The United States Supreme Court released an opinion on June 24 that has overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling from 1973. And most Americans disapprove, according to a new poll.
A survey from CBS-YouGov that was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade concluded that most Americans disapprove of the reversal from the Supreme Court. More than half (59%) of Americans disapprove of the court striking down of Roe, according to the poll, while 41% approve. Additionally, 52% believe the decision is a “step backward for America.”
A now-authenticated leaked draft majority opinion published on Politico from May hinted that a reversal from the court was coming.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion draft first disclosed in May. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he went on to say, citing a 1992 case that affirmed the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
With Roe v. Wade now overturned, it’s worth taking a look at how Americans feel about the 1973 decision, and about abortion as an issue.
The polling data is pretty clear that a majority of Americans think that Roe v. Wade should not have been overturned. According to a January poll from CNN, 69% of Americans want to keep Roe v. Wade intact, while just 30% want the ruling completely overturned.
This position is not a recent change, either, as support has remained fairly consistent for more than 20 years. Since 1989, between 52% and 66% of U.S. adults have said they want Roe v. Wade to remain, according to polling conducted and compiled by Gallup.
And according to data compiled by FiveThirtyEight from Pew, Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and YouGov, roughly 10% to 15% of Americans think abortion should be illegal in all cases, about 25% to 30% want abortion to be legal in all cases, and 55% to 65% tell pollsters that they want abortion to be legal in some or most cases.
When asked if abortion should be legal in the first trimester, 61% of Americans agree, a slight drop from the 69% of Americans who say they support Roe v. Wade. A majority of Americans also say that abortions in the second and third trimesters should be illegal in almost all cases, according to AP-NORC data.
Only 1.3% of abortions are performed at 21 weeks of gestation or later, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
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A more comprehensive view of how Americans feel about abortion and when it should be allowed can be seen below.
Results based on interviews with 1,125 U.S. adults conducted June 10-14. The margin of error is 4.2 percentage points for the full sample.
AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research
Abortion is a complex issue that is often reduced to two sides, but Americans’ feelings on the matter are more nuanced.
“What it speaks to is the fact that the debate is dominated by the extreme positions on both sides,” Barbara Carvalho, a pollster at Marist, said in 2019. “People do see the issue as very complicated, very complex. Their positions don’t fall along one side or the other.”
See also: Joe Manchin reacts to Roe v. Wade ruling: ‘I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh’
Some political analysts have argued that any attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court could result in a boost for Democratic turnout in November’s midterm elections, but voters in recent years have not identified abortion as a top issue. Among registered voters in the 2020 election, abortion ranked 12th highest on a list of issues “very important” to their vote, according to Pew Research, behind other issues such as climate change, gun control and immigration.
Democrats were quick to condemn the Supreme Court’s decision. President Joe Biden denounced the ruling as “a sad day for the court, and for the country.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement saying, “millions upon millions of American women are having their rights taken from them by five unelected Justices on the extremist MAGA court.”
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, also released a statement following the news. “The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling is courageous and correct,” he said.
