English- and Spanish-speaking U.S. adults’ perceptions of the most common reasons for abortion: a study of open-ended data before and after Dobbs v. Jackson

Abstract

Background: The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has given individual states more capacity to legislate abortion. State legislators have and continue to design and pass laws that restrict or ban abortion, often naming exceptions based on specific reasons (i.e., fetal health, woman’s health, rape). Given that these reasons often do not align with those reported by abortion-seekers, it is crucial to assess whether the U.S. public accurately understands why people seek abortions. This study explored a sample of U.S. adults’ perceptions of the three most common reasons why someone might get an abortion. Methods: We analyzed open-ended data from two waves of a 2022 longitudinal survey (n = 681 participants; n = 2,043 responses per wave; n = 4,086 total responses) collected before and after the Dobbs decision in English and Spanish via Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel®. We explored three main research questions: (1) What does the U.S. public perceive to be the most common reasons for someone to seek abortion? (2) Are there differences in perceived reasons before and after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision? (3) Are there differences in perceived reasons across languages? Results: Findings indicated that people perceive the three most common reasons to seek abortion to be: unwanted/unplanned pregnancy reasons, violence-related reasons, and health reasons. After the Dobbs decision, there was an increase in respondents mentioning that people have abortions for health reasons and financial reasons, and a decrease in responses related to unwanted/unplanned pregnancy reasons, not ready/unprepared reasons, and partner-related reasons. Additionally, we found significant differences in perceptions between languages (i.e., English and Spanish). We also note discrepancies between perceived reasons among our sample and reasons reported by abortion patients in national studies. Conclusions: This study underscores the public’s misconceptions of reasons for seeking abortion and the importance of correcting such misunderstandings to ensure alignment of public sentiment and legislative and judicial policy post-Dobbs.