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How the Right to Legal Abortion Changed the Arc of All Women’s Lives

By Katha Pollitt

I’ve never had an abortion. In this, I am like most American women. A frequently quoted statistic from a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, which reports that one in four women will have an abortion before the age of forty-five, may strike you as high, but it means that a large majority of women never need to end a pregnancy. (Indeed, the abortion rate has been declining for decades, although it’s disputed how much of that decrease is due to better birth control, and wider use of it, and how much to restrictions that have made abortions much harder to get.) Now that the Supreme Court seems likely to overturn Roe v. Wade sometime in the next few years—Alabama has passed a near-total ban on abortion, and Ohio, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri have passed “heartbeat” bills that, in effect, ban abortion later than six weeks of pregnancy, and any of these laws, or similar ones, could prove the catalyst—I wonder if women who have never needed to undergo the procedure, and perhaps believe that they never will, realize the many ways that the legal right to abortion has undergirded their lives.

Legal abortion means that the law recognizes a woman as a person. It says that she belongs to herself. Most obviously, it means that a woman has a safe recourse if she becomes pregnant as a result of being raped. (Believe it or not, in some states, the law allows a rapist to sue for custody or visitation rights.) It means that doctors no longer need to deny treatment to pregnant women with certain serious conditions—cancer, heart disease, kidney disease—until after they’ve given birth, by which time their health may have deteriorated irretrievably. And it means that non-Catholic hospitals can treat a woman promptly if she is having a miscarriage. (If she goes to a Catholic hospital, she may have to wait until the embryo or fetus dies. In one hospital, in Ireland, such a delay led to the death of a woman named Savita Halappanavar, who contracted septicemia. Her case spurred a movement to repeal that country’s constitutional amendment banning abortion.)

The legalization of abortion, though, has had broader and more subtle effects than limiting damage in these grave but relatively uncommon scenarios. The revolutionary advances made in the social status of American women during the nineteen-seventies are generally attributed to the availability of oral contraception, which came on the market in 1960. But, according to a 2017 study by the economist Caitlin Knowles Myers, “The Power of Abortion Policy: Re-Examining the Effects of Young Women’s Access to Reproductive Control,” published in the Journal of Political Economy , the effects of the Pill were offset by the fact that more teens and women were having sex, and so birth-control failure affected more people. Complicating the conventional wisdom that oral contraception made sex risk-free for all, the Pill was also not easy for many women to get. Restrictive laws in some states barred it for unmarried women and for women under the age of twenty-one. The Roe decision, in 1973, afforded thousands upon thousands of teen-agers a chance to avoid early marriage and motherhood. Myers writes, “Policies governing access to the pill had little if any effect on the average probabilities of marrying and giving birth at a young age. In contrast, policy environments in which abortion was legal and readily accessible by young women are estimated to have caused a 34 percent reduction in first births, a 19 percent reduction in first marriages, and a 63 percent reduction in ‘shotgun marriages’ prior to age 19.”

Access to legal abortion, whether as a backup to birth control or not, meant that women, like men, could have a sexual life without risking their future. A woman could plan her life without having to consider that it could be derailed by a single sperm. She could dream bigger dreams. Under the old rules, inculcated from girlhood, if a woman got pregnant at a young age, she married her boyfriend; and, expecting early marriage and kids, she wouldn’t have invested too heavily in her education in any case, and she would have chosen work that she could drop in and out of as family demands required.

In 1970, the average age of first-time American mothers was younger than twenty-two. Today, more women postpone marriage until they are ready for it. (Early marriages are notoriously unstable, so, if you’re glad that the divorce rate is down, you can, in part, thank Roe.) Women can also postpone childbearing until they are prepared for it, which takes some serious doing in a country that lacks paid parental leave and affordable childcare, and where discrimination against pregnant women and mothers is still widespread. For all the hand-wringing about lower birth rates, most women— eighty-six per cent of them —still become mothers. They just do it later, and have fewer children.

Most women don’t enter fields that require years of graduate-school education, but all women have benefitted from having larger numbers of women in those fields. It was female lawyers, for example, who brought cases that opened up good blue-collar jobs to women. Without more women obtaining law degrees, would men still be shaping all our legislation? Without the large numbers of women who have entered the medical professions, would psychiatrists still be telling women that they suffered from penis envy and were masochistic by nature? Would women still routinely undergo unnecessary hysterectomies? Without increased numbers of women in academia, and without the new field of women’s studies, would children still be taught, as I was, that, a hundred years ago this month, Woodrow Wilson “gave” women the vote? There has been a revolution in every field, and the women in those fields have led it.

It is frequently pointed out that the states passing abortion restrictions and bans are states where women’s status remains particularly low. Take Alabama. According to one study , by almost every index—pay, workforce participation, percentage of single mothers living in poverty, mortality due to conditions such as heart disease and stroke—the state scores among the worst for women. Children don’t fare much better: according to U.S. News rankings , Alabama is the worst state for education. It also has one of the nation’s highest rates of infant mortality (only half the counties have even one ob-gyn), and it has refused to expand Medicaid, either through the Affordable Care Act or on its own. Only four women sit in Alabama’s thirty-five-member State Senate, and none of them voted for the ban. Maybe that’s why an amendment to the bill proposed by State Senator Linda Coleman-Madison was voted down. It would have provided prenatal care and medical care for a woman and child in cases where the new law prevents the woman from obtaining an abortion. Interestingly, the law allows in-vitro fertilization, a procedure that often results in the discarding of fertilized eggs. As Clyde Chambliss, the bill’s chief sponsor in the state senate, put it, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.” In other words, life only begins at conception if there’s a woman’s body to control.

Indifference to women and children isn’t an oversight. This is why calls for better sex education and wider access to birth control are non-starters, even though they have helped lower the rate of unwanted pregnancies, which is the cause of abortion. The point isn’t to prevent unwanted pregnancy. (States with strong anti-abortion laws have some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country; Alabama is among them.) The point is to roll back modernity for women.

So, if women who have never had an abortion, and don’t expect to, think that the new restrictions and bans won’t affect them, they are wrong. The new laws will fall most heavily on poor women, disproportionately on women of color, who have the highest abortion rates and will be hard-pressed to travel to distant clinics.

But without legal, accessible abortion, the assumptions that have shaped all women’s lives in the past few decades—including that they, not a torn condom or a missed pill or a rapist, will decide what happens to their bodies and their futures—will change. Women and their daughters will have a harder time, and there will be plenty of people who will say that they were foolish to think that it could be otherwise.

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By Jia Tolentino

By Isaac Chotiner

By Margaret Talbot

Op-ed: How to save abortion rights

May 10, 2022 – A Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn the federal right to abortion in the U.S. if finalized is “humanitarian malfeasance,” according to Michelle Williams , dean of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

In an op-ed published May 5, 2022 in the Emancipator—a collaboration of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research and the Boston Globe—Williams called the draft opinion “egregiously wrong” from a public health perspective, a humanitarian perspective, and an equity perspective. She pointed out that women who can’t get abortions, compared with their peers who are able to terminate pregnancies, are more likely to struggle financially, to have health problems, and to be women of color.

Williams listed four ways to protect a woman’s right to choose. One way is that Congress should codify the right to abortion into federal law. The move may require the U.S. Senate to lift the filibuster, since it has so far been impossible for that chamber to muster the 60 votes needed to protect abortion rights, Williams wrote.

Williams also called on states with progressive legislatures and governors to take steps to protect abortion rights within their borders; recommended that advocacy groups mobilize to support women in the many states where abortion is likely to be banned; and urged voters to elect candidates who support abortion rights.

Read the op-ed in The Emancipator: The right to an abortion can be saved

The negative health implications of restriction abortion access (Harvard Chan School feature)

The Abortion Policy Most Americans Want

I dug into the numbers, and found that views were more straightforward than I thought—and the exercise was more disquieting than I anticipated.

The relationship between public opinion and the codification of rights is not linear. Public opinion lagged decades behind the courts on the question of interracial marriage, but led the way on same-sex marriage. In theory, rights supersede public opinion—you should have the right to free speech even if what you’re saying is very unpopular. In practice, rights are safer when they are popular.

Now that the Supreme Court seems poised to reverse itself on Roe v. Wade , abortion-rights advocates and anti-abortion advocates are both claiming the mantle of popularity. Who’s right? I dug into the numbers, and found that views were more straightforward than I’d thought—and the exercise was more disquieting than I’d anticipated.

Most people want abortion to be legal, and they want restrictions on its availability. Beyond that basic position, however, voters’ views can appear contradictory. That’s in part because, although Americans tell pollsters that the details of an abortion policy are important in determining whether or not they will support it, survey respondents display very little knowledge of the relevant details.

Kimberly Wehle: What we keep getting wrong about abortion

One study indicates that myths about abortion are pervasive enough to skew voters’ understanding of the issue. Women correctly answered 18 percent of questions about abortion regulations in their state, and correctly identified only 23 percent of true statements about abortion. For instance, many incorrectly believe that “childbirth is safer than abortion” and that “abortion causes depression and anxiety.”

Similarly, in a 2016 poll by Vox and Perry/Undem of 1,060 registered voters, only 19 percent of respondents correctly answered that giving birth was less safe than having an abortion; 31 percent of respondents said they weren’t sure whether doctors who provide abortions are “licensed medical professionals like other doctors.” (The answer is yes, they are.)

Americans may not have a firm grasp of the details. But pollsters have still been able to learn a few clear lessons about attitudes on abortion policy.

Views about abortion are unusually stable

In 1958, when Gallup first asked Americans whether they approved of marriage between Black and white people, only 4 percent said yes. That number rose steadily over the next 50 years: In 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional, approval stood at a little less than 20 percent; in 1997, 64 percent; and in 2021, 94 percent.

In 1937, when Gallup polled Americans about whether they were willing to vote for a woman presidential candidate, 33 percent said yes; in 1959, 57 percent said yes; and at the end of the century, 92 percent answered affirmatively.

In 1996, just 27 percent of Americans told Gallup that they believed same-sex marriages should be recognized as equal to “traditional marriages.” By 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states had to recognize same-sex marriage, that number had shot up to 60 percent.

Abortion is different. In the 1970s, a large majority of Americans wanted abortion to be legal in at least certain circumstances. That remains true today.

From the May 2022 issue: The future of abortion in a post- Roe America

“You look at anything like support for interracial marriage or voting for a woman for president or gay marriage or legalizing marijuana … all of the cultural shifts that have happened since the dawn of polling, and this is the thing that hasn’t shifted. Abortion is a real exception in the cultural landscape,” Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, told me.

In a comprehensive review of abortion polling, the American Enterprise Institute’s Karlyn Bowman found that—across decades, pollsters, and different types of questions—attitudes have remained stable since the 1970s. For example, a 1990 NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of Americans believed “the choice [to have an abortion] should be left up to the woman and her doctor.” In October 2009, this number was 51 percent. A Yankelovich/ Time /CNN poll from August 1987 found that 34 percent of Americans believed abortion was the “woman’s decision no matter what the reason”; 39 percent said the same in January 2003. In August 1997, 40 percent of people identified themselves as pro-life to a Fox News pollster; in June 2019, that number was 45 percent.

Saad told me that opinions about abortion have also remained stable within generational cohorts across time. Women ages 18 to 29 in 1975 had roughly the same views as women ages 63 to 75 today: “The same age group will flash forward 50 years, and the balance of views hasn’t changed on the legality question. So these are hardwired,” she explained.

People want abortion to be legal, but favor a variety of restrictions

Gallup has found that the number of people favoring legal abortion under any circumstance has consistently outstripped the number of those wanting it to be illegal under any circumstance since 1975. But the broad center of public opinion says that abortion should be legal only “under certain circumstances.” This number has bounced from 54 percent in 1975 to a high of 61 percent in 1997 to 48 percent in 2021.

What are those circumstances? Americans are sympathetic to women seeking abortions if they are victims of rape or incest, if they have a serious health concern, or if the baby will be born with a disability. They are significantly less willing to approve of abortion in cases of economic hardship or personal preference.

To put some numbers on it: In 1972, 83 percent of Americans agreed that abortions should be allowed when “a woman’s health [is] seriously endangered by the pregnancy” and 72 percent said the same when the pregnancy is the product of rape. In 2021, those numbers were 87 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

At least 70 percent of Americans since 1972 have also favored legal abortion if “there is a strong chance of a serious defect in [the] baby.”

A poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago semiregularly from 1972 to 2018 found that Americans are evenly split on the acceptability of abortion if the “family has [a] very low income and cannot afford any more children” or if a woman is married and doesn’t want any more children. (The precise figures in 2018 were 47 percent and 49 percent in support, respectively.)

On the question of timing, polls by Gallup/CNN/ USA Today and Associated Press/NORC from 1996 to 2021 reveal that more than 60 percent of Americans say abortion “should be generally legal” in the first three months of a pregnancy. That number drops precipitously, to the low 30s, when Americans are asked about the second trimester, and to below 20 percent when they’re asked about the third.

Various restrictions have broad support as well. In 2011, 69 percent of respondents told Gallup that they support a law forcing women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours before having one. In that same year, 71 percent said minors should have to get parental consent for an abortion. And in 2005, a Gallup/CNN/ USA Today poll found 64 percent support for requiring that the “husband of a married woman be notified if she decides to have an abortion.”

Respondents may not understand how cumbersome these requirements are. “Most voters are trying to express really vague concepts through these incredibly specific questions that we ask them,” Charlotte Swasey, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told me.

Relatedly, laws that ban abortions in the second trimester don’t represent a middle-ground consensus position, because states that pass them also tend to put up barriers to getting abortions early on.

Helen Lewis: How to win the abortion argument

One 2006 study indicated that 91 percent of women who had an abortion in the second trimester would have preferred to terminate their pregnancy earlier. Some 67 percent of second-trimester patients, for instance, said they’d had to delay having their abortion because it took them so long to make arrangements; 36 percent said “it took some time before I knew I was pregnant or how far along I was.”

The political salience of abortion

On the national level, voters have generally trusted Democrats over Republicans on abortion policy. In 2012, when the Pew Research Center asked voters whether President Barack Obama or his rival in the election, Mitt Romney, was better suited to handle abortion policy, Obama edged out Romney 55 percent to 36 percent. (The same poll showed that 54 percent of voters believed correctly that Romney was pro-life, whereas 21 percent believed that incorrectly of Obama.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given how contentious abortion is in the national conversation, voters tend not to rank it as high as other issues. In an October 2021 YouGov/ Economist poll , 44 percent of respondents said that abortion was “very important” to them but only 4 percent named it as a “top issue.”

But of the people who do rank abortion highly, anti-abortion advocates are more likely to subject their candidates to litmus tests on the issue. In a 2015 Gallup poll, 23 percent of those opposed to abortion and 19 percent of abortion-rights supporters said they would vote only for candidates who shared their views on the issue.

This dynamic could be shifting. As FiveThirtyEight reported , “After the Supreme Court allowed a highly restrictive abortion law to go into effect in Texas last fall, the share of Biden voters who said abortion is a ‘very important’ issue for them jumped, while the share of Trump voters who said the same thing fell.”

All of the aforementioned polling has been conducted nationally, but with the imminent demise of Roe likely, the politics of abortion will happen at the state level, where public opinion varies significantly and where Republican legislatures are ready to severely restrict or eliminate abortion rights.

I found writing this essay difficult. While scrolling through poll after poll, I resented that I had to care about public opinion on something as private as a medical decision. The doctor’s office is crowded enough without inviting in the opinions of 300 million Americans. I can’t imagine weighing in on someone’s decision to donate an organ, or to stop treatment for a difficult disease. My irritation only compounded as the survey data revealed a public that feels a sense of ownership over my choices. I imagine the median voter staring disapprovingly at me with a clipboard, trying to determine if I deserve full decision-making authority over my body. Nobody should get to volunteer my body, my time, and my life to the state, no matter how unpopular my choices.

For now, few believe that they should have the ability to impose their opinions about abortion via state violence. Pew has found that 47 percent of American adults say women should face penalties for getting an abortion “in a situation where it is illegal.” When pressed, however, only 14 percent of respondents think that jail time is an appropriate punishment, another 16 percent support community service, and 17 percent remain unsure.

But we can expect the disconnect to grow between what Americans want and what they get. Republicans in states across the country have passed or are pondering legislation well outside the mainstream of public opinion. So-called heartbeat bills , which have been proposed in several states, would limit abortion to the first six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. In Louisiana, Republicans even considered a bill that would treat abortion as murder, meaning patients could be charged as criminals. In Oklahoma , the second Roe falls, abortion will be banned, with no exception for rape or incest. To put a fine point on it, these are extremely radical policies, intended to almost entirely eradicate abortions.

The effect will be significant. One study that looked at 1,178 counties in 18 states from 2000 to 2014 found that “highly restrictive” abortion policies led to a 17 percent decrease from the median abortion rate. Another study estimated that total abortion bans would lead to a 21 percent increase in deaths due to pregnancy-related mortality. This is the new reality, one that has not felt possible while most women of childbearing age have been alive.

Americans’ views have remained stable under a relatively stable legal framework. But when stories of women seeking unsafe and illegal abortions hit the front pages, when victims of rape or incest find themselves forced to bear children, when underfunded social services struggle to provide adequate care for newly born but uncared-for infants, all of that could change.

Non-Trump Republicans are reminded that the party isn’t really theirs

You can be a Republican and not like Trump, but you are not welcome to share that opinion.

For eight years, Larry Hogan was a Republican governor of a heavily blue state. This is a unique role in American politics, one of the last remaining places where the partisan bifurcation that defines national politics fails to draw sharp boundaries. Hogan won election and reelection in Maryland even as the state voted for Democrats for president and the Senate by wide margins.

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Hogan’s announcement that he would seek the Senate seat held by retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D) offered a unique opportunity for his party. With the Senate evenly divided between the parties, any gain of a seat is hugely important — and here was a chance to potentially lock up a blue seat for at least six years. One would justifiably assume that the national Republican Party was thrilled about Hogan’s candidacy.

Perhaps it was, until Hogan did the one thing you’re not allowed to do as a Republican: criticize Donald Trump , even obliquely.

Hogan had criticized Trump before, writing an essay for this newspaper in which he faulted Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. That was way back in 2020, though. When he offered new — milder! — apostasy last week, the backlash was sharp.

You will recall the recent news that Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, part of an effort to cover up a hush money payment made to an adult-film actress before the 2016 election. In the estimation of most Americans , including most Democrats and independents, this was the right verdict for the jury in Manhattan to draw. Meaning that it was almost certainly the collective view of Marylanders that Trump should have been found guilty.

As news broke that the jury had reached a verdict, Hogan offered thoughts that were a case study in careful politicking: not celebrating the prospect of Trump’s guilt but rejecting the sort of hyperventilating excoriations coming from Trump and his allies.

“At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship,” his message on social media read in part. “We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

Trumpworld was furious . That included Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“I don’t support what he just said there,” Lara Trump said when presented with Hogan’s comments. “I think it’s ridiculous.”

She added that Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point and, quite frankly, anybody in America, if that’s the way you feel. That’s very upsetting to hear that.”

Lara Trump is not just a Trump, of course. She is also the co-chair of the Republican Party, the group committed to ensuring that Hogan wins. When CNN host Kasie Hunt pressed her on whether Hogan’s comments meant he wouldn’t receive that support, Lara Trump hedged: “I will get back to you on all the specifics monetarily.”

Lara Trump has not held her position for long. She comes to the party by way of being a verbose advocate for her father-in-law. She is not practiced in walking the line between fervent defense of Trump and protecting the institutional needs of the party. But then, it’s not clear that her mandate at the party is to worry much about non-Trump candidates.

“My number one goal is making sure that Donald Trump is the 47th president,” she told the Associated Press last month. If that means prioritizing Trump’s argument that the New York verdict was a repulsive abuse of power over Hogan’s tailored effort to appeal to Maryland voters? Well, too bad for Larry Hogan.

It’s very much a reflection of how the GOP more broadly has reacted to Donald Trump’s ongoing centrality to Republican politics. There remain Republicans who are skeptical of Trump, voting against him in the presidential primaries and telling pollsters either that they won’t vote for him in November or that they are wary of doing so.

In recent Fox News polling, a quarter of Republicans who indicated that they planned to vote for Trump in November said they were doing so mostly in opposition to President Biden — suggesting that their support for Trump is not rooted in the sort of fervency that their party’s co-chair demands. No worries, though: Three-quarters of Republicans said their vote was centered on Trump.

In the wake of the verdict, YouGov conducted polling for CBS that included a question about the need for Republicans to remain loyal to Trump. Four in 5 Republicans said it was at least somewhat important for them to do so, including more than two-thirds who said it was very important. Far fewer said it was not important.

In Maryland, Hogan enjoys high favorability ratings overall and from members of his party, according to Washington Post-University of Maryland polling released in March. In that poll, he led the eventual Democratic nominee Angela Alsobrooks by double digits, partly on the strength of his overwhelming support from Republicans.

But did you hear that his response to the New York verdict wasn’t a full-throated rejection of the possibility that the trial was fair? Maybe he isn’t a real Republican after all.

Trump has long defined “Republican” as meaning “Trump loyal”; it’s why he deploys the term “RINO” or Republican-in-name-only as a descriptor for his critics so frequently. By clearing the path for his daughter-in-law to serve as co-chair of the party, Trump helped cement that view as an institutional one for the GOP. By extension, he helped make non-Trump Republicans more obviously unwelcome in the party — even if they potentially represented the seat needed for the party to gain control of the Senate.

Lara Trump’s criticism was an odd comment for a party chair to make. It was a very typical comment for a Trump loyalist to make. And in the revamped Republican Party, Trump, not the party, is the institution that is first in line for protection and advocacy.

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Who is running?: President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch .

Presidential debates: Biden and Trump agreed to a June 27 debate on CNN and a Sept. 10 debate broadcast by ABC News.

Key dates and events: From January to June, voters in all states and U.S. territories will pick their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.

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Views on abortion, 1995-2024.

• Views on abortion by religious affiliation
• Views on abortion by party identification
• Views on abortion by political party and ideology
• Views on abortion by gender
• Views on abortion by race and ethnicity
• Views on abortion by age
• Views on abortion by level of education

Public Opinion on Abortion

While public support for legal abortion has fluctuated somewhat in two decades of polling, it has remained relatively stable over the past several years. Currently, 63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted April 8-14, 2024. Data since 2019 is from the Center’s online American Trends Panel; prior data is from telephone surveys. Data for 1995-2005 is from ABC News/Washington Post polls; for 2006, an AP-Ipsos poll.

Views on abortion by religious affiliation, 2024

About three-quarters of White evangelical Protestants (73%) think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. By contrast, 86% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 71% of Black Protestants, 64% of White nonevangelical Protestants and 59% of Catholics.

Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted April 8-14, 2024.

Views on abortion by party identification, 2024

Among Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party, 57% say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. By contrast, 85% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Views on abortion by political party and ideology, 2024

Conservative Republicans and Republican leaners are far more likely to say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases than to say that it should be legal (71% vs. 27%). Among moderate and liberal Republicans, 67% say abortion should be legal, while 31% say it should be illegal.

The vast majority of liberal Democrats and Democratic leaners (96%) support legal abortion, as do about three-quarters of conservative and moderate Democrats (76%).

Views on abortion by gender, 2024

Majorities of both men (61%) and women (64%) express support for legal abortion.

Views on abortion by race and ethnicity, 2024

Majorities of adults across racial and ethnic groups express support for legal abortion. About three-quarters of Asian (76%) and Black (73%) adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 60% of White adults and 59% of Hispanic adults.

* Estimates for Asian adults are representative of English speakers only. Note: White, Black and Asian adults include those who report being one race and are not Hispanic. Hispanics are of any race.

Views on abortion by age, 2024

Among adults under age 30, 76% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 61% of adults in their 30s and 40s. Among those in their 50s and early 60s, 57% express support for legal abortion, as do 59% of those ages 65 and older.

Views on abortion by level of education, 2024

About two-thirds of college graduates (68%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as do 64% of those with some college education. Among those with a high school degree or less education, 56% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 41% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

Note: Here are  the questions used in these surveys , and information about  the Center’s polling methodology .

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Guest Essay

Melinda French Gates: The Enemies of Progress Play Offense. I Want to Help Even the Match.

By Melinda French Gates

Ms. French Gates is a philanthropist and the founder of the charitable organization Pivotal.

Many years ago, I received this piece of advice: “Set your own agenda, or someone else will set it for you.” I’ve carried those words with me ever since.

That’s why, next week, I will leave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , of which I was a co-founder almost 25 years ago, to open a new chapter in my philanthropy. To begin, I am announcing $1 billion in new spending over the next two years for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.

In nearly 20 years as an advocate for women and girls, I have learned that there will always be people who say it’s not the right time to talk about gender equality. Not if you want to be relevant. Not if you want to be effective with world leaders (most of them men). The second the global agenda gets crowded, women and girls fall off.

It’s frustrating and shortsighted. Decades of research on economics , well-being and governance make it clear that investing in women and girls benefits everyone. We know that economies with women’s full participation have more room to grow. That women’s political participation is associated with decreased corruption. That peace agreements are more durable when women are involved in writing them. That reducing the time women spend in poor health could add as much as $1 trillion to the global economy by 2040.

And yet, around the world, women are seeing a tremendous upsurge in political violence and other threats to their safety, in conflict zones where rape is used as a tool of war, in Afghanistan where the Taliban takeover has erased 20 years of progress for women and girls, in many low-income countries where the number of acutely malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women is soaring.

In the United States, maternal mortality rates continue to be unconscionable , with Black and Native American mothers at highest risk. Women in 14 states have lost the right to terminate a pregnancy under almost any circumstances. We remain the only advanced economy without any form of national paid family leave. And the number of teenage girls experiencing suicidal thoughts and persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness is at a decade high.

Despite the pressing need, only about 2 percent of charitable giving in the United States goes to organizations focused on women and girls, and only about half a percentage point goes to organizations focused on women of color specifically.

When we allow this cause to go so chronically underfunded, we all pay the cost. As shocking as it is to contemplate, my 1-year-old granddaughter may grow up with fewer rights than I had.

Over the past few weeks, as part of the $1 billion in new funding I’m committing to these efforts, I have begun directing new grants through my organization, Pivotal, to groups working in the United States to protect the rights of women and advance their power and influence. These include the National Women’s Law Center, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

While I have long focused on improving contraceptive access overseas, in the post-Dobbs era, I now feel compelled to support reproductive rights here at home. For too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.

I’m also experimenting with novel tactics to bring a wider range of perspectives into philanthropy. Recently, I offered 12 people whose work I admire their own $20 million grant-making fund to distribute as he or she sees fit. That group — which includes the former prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, the athlete and maternal-health advocate Allyson Felix, and an Afghan champion of girls’ education, Shabana Basij-Rasikh — represents a wide range of expertise and experience. I’m eager to see the landscape of funding opportunities through their eyes, and the results their approaches unlock.

In the fall, I will introduce a $250 million initiative focused on improving the mental and physical health of women and girls globally. By issuing an open call to grass-roots organizations beyond the reach of major funders, I hope to lift up groups with personal connections to the issues they work on. People on the front lines should get the attention and investment they deserve, including from me.

As a young woman, I could never have imagined that one day I would be part of an effort like this. Because I have been given this extraordinary opportunity, I am determined to do everything I can to seize it and to set an agenda that helps other women and girls set theirs, too.

Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist and the founder of Pivotal, a charitable, investment and advocacy organization.

Source photographs by Bryan Bedder, filipfoto, and Westend61, via Getty Images.

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