setup can be merged with the pro-life stance for the purpose of your analysis?
I don't get this. "Legal under most circumstances" is pretty much "always legal".
In a logical world, yes. In the world we actually inhabit, lots of people think abortions should be always legal for good girls in bad situations (however they define that) and always illegal for the sluts.
No pollster is ballsy enough to ask about that nuance, which is why we get logically conflicting poll responses.
Yep
"Legal under most circumstances" is pretty much "always legal".
It is true that this sounds illogical. However, here is how the situation was in Switzerland when I grew up: Abortion was not tolerated except in cases of damage to maternal health. When I was young (1970s) that meant in practice "physical and mental health". A certificate by a second doctor (apart form the one carrying out the procedure) was required, except in emergencies. Pregnant people could get a certificate from a mental health doctor that the difficult future ahead for them made them depressed and they were good to go. Which means everybody who really wanted to end a pregnancy could get an abortion. Very close to "always legal".
The polling presented here does not match the voting patterns that we have seen since Dobbs. It is, of course, possible that the voting patterns would have been the same before Dobbs, except that the referendums wouldn't have made sense before Dobbs. It is also possible that the Republicans have been shutting themselves in the foot by making their referendums too extreme.
But referendums since Dobbs have come back consistently favoring the pro-choice side. In Ohio, a red state, although not the reddest, an attempt to reinstate the equivalent of Roe in the state seems to have support in the high 50%s which is why Ohio tried to get the required vote up to 60%. Maybe that is because the people in the "few" catergory prefor "most" to "none" which is really the choices they are being given.
But votes in deep red states have already favored the pro-choice side. And I would trust voting over polls.
The Gallup polls are consistent with voting patterns - most people are opposed to complete banning (see my comment below) and when some states banned completely there have been reactions in referenda. Somehow Kevin misses this. If there were referenda in blue states - which are unnecessary - there would be even stronger voting opposition to banning. In the very deepest red states referenda might fail if they were even allowed by politicians.
It's wild to me that you're basing this on opinion polling and not on actual voting behavior.
There have been multiple referendums on abortion post-Dobbs, and even in deep blood-red states the pro-choice side has tended to cruise to election by comfortable margins, often with said blood-red state doing all it can to fuck with the vote.
There's also the fact that you completely whistle past the obvious question of "what do people who think 'legal only under a few circumstances' actually think they mean by that?" Because that's incredibly vague wording. YOU have decided that it means "they mostly oppose abortion" but that's a big assumption.
There are a couple more nuances Kevin neglects to mention:
“Abortion should be legal for me or my loved one if I/they need one for any reason I deem appropriate.”
Virtually every woman and many men agree with this. Selfishness (or the “it’s not real until it happens to me” principle) is very strong in America, even/especially amongst so-called conservatives.
“Abortion should be legal for women experiencing severe health issues from remaining pregnant and/or for women with fetuses experiencing severe health issues and/or already dead inside them.”
As more icky stories come out, lots of people agree with this too, even if pollsters are too classy/squeamish to ask about it.
But both of these positions - which I would venture capture a good majority of Americans’ views on the subject - are also just lumped in with “abortion should be legal sometimes.”
Some people favor legal abortion out of ideological support for women's rights, and some people favor legal abortion because they don't want to be stuck without it if THEIR teenage daughter gets pregnant.
Sure. The former already are answering the polls with “always legal” if they truly want their ideology to match their polling answers, and the latter are using the selfishness principle I mentioned above: abortion should be legal for those I approve of (including my teenage daughter) and illegal for those I don’t (including possibly everyone else’s daughters).
"There was certainly no big backlash"
2024 National Election is on Line 2 for you.
The most popular position has been "sometimes legal", which is what Roe prescribed - Roe was very much a compromise decision. Combined with "always legal" there has certainly always been very strong opposition to complete banning. So far there is no evidence that Dobbs changed these basic attitudes much. So when Dobbs allowed complete banning, the great majority may have been disturbed, dissatisfied or outraged. Probably not many were happy with the decision overall - only the hard-core right. If this interpretation is right, then Dobbs did change things greatly despite little change in overall attitudes to abortion. To find out how disturbed, dissatisfied or outraged people are, more specific poll questions would be required. For Democratic politicians, the most important question would be "Did Dobbs change your attitude about voting for Republicans or about voting at all?" This would be important for Republicans also, if there were any who were not committed 100% to culture wars.
Kevin's attempt to break down basic attitudes does not address the important questions. There are other complications and possible questions, such as "Do you think the legislature in your state should decide this question?"
General attitudes are probably kind of wishy-washy - many people don't like to be on record as approving abortion on moral grounds, but they want to have the option for themselves. And the compromise Roe essentially allowed this attitude. Democrats would be best advised just to promise to bring back Roe and not force people to take a moral position.
Middleoftheroaddem’s expert knowledge of NJ politics and alleged preferences for abortion right up to the moment of birth notwithstanding, I don’t really see many elected Democrats anywhere in the nation pushing for anything more than restoration of Roe. That in and of itself is going to be a generational big lift.
Another way to put it: Dobbs is incompatible with any of the postulated "sometimes allowed" positions. So, the politics is now between the "never under any circumstance" position (Mike Pence) and the entire set of the others. They all want to have the right to make the decision in case they get into a problematic situation, even if they disagree with others on the details.
In other words: Dobbs has created a coalition that was not there before. This is the reason for the backlash that is clearly reflected in election and initiative results. In yet other words: Kevin is too clever by half on this issue.
Voters do not understand the fine points of economics* or military readiness. But they do understand this issue because it is close to home (maybe with the exception of catholic clergy and monks who don't have any women in their private lives).
* no wonder since economists don't seem to understand them either...
So much to unpack here that I will just raise a few points. 1- Actual election results (pro-choicers are more motivated). 2-That abortion should sometimes be legal/illegal has been lumped with the pro-life crowd but Atrios argues persuasively that it should have been the other way. 3-The question begs for evasive answers, typically erring on the pro-life side because of the nature of the controversy and how the media has portrayed it and even then the pro-choice remains healthy (Pew has abortion support as 61-37-its highest ever). There are reasons why the GOP is trying to figure out how to address the situation.
You get a different answer if you tell someone they or a loved one is pregnant and wants to get an abortion.
Sorry, I don't buy it. Most people view current red state restrictions as full abortion bans, and that is indeed what they are; the exceptions are virtually impossible to qualify for. Even health of the mother exceptions aren't real in red states: the exceptions states, paraphrasing: "if a patients is likely to suffer significant organ damage". In PA, which is truly pro-choice, the law states "if **in the doctor's best judgement**, a patient's health is at risk" (or serious risk after the 2nd semester)."
People know that in red states, abortion is effectively banned, and they're not happy about it. Even in Kansas FFS.
My guess is that Dobbs is going to have a significant impact on elections until there's a national law protecting abortion rights.
I said earlier this year that what Dobbs did was motivate pro-choice voters to get out and vote. That is the backlash, not a change in opinion.
I stick by this.
Like so many things that baffle me about this nation, here we have a 50/50 split on what I consider an major moral issue that should (?) have an overwhelming majority for one position or the other.
Are moral issues a priority for most folks or for the nation as a whole ? As a society, Isn't money our highest value ? As individuals, aren't respite, family, diversion, avoidance, and pleasure higher values than morals ?
I find so much of human behavior baffling. I alternate between being baffled at the irrationality, ignorance, cruelty, and lack of effort, versus acceptance of the reality that I just will never understand, versus acceptance or sadness that our species just isn't good enough to care about.
Maybe because it's not the senitment that's changed, but the intensity level of voter activation for different voting blocks?
A more interesting poll to review would have been the number of people who view abortion as a #1 issue, as a peek into voter intensity, which is the real variable here.
I'm all in favor of realism, but this seems unduly pessimistic. I buy the general point (with the added qualification) that Dobb's did not fundamentally shift attitudes (and that it probably also galvanized people). But I quite suspicious of the "evenly split" story Gallup tells.
Pew, for example, shows a 60/40 spit, which seems far more in line with electoral results.