Women and men diverge more than ever on support for abortion rights, poll shows

The Guardian

a day ago

Three years after the fall of Roe v Wade and months after an election that heavily focused on the fight over abortion rights, men and women have never diverged more on their support for access to the procedure, according to new polling from Gallup released Monday.
Sixty-one percent of women now identify as 'pro-choice', but only 41% of men say the same, Gallup found. The same percentage of women identified as 'pro-choice' in 2022, just after the decision to overturn Roe was leaked, but at the time, 48% of men also did so. Prior to Roe's collapse, men and women were never more than 10 points apart from one another on the issue, according to decades of Gallup polling.
Men and women are also in record disagreement over whether abortion is moral, as 57% of women and 40% men say that it is. Just 41% of men say that abortion should be legal in all or more circumstances, while 56% of women say the same.
These gender gaps are likely less due to post-Roe changes in men's attitudes towards abortion than in changes in women's attitudes, said Lydia Saad, Gallup's director of US social research. Specifically: women have become a lot more supportive of abortion since Roe fell. In 2021, 52% of women and 45% of men identified as 'pro-choice'.
'In general, we see that with abortion, that the party that wants to change the status quo is the one that has more energy on the issue,' Saad said. 'For years, it was more the pro-life respondents who said that they will only support a candidate who shares their views on that issue. Whereas, since 2022, we've seen it flip.'
Sudden political upsets do have the power to dramatically change people's beliefs, Saad said. Typically, however, those changes don't last and people revert to their norm views within a few years. Men's declining support for abortion may thus be a sign that they are reverting to their norm – but Saad was surprised women are still so energized by the issue.
'A line had been crossed for women,' Saad said. 'If you were generally supportive of abortion rights before, you became much more so.'
Similarly, men who identify as Democrats have, like women, become much more likely to back abortion rights. Between 2020 and 2021, 63% of Democratic men said that they believed abortion should be legal in most circumstances; as of 2025, 78% of Democratic men say the same.
Saad is not exactly sure why support for abortion rights is dwindling among men. Although this is the lowest level of support among men for the 'pro-choice' label in a decade, she is not convinced that this decline will continue.
'It's more just a out of sight, out of mind issue for men,' Saad said of abortion's legality. 'Whereas for women – it's just been more salient.'
At this point, it's difficult to tell whether men are becoming more actively opposed to abortion or whether they are simply becoming more conservative overall, Saad said. Men are already more likely to be Republicans, and Republicans typically oppose abortion rights. A mere 19% of Republican men think abortion should be legal in most circumstances.
Saad suspects Gallup's findings may be tied to shifts in the political views of young men, who proved to be surprisingly conservative in the 2024 election. Fifty-six percent of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Donald Trump.
'We have to see where this goes,' Saad cautioned. 'If it's sustained, then we would really have to take a close look at why.'