Before conflicting federal court rulings on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone upended the status quo on a drug used by more than 3 million women to terminate their pregnancies, the Pew Research Center asked U.S. adults whether medication abortion should be legal or illegal.
A majority of adults (53%) said medication abortion — a method using one or more prescription pills to end a pregnancy — should be legal in their state. While 22% said it should be illegal; another 24% were unsure.
Demographic differences
The survey, which was conducted between March 27 and April 2, also revealed deep divides by age and partisanship.
A strong majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters (73%) said medication abortion should be legal in their state; only 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaners said the same. Only a slight majority of those who trend toward the GOP (36%) said the abortion method should be illegal.
Among Republicans and those who lean Republican, 47% of conservatives said medication abortion should be illegal in their state, while 24% said it should be legal and 28% were not sure. Moderate and liberal Republicans flipped: 20% said medication should be illegal, 50% said it should be legal and 30% said they were unsure.
Liberal Democrats were the most likely ideological group (88%) to say medication abortion should be legal in their state, with only 2% saying it should be illegal. Nearly 6-in-10 conservative and moderate Democrats (59%) said it should be legal compared to 13% who said it should be illegal.
While U.S. adults agreed that medication abortion should be legal in their state of residence, young adults under 30 were most likely to support abortion pills—66% said the method should be legal. Around half of adults 30 and older agreed that it should be legal, including 53% of those aged 30-49, 47% of those aged 50-64 and 49% of those 65 and over.
Strong majorities of both men and women said medication abortion should be legal (51% and 54%, respectively), but women under 30 were most likely to agree (71%) and least likely to say they were not sure (17%). Men between 50 and 64 were most likely (29%) to say medication abortion should be illegal, closely followed by men over 65 (27%) and women over 65 (24%).
While a slight majority of Protestants (39%) said medication abortion should be legal, White evangelicals were the religious group most likely to say it should be illegal (50%). Black protestants strongly favored the legality of medication abortion (54%), while 53% of White non-evangelicals also said it should be legal.
Forty-six percent of Catholics said medication abortion should be legal, with White Catholics being the largest demographic (51%) to support the pregnancy termination method.
Those who are religiously unaffiliated overwhelmingly said medication abortion should be legal in their state (74%) and were least likely to say it should be illegal (7%).
Perceptions on prevalence of medication abortions
The survey also asked participants to estimate how many U.S. abortions are performed using pills. Medication abortion now accounts for over half of abortions in the United States, according to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research and policy organization.
Around 3-in-10 said 40% to 60% of all abortions are medication abortions. A majority of those surveyed (41%) said less than 40% of abortions are performed using medication.
Read the full report and analysis at pewresearch.org.
Friends of Life KY 