Survey: 3 in 4 reproductive age women in the US think abortion should be legal
Arizona will vote on abortion in November
The battleground state of Arizona along with Missouri will now be among the states who will decide on whether to establish abortion rights in state constitutions in November. The Arizona secretary of state's office announced Monday that it had nearly 578,000 valid signatures turned in by Arizona for Abortion Access, a coalition of reproductive rights organizations. LiveNOW's Austin Westfall discusses it more with Cameron Arcand, an Arizona reporter for the New York Post.
Three in four women of reproductive age in the U.S. believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and the same percentage of women oppose leaving it up to states to determine abortion laws, a new survey found.
The survey from KFF, a nonprofit policy research center, found that 70% of reproductive age women support a nationwide right to abortion – something American women haven’t had since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Fallout from the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has remade the way abortion works across the country. Fourteen states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and four others bar it after about six weeks of pregnancy.
RELATED: Abortion access gains support: More Americans opposing federal ban, poll shows
What the survey found
According to the survey, one in seven women (14%) of reproductive age have had an abortion at some point in their life. The numbers are similar among Republicans, Democrats and independents.
An Abortion is Health Care mural graces the front window at the new Planned Parenthood-Wyandotte Clinic in Kansas City, Kansas. The facility provides medical abortions, but not surgical abortions. (Getty Images)
Nearly one in 10 women of reproductive age (8%) personally know someone who has had a harder time getting an abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Of the women who say they know someone who’s had trouble getting an abortion, 68% of those women had to travel out of state for care; 40% of them didn’t know where to go, and 35% of them couldn’t afford the cost.
More than 60% of women are concerned that they or someone they know won’t be able to get an abortion even if it was needed to save their life.
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Nearly one in five women (17%) of reproductive age said they have changed their contraceptive practices in the wake of Roe being overturned. They said they’ve taken actions including starting birth control, getting a sterilization procedure, switching to a more effective method, or keeping emergency contraceptive pills on hand.
Less than half of the reproductive age women surveyed were aware of the current abortion laws in their state, and 26% of them said they wouldn’t know where to go if they needed or wanted an abortion.
Abortion on the ballot
Americans are largely opposed to the strict bans that have taken effect in Republican-controlled states since the high court’s ruling two years ago.
A solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban as a rising number support access to abortions for any reason, a recent poll found, highlighting a politically perilous situation for candidates who oppose abortion rights as the November election draws closer.
Around 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s an increase from June 2021, a year before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Abortion-rights supporters have also prevailed in all seven abortion ballot questions in the U.S. since 2022.
The number of women getting abortions in the U.S. actually went up in the first three months of 2024 compared with before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.