Can't quit you

 I seem to keep getting drawn back to opinions on abortion--here are a few more points that I haven't previously discussed.  

1.  Since the 1990s, Gallup has asked "if you would only vote for a candidate who shares your views on abortion, consider a candidate's position on abortion as just one of many important factors, or not see abortion as a major issue."  The averages, with higher values meaning more important*:

  There is a good deal of short-term fluctuation, but it seems clear that there is an increase in recent years.  Another example of polarization appearing or accelerating in the 21st century.  

2.  In 2000, one of the surveys asked if abortion should be legal in all circumstances, legal in certain circumstances, or illegal in  all.  The ratings of importance by opinions on legality:

                         only     one of many      not major           % of total

legal                  15%            54%                 30%                   30%

circumstances   10%             55%                 35%                   50%

illegal                31%             49%                 18%                   15%

People who thought that abortion should always be illegal were more likely to rate it as essential, while people who took a middle position were least likely to.  There were also questions on whether it should be allowed in different trimesters.  

Never                 28%              51%             20%                    30%

First                      5%              55%            40%                     39%

First & second   15%               56%            29%                     18%

all                      20%                51%            25%                       9%

The same basic pattern, although the difference between the extreme positions is smaller.  However, the extreme pro-abortion position (allowed at any time) was held by a only a small minority.  

So in 2000, it seems clear that people who were opposed to abortion regarded the issue as more important.  Of course, 2000 was quite a while ago, but that's the most recent one for which the full data are available and they had detailed questions on abortion (some of the later ones have asked if people considered themselves pro-life or pro-choice:  see the Gallup link above for breakdowns on those).

3.   Religion is an important influence on opinions about abortion today--specifically, Evangelical Protestants are more likely to oppose it.  I've seen claims that this link didn't appear until the late 1970s, and that the issue was created as a sort of cover for segregation--that is, leaders of the "religious right" wanted to preserve segregation, but they knew that wouldn't be a winning issue, so they looked around for another issue that would help their friends (especially Ronald Reagan) take power.  I may look into this more closely later, but here's a quick analysis.  The GSS asks people about their general religion, and then asks Christians about their denomination.  It has a classification of denominations as fundamentalist, moderate, or liberal.  The percent saying abortion should be legal for a single woman who doesn't want to marry the father:

                                    1972-80       1981-2000    2002-2021

Fundamentalist               35%               29%             23%

Moderate                        45%                42%            37%

Liberal                            73%                64%            63%

The gap was about equally large at all times.**  That doesn't directly contradict the idea that the "religious right" coalesced around opposition to abortion, but it suggests that it was mostly leaders shifting their own positions rather than changing their followers' positions.

*I counted "don't know" as equivalent to not a major issue--if you don't affirmatively say that something is important to you, that means it's not that important.  But there weren't many--no more than 5%. 

**Support for abortion declined over the period in all Christian groups.  But it didn't decline in the population as a whole, mostly because the number of people who don't identify with any religion (who tend to support legal abortion) grew substantially.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

But will they come when you call?

 While thinking about the draft Supreme Court decision on abortion, I looked at the court opinion in Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992).*  I found that, in addition to legal reasoning, it contained some sociology (or political science):  "Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases, its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution."
      "        The Court is not asked to do this very often, having thus addressed the Nation only twice in our lifetime, in the decisions of Brown and Roe."  Of course, in 1992 there was still division over many issues involving race (as there is today), but the national division over segregation was over:  virtually everyone agreed that segregation was wrong.   Did the Supreme Court decision contribute to this change?  The Gallup Poll asked the following question a number of times:  "The US Supreme Court has ruled that racial segregation in the public schools is illegal.  That means that all children, no matter what their race, must be allowed to go to the same schools.  Do you approve or disapprove of this decision?"  The figure shows the ratio of approve:disapprove

There was some shift towards approval:  in May 1954 (about a week after the decision) 55% said they approved and 40% said they disapproved and in May 1961 63% approved and 32% disapproved.  The last figure is from a question asked by Harris in 1966:  "In 1954, the U.S. supreme court ruled that it was illegal to require Negro children to go to all Negro or segregated schools. Do you personally think that decision of the U.S. Supreme Court was right or wrong?"  64% of those who had an opinion said it was right and 36% said it was wrong.**  The difference between the questions makes comparison difficult, but at least you can say there was still substantial division over the issue in 1966, twelve years after the decision.  Finally, the Gallup question was repeated (with a small change in the introductory wording) in a survey for the fortieth anniversary of the decision in 1994:  88% approved and 11% disapproved.  

Ideally, there would have been questions before the decision about how people hoped the court would rule.  I couldn't find any, but there was a question in 1950 that asked which statement you agreed with: "Children of all races, and colors, should be allowed to go to the same schools together everywhere in the country. Children of all races and color, should be allowed to go to the same public schools together everywhere except in the South, where white and Negro children should go to separate schools. White children and Negro children should be required to go to separate schools everywhere in the country."  42% said same schools, 17% same except in the South, and 36% said separate schools.  Judging from those answers, 42% favored the result of the court decision and 53% opposed it.  That suggests that the Supreme Court decision made some difference for public opinion, but that most of the change was part of the gradual long-term liberal movement in racial attitudes.  

*I'm quoting from opinion by O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, which was joined by Stevens and Blackmun for the passage I quoted.  Rhenquist, White, Scalia and Thomas dissented,

**Those figures were taken from a published source which didn't show the percentage of "don't knows"; that's why I show the ratio of agree to disagree rather than the percent agreeing.   

[Data from the Roper Opinion for Public Opinion Research]

Men, women, and abortion

In my last post, I mentioned that men and women do not differ much in their opinions on abortion--this post will document that point.

1.   The General Social Survey has seven questions about whether abortion should be allowed in various circumstances.  This post looked at gender differences on these questions in recent years (208-18) and found that men were more likely to support legal abortion on each one, but the differences were small--the biggest gap was 50% to 44%  for "if she is married and does not any more children".

2.  Gallup has a question on whether abortion should be legal under any circumstances, under only certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances.  During the 1970s and 1980s, support for "any circumstances" was about the same among men and women; since then, it's been a little higher among women.  Support for "illegal in all circumstances" has consistently been a little higher among women.  See this discussion at the Gallup site.

3.  Since the 1990s, a number of survey organizations have asked if abortion should be "legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases."  The figure shows the averages for men and women on a scale of 1-4, with higher numbers indicating support for legal abortion:

 

 Women are a little more favorable.  There is a trend towards more support for abortion, but it is about equally strong among men and women--that is, the gap is not changing.*  The variance also tends to be higher among women--that is, women are more likely to choose the "all cases" options on both sides, as with the Gallup question. 

4.Since the 1990s, CBS News surveys have asked if "abortion should be generally available to those who want it, abortion should be available but under stricter limits than it is now, or abortion should not be permitted".  I use the percent saying "generally available" minus "not permitted" as a summary.

By this measure, support for abortion is a little higher among men.  I was getting tired of entering data by this point, so I didn't record the percent in the middle category--therefore, I can't tell about likelihood of picking the extremes vs. the middle.

To summarize, some surveys find that men are a little more likely to support legal abortion, others find that women are a little more likely, but the basic point is that there's not much difference.  Finally, I'll mention a CBS News/New York Times survey from 1998, which asked about a couple of other circumstances:  "if the pregnancy would force a teenage girl to drop out of school" and "if the pregnancy would  force a professional woman to interrupt her career."  The interesting thing about these questions is that they don't involve issues of traditional morality (like marital status) or health, but focus on a woman's ability to plan her life.  But there was no clear gender difference on either--for the first option , 43% support for legal abortion among men and 41% among women; for the second, 27% support among men and 24% among women.

If opinions just reflected interests, you would expect support for legal abortion to be higher among women than among men.  So the lack of a clear difference means that there must be some factor working in the other direction, maybe involving the way that men and women think about moral issues in general.   

*The trend is still there if you remove the two early surveys that show unusually low support for abortion. 

  [Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]