Will abortion become a live political issue in the UK?
In June of this year, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. While this was not completely unexpected, and indeed because this was not unexpected, this had a fairly dramatic effect. Several states had trigger laws leading to nigh on immediate effects on the legality of abortion in those states, and the anti-abortion lobby has already proposed a federal law reducing time limits.
Abortion has long been a highly charged issue in the US, with the proportion of the population thinking that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and those thinking abortion should be legal under any circumstances remaining relatively similar over the last 5 decades. Since the late 80s, there has consistently been more support for abortion being legal under any circumstances than illegal in all circumstances, with a current opinion gap of 22 opinion points in favour of legality, with these two points of view diverging in popularity over the last several years in particular. The proportion of those that think abortion should be legal under certain circumstances has stayed within the range 50-60% for the last 5 decades.
The situation is really quite different in the UK. To start with, while abortion is available in the UK (there are differences in both law and provision in Northern Ireland compared to the rest of the UK, so generally we will discuss Great Britain), it is technically still a criminal act, according to the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861.
The British Social Attitudes survey first started asking about abortion in 1983. Support for abortion in the case of serious danger to health has hovered around 90% for all 4 decades of polling. Support for abortion in the case of an unwanted child crossed 50% in about 1980 and has not dipped back under since, stabilising at approximately 60% since 2005. This is quite drastically different to the US, with a 40 percentage point difference in support for abortion in cases of danger to health and a 25 percentage point difference in support for abortion in any case. The wording in the two polls aren’t identical, but are similar enough to be comparable.
So given this gulf in opinion, is it possible that the UK could see a similarly successful campaign to roll back abortion rights? After all, such a campaign would be starting from a position where abortion is less protected than it was in the US. Activists worry that the answer is yes, especially when senior government MPs call abortion a “cult of death” and say that it is always wrong for the state to allow abortion.
Abortion in the UK is currently accessible up to 24 weeks, and if two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would cause harm to either mental or physical health. Doctors, as a whole, understand an unwanted pregnancy to damage mental health, meaning that abortion is de facto available. In July, there were multiple women involved in court processes after being charged with, effectively, obtaining an unauthorised abortion. Migrant women are also sometimes charged for abortion care, potentially meaning that some are unable to access it.
Public First undertook some polling, to have a look at what the general understanding of the UK’s abortion law is, and whether or not people want to move away from the current system. To begin with, we asked how respondents felt about the current abortion laws in the UK. 71% of respondents think that the current law is about right (82% excluding Don’t knows). 8% say that abortion laws are too strict, compared to only 6% who say they are too loose. The proportion of those saying the law is too strict varies dramatically by age, with 19% of those under the age of 25 agreeing, but only 2% of those 65+.
Of course, it’s all well and good for people to say the current law is appropriate. The question is whether or not they are fully aware of what the current law is, and our polling suggested that a significant proportion were not. A plurality of respondents (43%) were correct about the current legal status of abortion in the UK, but 39% report their understanding of the law to be that abortion is fully legal under any circumstance. This number rises to 43% among people who know somebody who has had an abortion, suggesting that the process at least seems smooth from the outside.
After being informed of the current legal status of abortion, 61% of respondents agreed that abortion should be legal regardless of whether there is a physical or mental health risk to the mother, while 57% agreed that the current abortion law seems about right, suggesting that many people perhaps struggle to maintain a consistent view on the issue. This is borne out by the finding that 58% of those who agree that abortion should be legal regardless of the health risk to the mother also agree that the current abortion law is about right.
One of the starkest differences in opinion was visible in the question of whether abortion should be legal regardless of risk. There was a 10 percentage point difference between men and women, with 66% of women agreeing, compared to only 56% of men. There was an even bigger difference in age. 69% of those aged 18-24 agreed with the statement, but only 56% of those aged 65+. However, in no demographic group of sufficient sample size did support for this statement drop under 50%.
While people might not be fully clear on precisely what the law is, or what they think it ought to be, as 76% of respondents agree that continuing an unwanted pregnancy would be bad for mental health and 78% agree that abortions should be allowed if there is a mental health risk, the general sentiment very much seems to be in favour of abortions being accessible for those that want them. This, along with the graphs above, implies that a similar project to the US anti-abortion campaigns would have to work extremely hard to turn public opinion around.