(Oregon Right to Life) — The vast majority of Americans support limits on abortion, a new poll has revealed, highlighting the radicalism of states like Oregon where abortion is fully legal up to the moment of birth for any reason.
The nationwide Knights of Columbus-Marist poll, released on January 23, surveyed 1,387 adults nationwide between January 7–9. The survey found that 72% of respondents, across political divides, believe abortion should be restricted at six months of pregnancy or earlier, and 60% think it should only be legal in the first three months. When given a binary choice, 67% rejected a position that would put no limits at all on abortion. Currently, nine states (and Washington, D.C.), including Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico, allow abortion up to birth with no limits.
A majority of people polled (57%) also said they disagreed with using taxpayer dollars to fund abortions, and 73% disagreed with taxpayer funding for groups to perform abortions overseas. In Oregon, more than 50% of all abortions are paid for with tax dollars. At the federal level, recent moves by President Donald Trump mirror the perspectives shown in the poll, with Trump reinforcing a prohibition against taxpayer-funded abortion within the U.S. and reinstating a ban on the use of American tax dollars to finance international abortions.
The poll also showed stark differences between the arguments put forward by pro-abortion activists and the opinions of ordinary Americans.
While abortion activists frequently argue that legal abortion is necessary to protect the lives of pregnant women, 82% of poll respondents said they believed that laws could protect mothers and unborn babies simultaneously. Moreover, 83% of Americans also said they supported pregnancy resource centers, which offer life-affirming alternatives to abortion but are often unfairly derided as “fake” clinics because they do not offer abortions. Further, 62% of Americans said healthcare professionals who have personal beliefs against abortion should not be forced to perform them.
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Dr. Barbara L. Carvalho, Director of the Marist Poll, said the results of the 2025 survey “show that Americans are once again firm in their belief that abortion should be significantly limited yet laws should include exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.”
“This consistent year over year trend found in the annual Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll has continued, now nearly three years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision,” she said.
“Democrats who are still ‘Shouting Your Abortion’ after losing the presidency, House, and Senate in 2024 should think again,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in response to the poll. “Their agenda of taxpayer-funded abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy remains deeply unpopular, as do their attacks on pro-life doctors and pregnancy centers that offer real alternatives to abortion.”
“With a new administration in charge, we look forward to reversing Biden’s weaponization of every aspect of the federal government to push abortion on demand, getting American taxpayers out of the abortion business, and a new focus on putting our government to work to truly serve both mother and child,” Dannenfelser said.
