People Who Don't Understand Pregnancy More Likely to Oppose Abortion

People who know more about pregnancy and what it involves are more likely to support abortion rights, research has found.

Regardless of political position, the more details people understand about what pregnancy involves, the less they support making abortion illegal, finds a new study presented at the Southern Political Science Association Conference in New Orleans.

It comes nearly two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in June 2022, removing Constitutional protection for abortion access. In the time since, several states have banned abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, including Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, South Dakota and Tennessee.

In other states, like Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and West Virginia, abortion is banned with limited exceptions, like rape or incest, but this comes with a time limit and often a requirement that the incident must have been reported to law enforcement.

Some states have banned abortion after a certain number of weeks of pregnancy: in Georgia and South Carolina, it's banned after 6 weeks, while the limit is 12 weeks in Nebraska and North Carolina, 15 weeks in Arizona and Florida, and 18 weeks in Utah.

In many of the states where abortion is legal, it is allowed up to the point where a fetus is viable outside of the womb, which occurs at roughly 24 weeks.

The study polled over 1,300 adults in the United States from across the political spectrum and found that those who knew more about pregnancy and how a fetus grows were more likely to support keeping abortion legal.

"Our study finds that the more people understand about pregnancy, the more they support legal abortion. We also find, that people seem just as opposed to 12-week abortion bans—a presumed compromise position—as they are to restrictive 6-week bans," study author Steven Greene, professor of political science at North Carolina State University, told Newsweek.

People who knew what a trimester was and who knew that a pregnancy is counted back to a woman's last period, rather than to conception are more likely to oppose laws banning abortions.

"As knowing more about pregnancy also is associated with being female and more educated, we thought it was important to make sure this relationship would hold up with appropriate statistical controls," Greene said. "And, yes, we did find that even when controlling for demographic factors and political and religious beliefs, this association between pregnancy knowledge and abortion attitudes persisted."

The fertilization of an egg occurs in the third week of a pregnancy: the first two weeks of a pregnancy are the time between the woman's last period and conception.

The study also found that laws limiting abortion to before 12 weeks only were not more supported than laws that limited it to before 6 weeks.

"This suggests that efforts by some politicians to promote 12-week bans as a moderate, or compromise, position are likely not effective," Greene said in a statement.

After week 6, the fetus is around the size of a lentil, at 8 weeks, the size of a kidney bean, and at 12 weeks, the size of a lime.

"There is a tremendous amount of research on public attitudes toward abortion in the United States, but very little of that work has been done since the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade," Greene said. "We wanted to ask questions that directly address the policy issues raised in state legislatures in the wake of Dobbs.

"Will people support a politician who promotes six-week bans? Will people support a politician who promotes 12-week bans? Do people who understand that these weeks are counted starting from a woman's most recent period view abortion laws differently from people who think that these weeks are counted from when a woman actually got pregnant?" he said.

The researchers hope that these findings will highlight the importance of educating the public about pregnancy and sex when garnering support for abortion rights.

"One possible take-away here is that efforts to educate the public on basic sex education may be a viable strategy for groups trying to build support for women's access to abortion," Greene said.

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Update 1/26/24, 11:26 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Greene.