These Pro-Lifers Don't Love Abortion Bans

Audra Worlow thinks of herself as pro-life. A 32-year-old, married stay-at-home mom in Ohio, Worlow takes her Catholic faith seriously. She's against both in vitro fertilization (IVF), which she calls "another form of eugenics," and surrogacy. She thinks abortion is not only harmful to babies but also "psychologically damaging to women."

Yet in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Worlow isn't excited about states' new ability to ban abortion at any point in pregnancy.

She still wants to see an end to abortion. "I just don't know if the legal system is the right route to go with this," she tells Reason. "I'm worried that babies and women are going to die."

She points to the Brittany Watts case in her state. Watts' water broke at just 21 weeks pregnant, and a hospital refused to intervene. If medical staff had taken action, Worlow suggests, there's a chance the baby could have survived. Instead, Watts went home, miscarried, and was charged with "abuse of a corpse." A grand jury refused to indict.

"I want doctors to have the freedom to be doctors," says Worlow. She was trained as a hospital administrator, and she worries about the effect risk-averse administrators will have on doctors' treatment of pregnant women with complications. In places with abortions bans, doctors may be left "basically waiting around for the baby to die before they do anything." In the interim, she says, women can develop life-threatening conditions like sepsis. "I like the term pro-life. But I care about everybody's life. I…care about the woman's life, too."

The idea that Americans might personally oppose abortion but also disfavor banning it isn't new. But in the aftermath of Dobbs, this idea is taking on new salience. To help understand why, I sought out people who consider themselves pro-life but question the ethics or efficacy of abortion bans. I wanted to peer beyond the polls—which show significant shifts in abortion views since the Dobbs decision—and hear how individuals square competing values in this realm.

Dobbs was the biggest legal victory in the pro-life movement's history—a culmination of 40 years of activism and political strategy. The decision ushered in a wave of state abortion bans that weren't permissible under the Roe paradigm, in which only minimal restrictions were allowed before fetal viability.

But a strange thing happened in the aftermath of the pro-life movement's great victory: America became more pro-choice.

Although Americans' views on abortion are complex, surveys show a decisive shift toward pro-choice positions, even among some who believe in rights for embryos and fetuses or who question abortion's morality. When given the opportunity to weigh in on reproductive freedom measures directly, American voters—even those in decidedly red states like Kansas and Kentucky—keep taking the pro-choice side.

What happened? The reality of abortion prohibition set in. It is not unusual these days to hear the phrase "I'm pro-life, but…" followed by words of disapproval for the policies and tactics favored by prominent pro-lifers—and concern about what such policies will mean for women, children, and society.

It's a remarkable turnabout, and it's a reckoning for the pro-life movement that worked so hard to bring about Dobbs. The end of Roe turned out to be the biggest boost the pro-choice movement has ever had.

'The Labels Are Messy'

A majority of Americans now identify as "pro-choice"—54 percent in a Gallup poll from May 2024. That's a near-record high, and it reflects a measurable shift in public opinion.

Yet polling on "pro-choice" vs. "pro-life" labels doesn't tell the whole story, since views differ on what exactly these labels mean. Some think being pro-choice means support for legal abortion throughout pregnancy. Others suggest it aligns with the Roe paradigm where restrictions vary by trimester, with few at the beginning and a lot after viability. To some, "pro-choice" just means people should be allowed to choose abortion, while others think it necessarily endorses that choice. On the flip side, some use "pro-life" to describe personal opposition to abortion, while others think it must mean support for total or near-total bans.

What is clear is that these binary labels don't fully capture many people's views.

"The labels are messy, because people are way more nuanced," says Jordan Willow Evans, a 33-year-old woman living in New Hampshire. She opposes abortion as well as the death penalty, "unjust war," and euthanasia, so the pro-life label has "always resonated" with her. But she doesn't support abortion bans, because they can "drive people into dangerous alternatives" and "will eventually be either misused, abused, or otherwise neglected" by people in power.

"I think that taking an innocent life is one of the worst things you can do, and to avoid that at all costs is an imperative," says Meaghan Walker-Williams, a 52-year-old Canadian writer. But she doesn't "trust the government to get involved in these kinds of decisions," nor does she think "the state has the ability to discern what a woman can and can't handle, and what she can survive emotionally, psychologically, financially, spiritually."

Views like these aren't an anomaly. For a lot of folks, labels like "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are inadequate. In the Gallup poll where just 54 percent of respondents labeled themselves "pro-choice," a massive 85 percent said abortion should be legal under at least some circumstances.

A large Pew Research Center poll this year found strong support for the idea that "the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman," with 54 percent saying this describes their views very well and an additional 19 percent saying it describes their views somewhat well. It also found strong support for the idea that "human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights," with 19 percent at least somewhat endorsing this statement and 35 percent agreeing wholeheartedly. While 47 percent of those surveyed by Pew in March 2022 said abortion is morally wrong, only 22 percent said it should be illegal in all situations in which it is immoral.

All-or-nothing positions on abortion may dominate the headlines, but many Americans are fairly moderate on the issue. Their views on its morality and proper legal status shift depending on circumstances.

In the Pew poll taken last April, 25 percent said abortion should be legal in all circumstances and 8 percent said it should be illegal in all circumstances. The majority—66 percent—fell somewhere between these positions.

"There is evidence that many people are cross-pressured on this issue," Pew has noted. "For example, more than half of Americans who generally support abortion rights—by saying it should be legal in 'most' or 'all' cases—also say the timing of an abortion (i.e., how far along the pregnancy is) should be a factor in determining its legality (56%)."

Meanwhile, "among those who say abortion should be against the law in most or all cases," nearly two-thirds (63 percent) would at least sometimes make exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape and nearly half (46 percent) "say it should be legal if the pregnancy threatens the health or life of the woman," with an additional 27 percent saying "it depends."

The Evolution of American Views

A strong pro-choice streak in America is nothing new. But there's evidence that in the two years since the Supreme Court released the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe, support for legal abortion has increased.

The percentage of Americans describing themselves as pro-choice is up, hitting 55 percent in 2022 for the first time since Gallup started measuring in 1995. It hasn't fallen below 50 percent since. Meanwhile, support for total abortion bans has dropped—down from 19 percent in 2021 to 12 percent in 2024, now tying record lows from the 1990s.

After years of young Americans turning against legal abortion, youth trends have now done an about-face, with the youngest U.S. adults far outpacing older counterparts in their pro-choice sentiment.

A whopping 76 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds in a recent Pew poll said abortion should be legal in most or all cases, compared to 61 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds and 57 percent to 59 percent of older cohorts.

Ten years ago, Pew found more modest generational differences. In 2014, just 56 percent of millennials, then the youngest adult cohort, said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That's three percentage points fewer than among Gen Xers and four percentage points greater than among boomers, albeit quite a bit higher than the 42 percent of Silent Generation respondents who said the same.

In Gallup's surveys, 88 percent of young adults this year said abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, up from 77 percent in 2021 and 74 percent in 2010. The jump was especially stark for those saying abortion should be legal under any circumstances, going from 25 percent in 2010 to 44 percent this year. Young folks in 2024 are also much more likely to call themselves pro-choice: 58 percent say they're pro-choice and 35 percent pro-life, compared to 39 percent and 50 percent in 2010.

Views on the morality of abortion may be shifting along with views on its legality. About 54 percent of Gallup poll respondents this year said abortion is morally acceptable, up from 47 percent in 2021, before Dobbs. The number saying it's morally wrong dropped from 46 percent to 34 percent.

What explains these shifts? Exposure to the reality of abortion bans may play a role, along with the kinds of abortion stories featuring strongly in news and popular culture.

For decades, the most prevalent image of an abortion-seeking woman was one choosing abortion because she didn't want a baby. Sometimes this was for sympathetic reasons, such as financial hardship, but it was always a choice.

In recent years, by contrast, the news has been filled with stories of women who very much want children but find that continuing a pregnancy threatens their lives, will end with a baby suffering and dying soon after birth, or will lead to similarly tragic circumstances. Front and center are stories of women for whom abortion is the only option compatible with compassion, health, and life.

Bans 'Already Proving To Be Life-Threatening'

As I interviewed pro-life people who oppose abortion bans, one idea that kept appearing was a fear that such laws put women's lives at risk.

This was sometimes framed as concern about attempted black market abortions. But more often it was concern for how bans could distort care for pregnant women, making medical professionals hesitant to act to save women's lives for fear of running afoul of abortion rules.

"A lot of this is already proving to be life-threatening," says Maureen Flatley, a 75-year-old pro-life Catholic in Boston who thinks the anti-abortion movement has taken some wrong turns since when she was first exposed to it in her 20s. "The positions that are being taken [now] are definitely too extreme."

"I don't like the idea that people run around saying, 'It's never medically necessary to have an abortion,'" says Worlow. "That's just not true. If you define an abortion as ending a baby's life [in utero], it is—in very rare circumstances—100 percent medically necessary to do, to prevent sepsis."

Trisha Butler, a mother of four in Tennessee and chair of the libertarian-leaning Liberal Party USA, is also concerned with the "second- and third-level consequences" of banning abortion, including how it could lead to things "like prosecuting women…who have miscarriages." While she personally identifies as pro-life, she tells me "my very uncomfortable compromise is…it has to be between a woman and her doctor. It has to be a medical thing."

'The Real Issue Is Bodily Autonomy'

This was another common theme in my interviews: that reproductive decisions must be left to medical professionals because doing otherwise invited too much intrusion by the state.

"It's a matter of privacy between the person who is pregnant and their physician," says Maura Alwyen, a 54-year-old property maintenance manager in Illinois. Alwyen is pro-life, but "if we start interjecting legal aspects into private matters, where does it stop?" she asks. "Everyone says 'slippery slope.' It's like, no, it's a well-waxed slide."

Marc Randazza, an intellectual property and First Amendment lawyer, likens support for abortion bans with wanting to force everyone to get a COVID-19 vaccine. "The real issue is bodily autonomy," he says.

"My co-Catholics are like, 'Well, what about the rights of the fetus?' I agree that's a living thing and it ought to have rights. And it sucks that it can't," says Randazza. "But the only way that that fetus can have rights is if we move the jurisdiction of the government from outside your body to inside your body. Once they're inside your body, there's no limit to what they can do in there."

"The government that has the power to tell you you can't have an abortion is the same government that has the power to tell you you have to have an abortion," he adds.

God, Love, and Liberty

Randazza is unabashedly Catholic and pro-life, but he worries that using religion to "coerce other people into social action" opens up a path to religious majority rule in ways that he won't like. "There's a reason that I quote 2 Corinthians 3:17 all the time—where you find God, you find liberty."

Leaving the morality of abortion between individuals and a higher power is another thing I heard repeatedly in my interviews.

Ali Elwell Zaiac, a firefighter and mother of one in Vermont, was raised "fundamentalist" and later went to theology school. She is pro-life enough that she and her husband decided to donate unused embryos from their IVF process. But God gave people free will, she tells me, and what people do with it is between them and God. You can't "love your neighbor" and then hate them because they get an abortion, she says.

"It's not up to us or the government to tell us whether or not we have to have children," adds Zaiac, noting that pregnancy "is so hard on your body" and can cause many health risks.

This was another common theme among those I interviewed: Even when personally opposed to abortion, many feel uncomfortable making this decision for everyone.

Walker-Williams, who gave a daughter up for adoption when she was younger, is "strongly opposed to abortion" and finds it "morally repugnant." But she says she "would never, never, never get in the middle between a woman's ability to choose for herself what she is capable of surviving and coping with."

Practical Concerns

For the "pro-life, but…" crowd, a world without abortion is still the goal. But many who define themselves this way try to be practical about what it will take to get there, and cognizant of the ways bans have unintended consequences.

Evans says she would "much rather empower people through education" and access to contraception than through bans that don't address the underlying issues driving unintended pregnancies.

"Women forever have tried to have abortions, and then they just died. It's good to have people that are still alive," says Zaiac.

Flatley, who has worked for decades as a child welfare advocate, worries that abortion bans will only fuel neglect and abuse of children once they are born. "Women who don't want to parent" are going to have kids "at the highest possible risk for abuse and neglect," she says. And the idea that the adoption system can pick up all the slack is laughable to her.

"I can tell you that as the Supreme Court rushed to overturn Roe, everyone around them skipped about 10 million steps to create an infrastructure that was adequate to support the unintended consequences," says Flatley. "If you're going to force people to have children, you need to be prepared, and nobody was prepared for the upshot of the Dobbs decision."

Flatley has seen firsthand the "appalling condition of the child welfare system in America" as well as flaws in the private adoption system. "We barely have enough adoption service providers to do the adoptions today, much less absorb the bandwidth that would be required" without legal abortion, she says. And "because there is inadequate bandwidth to actually execute the adoptions," you'll wind up in a situation where kids are just waiting in the foster care system or state care for years.

Finding Common Ground

As with so much in American life, politics complicates the issue. There was a time when being a Democrat or a Republican didn't necessarily signal where one fell on the pro-life/pro-choice divide, and evidence suggests that for ordinary folks this still might be the case. But Democrats have become so firmly encoded as the pro-choice party and Republicans as their pro-life opposition that it's nearly impossible for politicians from one or the other to embrace middle ground. It's de rigueur instead for them to wildly caricature or exaggerate the other side's views. This is perhaps always more intense during an election season, and will likely be all the more so with Kamala Harris—who has hit hard on this issue in recent years—stepping into President Joe Biden's shoes as the Democratic nominee.

It's in the vested interests of both parties to focus on where Americans differ on abortion rather than on where they find common ground. But there is a lot of common ground.

"It's rare to find someone who genuinely wants to destroy life," says Evans, suggesting that the idea that pro-choice activists "don't themselves like abortions" is something that unfortunately "gets lost a lot" in abortion discourse. "People need to understand that we're more alike than we are separate," she says.

This seems like a productive starting point for reaching some sanity on abortion policies.

The abortion activists—pro or anti—that grab attention tend to be outliers. According to basically all available polls, most Americans are willing to go beyond black-and-white thinking about the issue. They support limits, and they support exceptions. They trust women and medical professionals. They understand the problems that unwanted pregnancies can cause, and they don't dismiss the idea that fetuses have rights.

Americans are capable of separating their feelings about abortion's morality from their opinions about what should or shouldn't be against the law.

On abortion, Americans are largely moderates—and libertarians. Contrary to popular portrayals of diametrically opposed pro-choice and pro-life sides, they are looking for laws and candidates that reflect this. It's high past time for the politics of abortion to more closely mirror the reality of American views.

When the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, pro-lifers expected the ruling to be a watershed moment for their movement. And it was—just not in the way activists wanted or expected.