Support for Roe ruling appears higher today
The claim: Is support for Roe v. Wade — the now-overturned Supreme Court ruling that federally protected abortion access — higher than ever?
That’s what President Joe Biden said in response to an April 8 video in which former President Donald Trump said “everyone” wanted the ruling overturned. We rated Trump’s statement False.
Biden’s campaign responded to Trump’s video by releasing a Facebook post in which Biden said:
“Trump is lying: There was no groundswell of support in America for overturning Roe. In fact, support for Roe is higher today in America than it has ever been. The real truth is Trump made a political deal in 2016. He promised to appoint a (Supreme) Court that would get rid of Roe, so he did.”
PolitiFact ruling: Mostly true. Polls show that since the Supreme Court issued its June 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe, support for the previous status quo under Roe has outpaced support for dismantling Roe’s federal abortion protections. Gallup’s long-term public opinion tracking shows a clear spike in support for Roe after the ruling’s overturning.
However, long-term polling data is sparse, making it hard to know whether today’s level of support represents the historical apex.
The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.
Discussion
Asking about support for Roe is one way to take Americans’ temperature on abortion policy, and opinions are often nuanced, hinging on how questions are worded.
Polls show that since the ruling’s 2022 overturning, support for the status quo under Roe has easily outpaced support for dismantling its protections. Some public opinion measures show support for Roe spiked after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that ended Roe’s federally protected abortion access.
However, long-term polling data is sparse, making it hard to verify whether today’s support is indeed the highest in history.
PolitiFact did not hear back from Biden’s campaign for comment.
Polling from 2023 and 2024, after Roe’s overturning, is consistent: Many more Americans would have preferred that Roe remain in place rather than be overturned.
We found five media- or university-based polls from that period, and each found support for Roe from 56% to 64%. Support for overturning Roe was lower, from 36% to 41%.
However, these results are a snapshot in time and don’t address whether, in Biden’s words, support is higher “than it has ever been.”
Only one pollster, Gallup, has tracked opinion on abortion with similarly worded questions over an extended, yearslong period.
One of Gallup’s regular questions doesn’t cite Roe by name but asks: “Are you satisfied with the abortion laws in this country? If not, would you like to see abortion laws in this country made more strict, less strict or remain as they are?”
From 2001 to 2021, Americans who said they were dissatisfied because they thought the laws should be less strict ranged from 8% to 22%.
In 2022, the year Roe was overturned, that shot up to 30%. In 2023, it spiked again, hitting 46%.
In 2024, it dropped to 44% but that remained high by historical standards.
The poll didn’t strictly ask people how they felt about Roe, but its wording is close and provides the strongest evidence for Biden’s assertion.
Gallup also asked a separate question specifically naming Roe — although its wording changed slightly after Roe was overturned.
In surveys from 1989 to the eve of Roe’s overturning in 2022, support for keeping Roe in place ranged from 53% to 66%. In the 2022 poll, conducted a few weeks before Roe’s overturning, support for Roe was at 56%.
In two 2023 polls, Gallup asked a different question — whether respondents thought overturning Roe was a “good thing” or a “bad thing.” In those polls, the percentage of people answering that it was a “bad thing” reached 61% and 63%.
This shows an uptick in support for Roe compared with 2022, before the ruling’s overturning. However, the 2023 level of support for Roe was not as high as it was in a few isolated years, the Gallup results show. In 2006, it was 66%.
We also looked at other surveys that asked the same question for a couple of years in a row, but not as long as Gallup. We found five that asked about Roe in 2022 and 2023, and the level of support for Roe remained consistent.