These surveys each include around 5,000 respondents sampled to represent the total population as well as possible. Since it’s a fairly low number, I haven’t included intermediate percentage values because it varies quite a lot from survey to survey. I don’t think this type of surveys are great for looking at a single point in time, but they do just fine to detect trends.
I honestly don’t get the “legal in all cases” camp.
Before your heads all collectively explode – “all” means **all**, including potentially a week before a completely healthy birth of a fully capable to live baby.
Yes, I understand that these things are rare. But then if you don’t support these rare cases, why not choose “legal in most cases”? Are we afraid of some slippery slopes even in polls or something?
Edit: illegal in all cases is similarly as stupid (such as for an ectopic pregnancy), but it’s less than a third as popular as “legal in all cases”, so it doesn’t stand out as much as a serious potential policy.
Overturning Roe v Wade is impressive evidence that a decades long campaign by dedicated and well funded activists can succeed in the face of public opinion.
The total of mostly legal+ went from 55% to 61%, which is not insignificant, but it is wild. Having said that the question at the top and the answers don’t quite align. How much do you favor abortion is a different question to Do you think abortion should be legal? A person could be personally against abortion, but also against enforcing their beliefs onto the entire society.
A lot of these also don’t go into what should the penalty be for abortion. Speeding is illegal, murder is illegal – but the penalties are vastly different.
I’m not a fan of this type of chart. I can’t tell what the values are except for the start and end of the range. Similar to the issue with pie charts.
If you’re not a woman your opinion doesn’t matter.
Nobody ‘favors’ abortion, they just understand it’s a necessary procedure sometimes
Favor is a strong word isn’t it. It’s almost like ‘ hey, do you want to go to the beach or kill a baby?’
‘I’d favor killing the baby’
That’s a good visualisation with one small yet annoying flaw – this isn’t about „favour or oppose abortion”, it’s about „favour or oppose the woman right to have an abortion”.
Nobody wants to have an abortion, it’s not a great form of spending your free time. It’s all about the right to have an abortion in case you need one.
This was a poorly worded “question” though, IMO🤷🏻♀️
I have always been a “Legal in All Cases” voter, as an American I should have the freedom of choice, not forced birth.
It would be most interesting to see this alongside western Europe.
This chart is super confusing. A standard line chart would be much easier to read and would make it easier to compare values.
At first glance, it looks like there’s an inflection point around late 2022/2023. I wonder if that is borne out by proper analysis.
In other news, reminder that Canada has had no law at all governing abortion for probably 35 years, and this decision is treated as a medical procedure for discussion between the pregnant woman and her doctor. None of the nightmare scaremongering scenarios that we hear about have occurred in all that time. Women are not having recreational abortions. Women are not waiting until the last minute to abort viable babies at term. In all cases, it appears that treating women like grown-ups and letting them exercise grown-up judgement, without meddling by the law on behalf of to other people’s morality or superstition, seems to be working well.
It has made legal systems that force mandatory gestation on women for any reason look like a ridiculous and obvious violation of human rights. It has made legal systems that endanger the life of the women, by refusing to terminate medically dangerous pregnancies, look absolutely barbaric and uncivilized.
What a terrible data chat.
So the usual 1/3 of Christians telling the other 2/3 what they should do with their bodies. Nice.
I’m gonna guess over half of the “illegal in all cases” crowd are either men or women with trouble conceiving or past birthing age.
Where’s the option for “mandatory in most cases”? So crazy that women have been property for years now in the US and even the majority of Republicans for years have believed in bodily autonomy for women and don’t give 2 shits about abortion, the overwhelming majority of which occur without medical intervention.
Legal in all cases is insane. Almost as disgusting as illegal in all cases.
I don’t know how anyone could be for abortion in the third trimester with no factors like maternal health and so on.
If you support abortion in all cases, you support the abortion of a perfectly healthy baby one week before their due date to a mother who is not at any increased risk from the pregnancy.
I’m sure that is a situation where pretty much everyone can agree abortion shouldn’t be legal, so the responses in this dataset seem to be flawed.
all this fighting and arguing and the needle has shifted only 5%
Im curious to see how many of the blue percentage think abortion should only be legal because of rape/in case the fetus is killing the woman. I always hear that and it seems like thats the only thing making them vote for it
Would be more interesting to see state by state. That’s the issue preventing a federal bill
![[OC] How Much Do You Favor or Oppose Abortion? PRRI Surveys From 2011 to 2025](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/0o684crdrjlf1-1920x1024.png)
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Data source: [https://prri.org/prri-research/data-vault/](https://prri.org/prri-research/data-vault/)
Tools used: Matplotlib
These surveys each include around 5,000 respondents sampled to represent the total population as well as possible. Since it’s a fairly low number, I haven’t included intermediate percentage values because it varies quite a lot from survey to survey. I don’t think this type of surveys are great for looking at a single point in time, but they do just fine to detect trends.
I honestly don’t get the “legal in all cases” camp.
Before your heads all collectively explode – “all” means **all**, including potentially a week before a completely healthy birth of a fully capable to live baby.
Yes, I understand that these things are rare. But then if you don’t support these rare cases, why not choose “legal in most cases”? Are we afraid of some slippery slopes even in polls or something?
Edit: illegal in all cases is similarly as stupid (such as for an ectopic pregnancy), but it’s less than a third as popular as “legal in all cases”, so it doesn’t stand out as much as a serious potential policy.
Overturning Roe v Wade is impressive evidence that a decades long campaign by dedicated and well funded activists can succeed in the face of public opinion.
The total of mostly legal+ went from 55% to 61%, which is not insignificant, but it is wild. Having said that the question at the top and the answers don’t quite align. How much do you favor abortion is a different question to Do you think abortion should be legal? A person could be personally against abortion, but also against enforcing their beliefs onto the entire society.
A lot of these also don’t go into what should the penalty be for abortion. Speeding is illegal, murder is illegal – but the penalties are vastly different.
I’m not a fan of this type of chart. I can’t tell what the values are except for the start and end of the range. Similar to the issue with pie charts.
If you’re not a woman your opinion doesn’t matter.
Nobody ‘favors’ abortion, they just understand it’s a necessary procedure sometimes
Favor is a strong word isn’t it. It’s almost like ‘ hey, do you want to go to the beach or kill a baby?’
‘I’d favor killing the baby’
That’s a good visualisation with one small yet annoying flaw – this isn’t about „favour or oppose abortion”, it’s about „favour or oppose the woman right to have an abortion”.
Nobody wants to have an abortion, it’s not a great form of spending your free time. It’s all about the right to have an abortion in case you need one.
This was a poorly worded “question” though, IMO🤷🏻♀️
I have always been a “Legal in All Cases” voter, as an American I should have the freedom of choice, not forced birth.
It would be most interesting to see this alongside western Europe.
This chart is super confusing. A standard line chart would be much easier to read and would make it easier to compare values.
At first glance, it looks like there’s an inflection point around late 2022/2023. I wonder if that is borne out by proper analysis.
In other news, reminder that Canada has had no law at all governing abortion for probably 35 years, and this decision is treated as a medical procedure for discussion between the pregnant woman and her doctor. None of the nightmare scaremongering scenarios that we hear about have occurred in all that time. Women are not having recreational abortions. Women are not waiting until the last minute to abort viable babies at term. In all cases, it appears that treating women like grown-ups and letting them exercise grown-up judgement, without meddling by the law on behalf of to other people’s morality or superstition, seems to be working well.
It has made legal systems that force mandatory gestation on women for any reason look like a ridiculous and obvious violation of human rights. It has made legal systems that endanger the life of the women, by refusing to terminate medically dangerous pregnancies, look absolutely barbaric and uncivilized.
What a terrible data chat.
So the usual 1/3 of Christians telling the other 2/3 what they should do with their bodies. Nice.
I’m gonna guess over half of the “illegal in all cases” crowd are either men or women with trouble conceiving or past birthing age.
Where’s the option for “mandatory in most cases”? So crazy that women have been property for years now in the US and even the majority of Republicans for years have believed in bodily autonomy for women and don’t give 2 shits about abortion, the overwhelming majority of which occur without medical intervention.
Legal in all cases is insane. Almost as disgusting as illegal in all cases.
I don’t know how anyone could be for abortion in the third trimester with no factors like maternal health and so on.
If you support abortion in all cases, you support the abortion of a perfectly healthy baby one week before their due date to a mother who is not at any increased risk from the pregnancy.
I’m sure that is a situation where pretty much everyone can agree abortion shouldn’t be legal, so the responses in this dataset seem to be flawed.
all this fighting and arguing and the needle has shifted only 5%
Im curious to see how many of the blue percentage think abortion should only be legal because of rape/in case the fetus is killing the woman. I always hear that and it seems like thats the only thing making them vote for it
Would be more interesting to see state by state. That’s the issue preventing a federal bill
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