Vast Majority Of Americans Don’t Want Abortion Bans, Poll Finds—Even In States Where It’s Already Outlawed

Topline

Only a quarter of Americans want their state to ban abortion now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade—including less than a third of people who live in states that already outlaw the procedure—a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds, as more Republican-led states try to enact new abortion bans and as the midterm elections loom.

Abortion rights demonstrators gather outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24.

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Key Facts

The poll, conducted July 7 to 17, found 25% of the 1,847 U.S. adults polled wanted the laws in their state to ban abortion, while 61% would prefer their state guarantee abortion access.

That includes just 32% of respondents who live in states with abortion “trigger laws” or pre-Roe v. Wade abortion bans still on the book, while 51% would prefer their state enacted legal protections for abortion instead.

The only demographic polled that actually supported abortion bans was Republicans, with 54% wanting their state to outlaw the procedure versus 37% who would prefer laws that guarantee access.

Less than half of Republican women polled (48%) support banning the procedure, though that’s still higher than the 43% of GOP women who’d prefer their state protected access.

Republicans are more supportive of Roe v. Wade being overturned than they are of their own state banning abortion, with 71% of GOP respondents and 65% of Republican women saying they agreed with the court’s decision.

Only 9% of Democrats and 17% of Independents support their state banning abortion, along with 22% of people in states that protect abortion rights and 19% of all women polled.

Big Number

33%. That’s the share of all respondents who supported the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, while 65% disapproved of it. Republicans are the only demographic polled—spanning party affiliation, gender and race—in which a majority of respondents approved of the decision.

Tangent

Some 17 states had trigger or pre-Roe abortion bans for the purposes of KFF’s polling: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The states that protect abortion access as identified by KFF are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, plus Washington, D.C.

What We Don’t Know

What impact abortion will have on the midterms, as Democratic strategists and politicians hope Americans’ opposition to the Supreme Court ruling will increase voter turnout. The KFF poll, similar to other previous polls, found 55% of respondents say abortion will be “very important to their midterm vote,” including 77% of Democrats, and 43% say the Supreme Court’s decision has made them “more motivated” to vote. That being said, abortion still ranks behind inflation when it comes to the issues that are most important to people’s votes (77% said inflation was very important), and independent voters appear less swayed by abortion than Democrats. Independents rank abortion as their fourth most important political issue, the KFF poll found, and only 56% said they plan to support candidates who favor protecting abortion access. Other polling has shown Americans’ anger over abortion may not translate to the ballot box, with respondents who support the ruling indicating they’re more likely to vote than Americans who disapprove of it—possibly because they feel politicians aren’t doing enough to address the issue.

Key Background

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, leading to a wave of state-level abortion bans, with even more poised to soon pass. The West Virginia legislature is now considering passing an abortion ban after the state’s 19th century-era ban was blocked in court, and the Indiana Senate passed a bill on Saturday that could make the state the first to enact a new abortion ban in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe. What abortion bans should look like in the wake of Roe’s overturning is an increasingly fraught issue, however. While anti-abortion advocates have pushed for harsh abortion bans that don’t contain exemptions for rape or incest, KFF’s poll is in line with other polling showing Americans are broadly supportive of abortion rights and do not want total abortion bans without those exemptions. As a result, both Indiana and West Virginia’s proposed bills contain exemptions for rape and incest—angering both sides of the debate, as abortion rights advocates believe the bills go too far and anti-abortion advocates believe they don’t go far enough.