Abortion Attitudes After Dobbs

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision returned abortion to the states, the issue has played a significant role in elections across the country with the pro-choice side winning most of them. In the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court contest, abortion was front and center in the candidates’ only debate. Before Elon Musk inserted himself into the contest, several analysts suggested that Susan Crawford, who ran on safeguarding abortion, could have won the race on that issue alone. According to a new state-by-state compilation by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 67 percent of Wisconsin residents said abortion should be legal in all (26 percent) or most (41 percent) cases.  

PRRI recently released a very useful report on abortion attitudes, looking not only at Wisconsin but also at the rest of the states and DC. Their American Values Atlas compiled data from more than 22,000 interviews conducted in 2024 enabling them to look at individual state attitudes with confidence. PRRI uses the familiar four-part question on abortion asking if it should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all.

This combination shows the range of belief in the US on this highly charged issue. In 43 states and DC, half or more said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Additionally, Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Tennessee came close to the 50 percent mark. Support fell below 45 percent in West Virginia (41 percent), Utah (44 percent), and Louisiana (42 percent). A gulf separated these three states from Massachusetts, where 83 percent gave the legal in all or most cases response, as did 80 percent in Vermont.

Looking specifically at the extreme positions on the question, responses varied as well. The lowest response for legal in all cases came in Louisiana (13 percent), West Virginia (14 percent) and Idaho (14 percent); the highest response was in DC (44 percent), followed by Rhode Island (41 percent), and Vermont (40 percent). At the other end of the spectrum, “illegal in all cases” was usually in the single digits. But more than 10 percent still gave that response fourteen states, with the highs in Nebraska (17 percent) and Mississippi and South Dakota at 14 percent.

Another way of assessing PRRI state-by-state data comes by combining the middle two categories “legal in some cases” and “illegal in some.” Looked at this way, majorities in every state put themselves in the middle categories. These middle categories reflect more ambivalence about the issue.

Nationally, 26 percent in PRRI’s 2024 polls supported legal abortion in all cases, up from 18 percent in 2010, the first time PRRI asked the question. Thirty-seven percent wanted abortion to be legal in most cases and 26 percent illegal in most cases. Eight percent, down from 15 percent in 2010, said it should be illegal in all. Pew’s Religious Landscape survey, conducted between July 2023 and March 2024, found similar responses: 31 percent said legal in all, 32 percent legal in most, 24 percent illegal in most, 11 percent illegal in all. Pew cautions that the results from the new survey should be “cautiously compared” to their previous surveys because of changes in their modes of interviewing. With that in mind, support for legal abortion all or most cases is up at 63 percent from 53 percent in their 2014 Landscape study.

As we approach the third anniversary of the Dobbs decision, the action on abortion legality will be mostly at the state level, though government spending and drug approval issues will have a national focus. President Trump has distanced himself from the issue or blurred his positions, giving state-level action greater importance. Although regional or state attitudes have come together in the US on many issues, states still have distinctive political personalities on abortion as the PRRI data show. Many, but not all, have moved toward a more expansive view of legality in all or most cases.