National

Percentage who say they think it should be possible to obtain a legal abortion for any reason

Data: General Social Survey; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals

Most Americans in recent polls think Roe v. Wade should be upheld but have no absolute position on abortion, saying it should either be mostly legal or mostly illegal.

The big picture: Years of polling have shown that Americans recognize gray areas in a way that you'd never hear about if you just listened to the politicians and the activists.

The closest thing to a consensus view: "It depends. It's not a simple yes or no answer," said Hannah Hartig, a research associate at Pew Research Center.

Between the lines: Here's what the polls really tell us — and what to remember as emotions rise over the likelihood that the Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade.

1) Most Americans are in the middle. In Gallup polling going back to 1975, the most common view has been that abortion should be "legal only under certain circumstances" — not that it should be "legal under any circumstances" or "illegal in all circumstances."

How broad that middle is depends on the wording of the question and how many options are provided. With Gallup, 48% said it should be legal only under certain circumstances as of May 2021.

But in a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2022, 71% said abortion should be legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or legal or illegal with some exceptions.

"Most people kind of live in the gray zone," said Ipsos pollster and senior vice president Chris Jackson. 

2) But majorities still want to uphold Roe v. Wade. When asked about it specifically, 54% in a Washington Post/ABC News poll in April said Roe should be upheld, as did 63% in a Fox News poll April 28-May 1.

Both were conducted before Politico reported on the draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe.

In Gallup polling going back to 1989, majorities have opposed overturning Roe, and support for overturning it has rarely risen above a third of Americans.

3) It depends on the categories and the questions. As with many polls on other topics, pollsters have found different answers on abortion by combining different groups and wording the questions in different ways.

For example, the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List released a poll of battleground states this week that found that 49% held what it defined as a "pro-life" view: 36% said abortion should be "illegal except in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life," and 13% said it "should always be illegal."

Pro-abortion rights groups, however, point to poll findings that suggest many people who are personally against abortion don't want the government to prevent others from getting one. They cite a Washington Post/ABC News question that found 75% agreed that the decision "should be left to the woman and her doctor," compared to 20% who said it should be regulated by law.

The bottom line is "who has power and control over these decisions," said Tresa Undem, a pollster who studies public opinion on abortion.

4) Democrats have moved more than Republicans. In a recent summary of abortion polling, Ipsos noted that there wasn't a lot of difference between Democrats and Republicans in the 1970s — but there's now about a 35-point difference in support for the right to obtain a legal abortion for any reason.

One reason: a big jump in Democratic support in the past few years, according to data from the General Social Survey.

"Democrats have become more liberal in the last decade or so, while Republicans have become a little more conservative," said Jackson.

5) People are weighing multiple questions. One example: nearly half of Americans — 48% — say there are cases where abortion is morally wrong but also should be legal, according to the Pew survey.

"For most people, this isn't just a legal question. It's also a moral question," said Besheer Mohamed, a senior researcher at Pew.

Another sign, according to the Pew survey: One in three agreed that life begins at conception, "so a fetus is a person with rights" — but also said the abortion decision "should belong solely to the pregnant woman."

And in the Fox News poll — the same one that found support for upholding Roe v. Wade — 54% said they'd favor banning abortion in their state after 15 weeks except in medical emergencies. That's a scenario similar to the Mississippi law in the Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe.

"There’s a black hole of what ifs," said Undem. "The clearest sense of opinion I get is that people tend to know every situation is different and want government out of these decisions. They are also reluctant to impose their personal beliefs on other people."

6) It's too early to know the election impact. Democrats have always warned that  overturning Roe would lead to a political earthquake — but while there are some midterm races that are being closely watched, the polling doesn't suggest a huge shift yet.

An Ipsos-Reuters poll taken right after the Supreme Court decision leaked found that two thirds of Americans would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported a law legalizing abortion if Roe is overturned.

But it also found that only a third said they'd be angry if Roe were overturned — mainly Democrats (51%) rather than independents (25%) or Republicans (24%).

Jackson noted that the actual ruling hasn't come yet and it's still early for most Americans to know what they might do about it in the midterms, or where abortion would rank in comparison to other issues like inflation. "The big question is, is that [anger] sustained ... until the election?"

Bill to protect abortion rights fails to pass Senate

Red states race to enact new abortion restrictions

Polling shows America in the middle on abortion

Americans are conflicted and recognize gray areas, even as most want to protect Roe v. Wade.

Axios Explains: Abortion

Politics & Policy

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Health

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it could begin a ripple effect that subsumes many other facets of reproductive health care — a reflection, in part, of decades' worth of medical advances that make the subject much more complicated than it was 50 years ago. 

Why it matters: Striking down the federal right to abortion could impact how people prevent becoming pregnant, how families grow and how miscarriages are managed.

Where it stands: If a leaked draft of the SCOTUS opinion to overturn abortion rights is finalized, states would decide whether abortion is legal, under what terms and even how abortion is defined. 

More than a dozen states already have laws in place that would automatically ban abortions if Roe is overturned. 

The language of these laws varies. But legal experts say they and other state laws create a hornet's nest of legal ambiguities.

"Banning abortion definitely has implications for other aspects of care, without a doubt. And it is everything from how you deal with miscarriages all the way to thinking about which methods of contraception are going to be acceptable," said Kaiser Family Foundation's Alina Salganicoff. "It's very complicated, and I think we're going to see a lot of laws as well as legal challenges to laws that we haven't seen before."

Between the lines: One immediate issue is the way state laws define "unborn human beings," and the way some definitions potentially make bans apply to embryos created through the IVF process and some forms of birth control.  

Some states' trigger laws define life as beginning at fertilization, or when a sperm penetrates an egg. 

Louisiana's trigger law, for example, specifies that "'unborn human being' means an individual living member of the species, homo sapiens, throughout the entire embryonic and fetal stages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth."

The IVF process works by fertilizing eggs with sperm in a lab and then transferring that fertilized egg — or embryo — to a uterus. But it's common for surplus embryos to be created that wind up going unused. 

Some state laws may confer legal protections to those unused embryos, experts say.

"There are going to be a lot of ancillary effects, and this could be quite catastrophic on the fertility industry," said Traci Keen, CEO of Mate Fertility. If a fertilized egg is declared life by law, then discarding that embryo "would be considered an abortion."

Some forms of birth control may also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a uterus and are considered forms of abortion by some conservatives.

The other side: Some other state laws contain language that experts say make them less likely to apply to IVF or contraception.

In Missouri's trigger law, for example, abortion is defined as terminating "the life of an embryo or fetus in his or her mother's womb," which may exclude embryos outside of the womb. 

Utah defines abortion as the termination of a pregnancy "after implantation of a fertilized ovum," suggesting protection only applies to embryos that have already implanted into the uterus. 

Arkansas, Kentucky and Louisiana laws specify that their abortion bans don't apply to contraception that's administered before a pregnancy can be detected through medical testing. 

The ruling could also have unintended consequences for managing miscarriages, which often uses the same methods as abortions.

"There's concerns about whether clinicians who are going to be working in states that will effectively ban abortion are going to be concerned about using a medication that is considered an abortifacient to manage the miscarriage," Salganicoff said.

State laws factor a provider's intent. That means providers may have to take additional steps to show they gave care after a fetus was already nonviable, to distinguish from providing the same care with the aim of terminating a pregnancy.

"I suspect in states where abortion is banned medical providers will develop appropriate techniques to determine compliance with the law. So I think it'll change the standard of care," said Naomi Cahn, co-director of UVA Law's Family Law Center. "I would imagine that they would want to be very careful in documenting this."

Experts say women may also be forced to carry pregnancies in which the baby won't survive after birth.

State laws generally allow abortions when the life of the mother is at risk, and some contain clauses saying that abortion is permissible to remove a "dead fetus" or a "dead, unborn child." That generally means the same procedure used for an abortion can be used for the removal of a dead fetus in the event of miscarriage or stillbirth.

But some women whose lives aren't at imminent risk could be imperiled as the pregnancy continues. Abortion may not be an option for them, nor for some women with nonviable pregnancies.

Texas' six-week abortion ban makes no exceptions for these scenarios, the New York Times reported last year.

What we're watching: Courts will likely have to interpret the scope of existing state laws. But in the meantime, states may move to write new policies.

Louisiana lawmakers recently advanced a bill that would classify abortion as homicide and allow women who end a pregnancy to face criminal charges. Experts say the legislation would also restrict IVF and emergency contraception, the Washington Post reports.

Other states have pushed "personhood" legislation that would give fetuses full protection under the law as early as fertilization, per KFF. But an abortion ban passed in Alabama in 2019 excluded eggs fertilized in the IVF process, a route other states may take going forward.

Overturning Roe creates a tempest for reproductive health

Overturning Roe could have ripple effect on other reproductive care

Illustration of a row of standing gavels set up and toppling like dominoes 

Abortion

Twin Cities

Axios Twin Cities

Abortion clinics are already preparing to shift people and resources away from red states, in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The other side: Blue states — including California, Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland and Massachusetts — are taking steps to prepare for a potential influx in patients seeking abortion care if Roe falls.

Many abortion providers "are planning to move or travel to places where they will be able to continue to care for patients," Alhambra Frarey, an OB-GYN in Pennsylvania and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement.

That means there is likely going to be a "saturation" of abortion providers in urban areas, particularly in blue states, said Iman Alsaden, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of Great Plains, which covers Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

"We have been preparing preemptively for this decision for a long time," said Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS), which covers: Iowa Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. She is also an abortion provider in St. Paul.

"We know that there are certain places in the country where we need to shore up access and make sure that we have space available for patients coming from all over."

She expects to see a 10% to 25% increase in demand for services in Minnesota, where access to abortion is protected by a 1995 state Supreme Court decision.

Between the lines: "We will need to assist people in ways that we currently rarely have to do, for example, with travel or with childcare or with other kinds of logistical help," PPNCS CEO Sarah Stoesz said.

What they're saying: Robyn Marty, director of operations at West Alabama's Women's Center, said the clinic's lone provider could need to find new work.

"How do I keep her when the thing that matters to her, the thing that she's been training for, is now something that could land her in jail?" Marty said.

Kentucky's two remaining abortion clinics briefly stopped providing abortions last month, after the state passed new restrictions. "That brief period of time ... was a very realistic window into what things would be like without Roe v. Wade," said Hanna Peterson, an abortion provider in the state.

She said she doesn't plan to relocate. "There's always more work to be done. But, you know, now that the threat is more imminent, I don't know that moving elsewhere would solve anything," she said.

How it works: 13 states have passed "trigger" laws that would immediately outlaw abortion if and when the federal right to the procedure is overturned, as a draft opinion leaked this week would do. Providers who try to keep operating in those states could face criminal penalties. And more states will likely pass additional restrictions once the court rules.

Abortions could require 200-mile trip if Roe is overturned

What abortion access would look like if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Abortion providers plan for the end of Roe

Blue states are preparing for more demand.

Illustration of a boarded-up window; the boards form a red cross. 

Axios Vitals

As the U.S. Supreme Court looks increasingly likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, advocates on both sides of the fight are already positioning themselves for the next battle, over medication abortions or so-called abortion pills.

Why it matters: The pills for a medication abortion, mifepristone and misoprostol, are FDA-approved for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The FDA lifted long-standing restrictions in December and paved the way for doctors to prescribe them online and mail them to patients.

Republican states, meanwhile, are moving to increasingly limit access to the pills, setting up a new round of legal battles over who'll have the final say over the distribution of the drugs.

What they're saying: "That's where the entire conflict is going to turn," Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University specializing in reproductive health, tells Axios.

Since those drugs can only be used before 10 weeks of pregnancy, the right to surgical abortions will continue to loom large, Ziegler says.

Yes, but: "The kind of low visibility and flexibility of medication abortion is going to be really, really consequential" if the high court strikes down or guts Roe, she adds. 

State of play: The abortion terrain has already shifted even before justices decided to review Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, which poses a direct challenge to Roe.

Medication abortion accounted for 54% of all U.S. abortions in 2020, up from 39% in 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The legal precedent: One of the cases that may be key in future arguments over limiting access to the pills involves a lawsuit over a painkiller. In 2014, Massachusetts instituted an emergency ban on the opioid Zohydro, saying the drug was dangerous and addictive. 

But a federal judge struck down the ban, saying a state couldn't take a drug off the market that the FDA had deemed safe, Rachel Rebouché, interim dean of Temple University's law school, tells Axios.

Experts might argue that means states don't have the authority to ban FDA-approved drugs, including abortion drugs. Some might even go so far as to argue that the FDA's policies would preempt any attempt by states to ban abortion, Rebouché said.

"That's a stretch," she says. "I think a lot of people think that's a difficult argument to make because states for so long have been able to regulate the practice of medicine and a law that says you can't perform an abortion seems like regulating the practice of medicine." 

What's next: Red states will likely pursue a strategy where they ban abortion and the use of drugs for abortion, but not the drugs themselves, according to experts who spoke with Axios. 

"How a state crafts its law could impact how a court reviews it," Greer Donley, an assistant law professor at the University Pittsburgh Law School, tells Axios.

Between the lines: This could all be a moot point since there are practical barriers to banning medication abortion.

"The reasons you see state banning medication abortion is because anti-abortion legislators recognized all too clearly that it is going to be really hard to track down pills you can take in your home and receive by mail," Rebouché says.

That is already is causing skirmishes between states. 

For instance, Missouri is also seeking to find ways to penalize out-of-state providers for providing any assistance in obtaining an abortion, Rebouché says.

On the flip side, Democratic-led states California and Connecticut are already considering bills to protect abortion providers from lawsuits filed by officials in other states, creating so-called havens.

"You'll see not only this tension between state law and federal law ... but you'll see really intense interstate conflict," Rebouché says. 

What to watch: While previous abortion laws targeted those that help women seeking abortions, such as providers, it's possible the approach may change in a world with self-managed abortions.

"Once providers are out of the equation or are outside the state's jurisdiction, the only way to truly enforce these laws is to go after the pregnant people themselves," Donley says. 

"That's historically something the anti-abortion movement has not wanted to do," she adds. "But I'm curious if that's going to change."

Pills are the next big abortion battleground

As the U.S. Supreme Court looks likely to end to Roe v. Wade,  "abortion pills" are seen as the next major battleground.

Illustration of a chain and padlock enclosing a pill capsule.

Data: Guttmacher Institute; Map: Thomas Oide and Erin Davis/Axios

The number of U.S. women who get abortions has decreased dramatically in recent decades, with typical patients now tending to be in their 20s and living in blue states. 

Why it matters: Abortion access is likely to be drastically curtailed in red states should a leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision hold, gutting the federal right to an abortion. But the profile of abortion patients has trended older since that right was established, and the vast majority of procedures tend to be early in pregnancies.

State of play: In 2019, nearly 630,000 abortions were reported to the CDC, reflecting a rate of about 11.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years. 

Around 18% of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion, according to the CDC. 

Women in their 20s accounted for the majority of abortions between 2010 and 2019 

That year, more than three-quarters of abortions were performed by nine weeks of a pregnancy, and rates were higher among Black and Hispanic women than among white women.

Factors influencing the abortion rate include access to health care services and contraception; the availability of abortion providers; state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods; parental involvement laws and legal restrictions on providers, the CDC writes. The state of the economy and resulting impact on family planning decisions and contraceptive use also play a role. 

Abortion rate by age group, 1973-2017

Data: Guttmacher Institute; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals

The big picture: Abortion rates have been declining for years, particularly among adolescents. The overall birth rate has also declined since 1973, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Many of the states in the South and Midwest most immediately poised to act to eliminate access should the high court rule against a federal abortion right already have lower-than-average abortion rates. 

Zoom in: These national trends are largely encapsulated in Texas, one of the states that would automatically ban abortion if SCOTUS overturns its earlier ruling. 

In 2020, 58% of women who received an abortion were in their 20s and were disproportionately Black, according to a report released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

84% were unmarried, 63% were receiving their first abortion and 39% were among women who hadn't given birth before. Nearly a quarter had given birth once before, 21% had had two previous live births and 16% had three or more. 

The state of abortion in America

Recently, the majority of abortions are received by women in their 20s.

Public health

Data: Myers Abortion Facility Database on OSF; Map: Thomas Oide and Sara Wise/Axios

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the average American could have to travel around 125 miles to reach the nearest abortion provider, compared to the current average of 25 miles, according to the Myers Abortion Facility Database. 

State of play: 12 states will immediately restrict abortion if Roe disappears, and others would be likely to impose significant new restrictions.

Driving the news: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a challenge today to a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. The case is a direct challenge to Roe.

By the numbers: The percentage of people living over 200 miles away from a provider would increase from 1% to 29%, according to the database. 

Myers' data complements a report from the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that researches reproductive rights, which found that people seeking abortions in southern and Midwest states would have to travel hundreds of miles to access the procedure.

In Florida, for example, the average one-way driving distance under a total abortion ban would be 575 miles — a 6,803% increase. Currently, people travel around 8 miles one-way to reach the closest provider. 

Louisiana residents seeking abortion care would have to travel the longest distances, 666 miles one-way. Currently, they travel approximately 37 miles one-way.

What it's like now: "Large areas of the U.S. — particularly in the central region of the country — already have no options within a 250-mile drive, and some counties are at least 350 miles from the nearest abortion provider," Axios' Tina Reed reported.

West Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota all have areas that are at least a four-hour drive from a provider.

Between the lines: The Supreme Court is currently considering two cases challenging Texas' near-total abortion ban.

As soon as the law was enacted, clinics in other states — such as Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico — started receiving calls from Texans looking to end their pregnancies, even as some struggled to support patients from their own states, per The 19th.

Women have been driving for hours to access reproductive health care. Some traveled for four hours, about 70 miles one-way, to reach an abortion clinic in Louisiana, AP reported.

Go deeper: What abortion access would look like if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Methodology: To choose which states are "highly likely" to ban abortion, the Myers Abortion Facility used a report from the Center for Reproductive Rights. However, after reviewing legal predictions, Myers did not include Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. 

Abortions could require 200-mile trips if Roe is overturned

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a challenge to a Mississippi law that could overturn Roe v. Wade.

More Axios Explains: Abortion stories

What's ahead in a post-Roe v. Wade world.

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