It’s more than likely the most important Supreme Court case in my lifetime: the overturning of Roe v. Wade means that each individual state gets to decide if and how it will regulate abortion inside its boundaries. According to NPR, that means that at least 20 states will effectively ban abortion in the coming weeks.

When the draft of the Dobbs opinion was leaked back in early May, I put together a thread of graphs about abortion opinion from a variety of angles and came to a clear conclusion: an outright ban is not where most American are when it comes to the issue of abortion.

But, now that Dobbs has been decided and many abortion clinics have been forced to shut their doors across the United States, who are the ones cheering this decision the most? Put simply: who favors an all-out ban on abortion and how does this subset of Americans compare to the general public? That’s the aim of this post — a deep dive into a descriptive analysis of those who favor a total ban on abortion.

The data comes from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study. The statement is simple enough: “Do you favor or oppose making abortions illegal in all circumstances.”

When I post this question on Twitter, there is always someone in the replies who tries to parse this statement. They don’t know how to deal with the phrase “all circumstances.” [Editor’s note: See recent Pew Research Center poll for more information on that angle.]

After conducting surveys for more than a decade, I can say that the average survey taker spends about two seconds reading each question and just responds with their gut. In this case, they more than likely interpreting the question to mean, “I’m completely opposed to abortion.”

In the 2020 CES that equals out to just under 20% of the American population. In a sample of 61,000 folks, that equals out to 12,093 individuals (weighted). So, my N size is just fine to proceed with this analysis.

The folks who are completely anti-abortion are evenly divided between men and women — as is the sample overall.

It’s notable that in a CBS News poll conducted on June 24 and 25, men were equally split over the question of overturning Roe, while two-thirds of women did not support the decision made in Dobbs. Thus, there’s a clear disconnect between the anti-abortion sample in the CES and the CBS News data. It’s important to note that in the CES data there’s no reason to believe that there’s a gender disparity among anti-abortion folks.

There’s also a very small discrepancy between the racial composition of the American public at large and the subset of Americans who will be pleased with the state bans implemented due to the Dobbs ruling. Sixty-nine percent of Americans indicated that they were white on the CES, while it was 55% of those who opposed a total abortion ban. For Hispanics, African Americans and Asians, the gaps are even smaller. In no case do the samples deviate more than two percentage points. In short, the racial composition of anti-abortion Americans almost perfectly reflects the general public.

However, there have to be some differences when it comes to religious tradition, right?

Well, the discrepancies between the two groups is a lot smaller than one would assume. For instance, Catholics make up about 18% of the general sample, and just 20% of the anti-abortion subsample. For many smaller religious groups like Latter-day Saints, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, there’s no statistically significant difference.

Where the statistics diverge, however, is in terms of Protestants and nones. While 34% of Americans are Protestants, they are 46% of the anti-abortion contingent. At the same time, the share of nones in the general population was 34% in 2020, but was just 21% of those who opposed abortion entirely. So, there are some deviations, but they aren’t as large as I would have guessed.

When it comes to religious observance, however, the religious gap comes into much sharper contrast.

In the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, nearly half of folks opposed to abortion attend church at least once a week. That’s nearly double the rate of the population at large (26%). While 30% of the Americans never attend church, it’s only 15% of those who would applaud the Dobbs decision.

I think it’s fair to say that while religious tradition reveals relatively small gaps, that religious behavior among anti-abortion folks is much higher than in the public at large.

CONTINUE READING: “What Do Anti-Abortion Folks Look Like Demographically, Religiously, and Ideologically?” by Ryan Burge at Religion in Public.

FIRST IMAGE: Photo with Catholic University of America website about the 2022 national March For Life.