The public lack of knowledge about Roe — and its conflict with actual public opinion on abortion — was captured well by a Fox News poll last September, which found that 65 percent of Americans said they oppose reversing Roe. But, absurdly, the same survey found that respondents were perfectly split on whether abortion should be legal, tied at 49 percent. A substantial number of Americans, in other words, both want abortion to be illegal and want to preserve jurisprudence making it essentially impossible to prohibit abortion. This outcome was possible only because a sizable percentage of the population doesn’t know that abortion can’t be regulated at all until Roe is gone.
Meanwhile, polls that ask Americans for their views on specific abortion policies tend to find that most Americans disagree with the status quo created by the Court in Roe and Doe v. Bolton and bolstered in Casey — namely, that abortion must be legal across all 50 states, for nearly any reason, and at nearly any time in pregnancy.
For instance, a Gallup poll from a few years back found that only 28 percent of Americans favor allowing abortion in the second trimester, and only 13 percent of Americans favor allowing it in the last three months of pregnancy — compared to 60 percent who would allow it in the first trimester.
Polling from Marist likewise suggests that most Americans tend not to support elective abortion later in pregnancy. A January 2022 survey from Marist, commissioned by the Knights of Columbus, found that nearly three-quarters of Americans would allow abortion only in the first trimester or in the so-called hard cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, if they would permit abortion at all. A mere 17 percent of respondents told Marist abortion should be legal at any time in pregnancy for any reason, and less than a third of Democrats agreed.
This is an issue that simply is not contemplated by the Constitution. If you want it to be, pass an amendment.