views of abortion by gender

I didn’t know how women and men differ in their views of abortion or how opinions have changed over time. So I ran the numbers using American National Election Study data since 1980.

Here are the strong pro-choice and anti-abortion views by gender:

More people favor always allowing rather than never allowing abortion. Differences by gender are small and not significant, but women are currently just a bit more likely to take both the strongest pro- and anti- positions. The trend over time is slightly favorable to choice.

The graph is noisier if we add a middle view as defined by the ANES (abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest, or medical risk to the mother):

Making abortion sometimes legal is the most popular position, and men are somewhat more likely than women to adopt it, but again, the gender difference is small.