Dobbs Did Little To Change Americans’ Opinions on Abortion
The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has had major impacts on abortion access, but very little effect on what Americans think about abortion. Over the past year, Americans have remained split on the issue, with about 60 percent saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases and about 40 percent saying abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. And while various polls found that around 50 to 60 percent of Americans disapproved of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling did very little to change that general breakdown of when Americans think abortion should and shouldn’t be legal.
Take a look at the breakdown of responses regarding the legality of abortion in the months leading up to Dobbs. There is precious little change before Dobbs compared to after. If Elena hadn’t stuck that line in showing the date of the decision, I’d have a hard time guessing where it should have gone.
The lack of movement is striking because that immediate post-Dobbs period is when Americans were more like to say abortion was an important issue facing the country, as the table below shows.
Americans were getting more concerned about abortion, but they were doing that within well-established lanes of belief. There don’t seem to have been too many people who woke up the day after the Dobbs decision and switched to the opposing camp. And that is not terribly surprising. As the chart below shows, those hard lines of support and disapproval for abortion were drawn in the gravel of partisan politics decades ago. Once the issue became intertwined with partisan identity, it was unlikely that many “yeas” or “nays” would cross lines or waver in their stance.