The mainstream coverage of the latest post-Roe poll predictably focuses on the fact that a majority of Americans support legal abortion in some or all circumstances. But the new poll also indicates that the percentage of people who believe abortion should be illegal in “most circumstances” or “all circumstances” increased by seven percentage points.
As pro-life statistician Dr. Michael New pointed out: “This is the highest level of pro-life sentiment since the Dobbs leak in May 2022. Other survey questions also indicate increasing public opposition to abortion.”
New noted that there are other indications of the solidity of American pro-life sentiment in the new data set as well.
“The survey asked respondents about whether ‘your state should allow someone to obtain a legal abortion’ in each of four different circumstances,” New wrote in National Review Online.
“For each circumstance, support for legal abortion fell during the past year,” New continued.
“Notably, the percentage of people who supported legal abortion if the woman ‘does not want to be pregnant for any reason’ fell by five percentage points. Considering the media’s consistently negative coverage of pro-life laws, this gain in pro-life sentiment is welcome news.”
As we reported last month, this is the second poll in as many months that indicates a pro-life shift—which is particularly significant considering a relentless and well-funded campaign to persuade Americans that abortion laws kill women. On June 9, a Gallup poll found that while 61 percent of women identify as “pro-choice,” only 41 percent of men do. The same percentage of women who identified as pro-choice in 2022 identify as pro-choice today, but in 2022, 48 percent of men also identified as pro-choice, a shift of 7 percent.
As Lydia Saad of Gallup noted: “Currently, 32% of women and 54% of men identify as pro-life.” Even more significantly, the Gallup poll showed a slight increase in pro-life sentiment in 2024. Overall, 43 percent of respondents identified as “pro-life,” a two percentage point gain from last year’s Gallup survey, New noted. “There were also small gains in the percentage of people who thought abortion was “morally wrong” and the percentage of people who thought abortion should either be ‘illegal’ or ‘legal in only a few circumstances.’”
Ramesh Ponnuru, writer for National Review and author of The Party of Death, observed recently that polling trends indicate that the backlash to the fall of Roe v. Wade appears to be dissipating. “In May 2022, right after the leak of the ruling, the two pro-abortion options hit a combined record high of 53 percent and the pro-life ones a record low of 45 percent,” Ponnuru wrote last month. “The latest numbers suggest a fading of that backlash: We’re down to a 49–48 percent split in favor of the pro-abortion options. I would not be surprised if next year those numbers went back even further toward the historical pattern.”
In 2022, the prevailing presumption was that the fall of Roe was not only a catastrophe for the GOP, but for the pro-life movement—a sort of “dog catches the car” moment. Many Republicans, including Donald Trump, bought that narrative. But three years on, the backlash to Dobbs is fading, while the work of the pro-life movement continues. Consider, for example, a list of Planned Parenthood centers that have shut down this year alone:
Gilroy, CA Madera, CA San Mateo, CA Santa Cruz, CA South San Francisco, CA Evansville, IN Ames, IA Cedar Rapids, IA Sioux City, IA Urbandale, IA Jackson, MI Petoskey, MI Marquette, MI Ann Arbor, MI Apple Valley, MN Richfield, MN Alexandria, MN Bemidji, MN Manhattan, NY Springfield, OH Hamilton, OH Tyler, TX St. George, UT Logan, UT St. Johnsbury, VT.
Pro-lifers have reason to be encouraged. Pro-life sentiment, while not the majority, has proven remarkably durable in the face of a tremendous propaganda surge. There is more work to be done, and thousands of pro-lifers doing it.
