Poll: Most Americans Do Not Support Second, Third Trimester Abortions

While the pro-life movement is experiencing some setbacks, a strong majority of Americans still do not support second and third trimester abortions, polling shows.

Gallup News released a survey this week, showing that only 37 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in the second trimester of pregnancy, while only 22 percent believe it should be legal in the third trimester. However, those percentages are “the highest for their respective trends, following seven-to eight point increases last year” according to the survey report.

The survey found that 69 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal within the first three months of pregnancy, which is also the highest percentage since Gallup began tracking the trend.

Gallup’s oldest trend on the legality of abortion found that 34 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstance, while 51 percent say it should be legal in “certain circumstances.” The percentage of Americans who want abortion to be illegal in all circumstances reached to a near-all-time low of 13 percent, the poll found.

Support for abortion has “increased mainly among Democrats” and by extension, women, who tend to vote more for Democrats, according to the survey.

Goldberg — Those Who Believe Abortion Is Taking Life Are Self-Righteous — “Respect that I Have a Different Opinion”:

“Since 2021, Democrats’ support for full legality has increased by 10 points, from 50 percent to 60 percent. Over the same period, support for that position has expanded four points to 36 percent among independents while decreasing seven points to 8 percent among Republicans,” the survey report states.

“Similarly, women (who are more Democratic than men) have grown increasingly likely to identify as pro-choice. After peaking at 61 percent last year in the wake of the Dobbs leak, the percentage doing so has receded to 55 percent,” the report continues. “However, that’s still higher than in any year prior to 2022. Meanwhile, just under half of men continue to identify as pro-choice.”

Republican support for abortion on demand is the lowest percentage recorded by Gallup for that group at 8 percent. The percentage of Republicans who want abortion illegal in all cases (24 percent) and legal only under certain circumstances (66 percent) are both up slightly from previous averages, the poll found.

“Meanwhile, 21 percent of Republicans now identify as pro-choice, tying the record low in 2019, while 84 percent of Democrats, near the record high from 2022, say they are pro-choice. The 52 percent of independents saying they are pro-choice is similar to the long-term average for this group,” according to the report.

Gallup also asked survey respondents about the morality of abortion. Before someone leaked the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in May of 2022, no more than 47 percent of Americans believed that abortion was morally “acceptable.” That percentage shifted in 2022 to 52 percent of Americans deeming abortion “morally acceptable” compared to 38 percent who called it “morally wrong.” However, the percentage of Americans who say abortion is morally wrong slightly increased to 41 percent this year.

Gallup News surveyed 1,011 U.S. adults between May 1-24, 2023, with a margin of sampling error of ±4 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.