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Abortion may be considered a top “women’s” issue but when it comes to support or opposition for the legality of the procedure education, not gender, is more the deciding factor.
Since 1975, two years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in the Roe v. Wade case, Gallup has been tracking nationwide opinions on the issue. What they have found is education as more a consistent barometer than gender in predicting views of Americans. Over a period of 35-years the level of support and opposition toward the abortion topic has fluctuated modestly. Majorites of the public have consistently placed themselves in the grouping of “legal only under certain circumstances” as to which best describes their opinion. Other options through the years have included “legal under any circumstances” and “illegal in all circumstances.”
Support for the legality of abortion under any circumstance has always been highest among college graduates. Those percentages ranged from the mid to upper-30 percentiles in the late-70s to late-80s and again from the mid-90s through the mid-2000s. It peaked in the early 90s when 44% of college graduates from either gender claimed to support a women’s right to choose in all instances. Recently that number has fallen however, as between 2005-09 just 31% of the most highly educated claimed to be on board with abortion being legal in any circumstance.
Trailing college graduates are those individuals with some college experience. There are nearly identical percentages from the mid-70s through the mid-2000s with the exception of that same 1990-94 period when 37% believed in the right for an abortion under any circumstance. More consistent over this time period were those with the lowest level of education. Individuals with a high school degree or less have supported the right to choose around 20% of the time through the past three and a half decades. Never did that figure exceed 25% or fall below 17%.
Looking at side by side comparisons between men and women through the years reveals just how similar abortion views are between genders. Since the beginning of the debate in 1975 around 52% of women and 57% of men have agreed that abortion ought to be legal only under certain circumstances. Another 27% of women and 24% of men on average believe the practice should be legal and available under any circumstances. Women (18.7%), perhaps surprisingly, actually believe abortion ought to be illegal at a higher rate than men (16.2%). The bottom line however is the two genders mirror each other’s opinions on the issue through the decades and at present.
The most supportive subgroup toward abortion are female college graduates. Currently 35% of that group supports a women’s right to choose in all instances, compared with 28% who’ve had some college experience and just 18% holding a high school degree or less. Men are a bit more narrowly divided yet college grads still trump those with less education on the topic of support for the legality of the issue. This includes 28% of college graduates, 25% with some college and 18% having no more than a high school education.
Opposition to abortion appears to have strengthened amongst most subgroups in recent years. Whether it be those with higher or lower levels of education or women versus men the percentages of those holding pro-choice views appears to be noticeably smaller than they were at their peak in the early-90s. Still the totals remain fairly consistent with averages from the past three
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