Why do some people oppose Roe v. Wade? I tried to figure it out by reviewing the responses to a series of open-ended and multiple-choice questions answered by 49 people in the U.S. who say they’re “very happy” that Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Here is what they said.
I posed the following open-ended questions:
1. “What are your views on abortion?”
2. “If you oppose abortion, why do you oppose it?”
3. “Under what circumstances do you think it should be legal to get one?”
The open-ended responses fell into these categories:
• 90% said abortion is wrong because it is murder (i.e., wrong like killing an adult is wrong)
• 24% said abortion is forbidden according to their religion
• 14% said they think it violates the rights of the unborn child
• 10% said Roe v. Wade misinterpreted the constitution
Note that the reasons listed above were those that people spontaneously wrote in their open-ended responses. Some wrote multiple reasons, which is why the probabilities exceed 100%.
Here are typical (exact quotes of) responses I received:
• “I believe that life starts at conception and abortion is the murder of innocent children. It is evil and immoral.”
• “An unborn baby is still a life. People who are pro-choice are not giving a choice to the baby”
• “I am against taking the life of an innocent baby. However, I am also careful not to judge those who are caught in a situation of rape, incest or life of the mother.”
• “I’m against abortion because it takes a human life. That’s really all there is to it! It’s simply murder”
• “I oppose it because I believe that God is in control of the pregnancy to begin with and we should not attempt to alter God’s plan.”
• “It goes against God’s Word, which teaches that life begins at conception”
• “the constitution of the United States does not speak to the legality of abortion, so it must be decided by legislators.”
On multiple-choice questions, here are the percentages of respondents who felt it should be ILLEGAL in different situations:
• 86% thought abortion should be illegal in normal circumstances (NOT an instance of rape, medical issues, incest, etc.)
• 67% thought abortion should be illegal for incest/genetic abnormality
• 53% thought abortion should be illegal when birth poses a 50% chance of death to the mom
Who were these respondents? I recruited them using our platform for running studies, Positly.com.
Regarding demographics: 42% of the respondents were women, 58% were men, and the average age was 45.
Only 12% consider themselves “not at all religious,” with 63% considering themselves “very” or “extremely” religious, and 79% considering themselves at least “moderately” religious.
51% of respondents live in the suburbs, and 22% in rural areas, with 27% in urban areas.
Choosing labels for themselves (with the ability to pick more than one) 34% of the respondents chose Christian Conservative, 26% Traditional Conservative, 25% said that they were actively against giving themselves a label, 12% selected Libertarian, and 8% selected Centrist. None were Liberal or Left-wing.
The qualitative responses above were collected as part of a broader study that involved a total of 396 people on Positly.com sharing their reactions to Roe vs. Wade being overturned. Of these, approximately 30% were very happy it was overturned, 10% were a little happy, 15% were indifferent or neutral, 7% were a little unhappy, and 38% were very unhappy it was overturned. (Not all of the qualitative responses made by those who were very happy it was overturned were analyzed to produce the summaries above; instead, a smaller subset was chosen at random for analysis of their qualitative responses.)
In the same study, I also asked all participants when they consider someone a living human person that it would be wrong to kill. Here are the response selections made by 120 people in the survey who said they have left-of-center (liberal) political views and 190 people in the survey saying they have right-of-center (conservative) views (right-leaning participants were purposely over-sampled in this study):
Notes on this chart: Respondents selected one time point from the following multiple-choice list of options (note that each is recorded in the chart as time since conception, as opposed to time since the most recent period the mother had, which is approximately 2 weeks prior to conception): At conception (i.e., when a human sperm enters a human egg/ovum), 4 weeks after the woman’s last period (about 2 weeks after conception), 6 weeks after the woman’s last period (when the beating of fetal heart tissue is detectable), 13 weeks after the woman’s last period (the end of the 1st trimester), 24 weeks after the woman’s last period (when the fetus is viable, that is, capable of living outside the uterus), 26 weeks after the woman’s last period (the end of the 2nd trimester), Just after birth, At one year of age, At three years of age, At five years of age, At 10 years of age, At 18 years of age). The following responses were not included: 1 person said 18 years, 1 person said 1 year, 1 person said 3 years, and 1 person said 5 years (the first 2 outliers were on the political left and the second 2 outliers were on the political right). The total number of responses from people on the political left (including the 2 outliers) was 122 and the total number of responses from people on the political right (including the 2 outliers) was 192.
This piece was first written on June 27, 2022, and first appeared on this site on June 30, 2022. The last section was added on July 5, 2022.
I dont know if you included me in your responses (maybe not because I’m not ‘happy’ about the decision just believe it was legally correct) because i didnt answer all the questions but I do consider myself liberal and just dont think Roe was rightly decided. Also a strong atheist and strong supporter of reproductive rights. I just don’t believe that Roe on its own is defensible (a broader general right to control one’s own body that protected all choices to take medication or have surgical treatment could have been but SCOTUS was never going to take a position which implied a right to take heroin).
Anyway, sorry I didn’t reply with more detail on Twitter but I’m currently dealing with some stuff involving a death in the family.
I wish I’d seen this survey! I’m one of the people who is thrilled Roe is overturned, both because I believe it’s killing a human organism AND because Roe/Casey were ultimately indefensible readings of the Constitution. I’m really grateful that you wanted to get a better sense of why people wanted Roe/Casey overturned. As a side note, a really interesting resource for people who want to understand the anti-abortion position from a legal standpoint is James Heaney, who blogs at De Civitate (https://decivitate.substack.com/). I read his stuff because I generally agree with his takes on things as a conservative, but if anyone is interested in better understanding of how many abortion abolitionists view the issue he’s a great resource. Thanks again for taking the time to see why people think the way they do.