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Americans who call abortion their top voting issue are now more likely to support banning it, a reversal from the energized reproductive rights supporters who turned abortion into a key election issue after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Only 2 percent of Americans say abortion is their top concern, according to a new 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll, down from 7 percent in the same poll a year ago and 5 percent in 2023. Among them, 57 percent want abortion mostly or completely outlawed; 39 percent say abortion should be banned in all cases, compared with only 10 percent of the general population. 

The findings suggest a possible reversion to the status quo before Roe’s fall. People who prioritize abortion now appear more conservative than Americans generally. 

“If there is a candidate who is not for protecting life — which is the very basic foundation of everything, is life — then I cannot support that person and could not vote for that person,” said Lisa Gormont, 58, who lives outside of State College, Pennsylvania, and said abortion is her top issue.

Historically, voters who prioritized abortion wanted politicians to outlaw it. But the 2022 Supreme Court decision ending federal abortion rights — which ushered in near-total bans in conservative-led states across the country — inverted that trend. 

For the past two years, most voters who made abortion their top issue said they believed it should be legal in most or all cases. Last year, the 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll found that 59 percent of voters who said abortion was their top issue wanted it legal in all cases, and another 22 said it should be legal in most cases. In 2023, 48 percent of those abortion-prioritizing voters said it should be legal always, and another 20 percent said it should be in most cases.

Democrats campaigned furiously on abortion rights, with many candidates highlighting the issue in the 2022 midterms and then-Vice President Kamala Harris making abortion protections a centerpiece of her 2024 presidential bid. Republicans, by contrast, largely avoided the issue, with President Donald Trump distancing himself from conservative calls for national abortion restrictions.

Since returning to office, Trump has spoken little about abortion. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has indicated some openness to limiting access to the procedure, most recently in a September 19 letter saying that the federal government is reviewing the approval for a key abortion drug and may restrict when it can be used.

About 56 percent of Americans who called abortion their top issue said they approve of Trump, compared with only 43 percent of the general public, the poll found. But some, like Gormont, expressed some dissatisfaction with his approach to abortion. In general, she said, Trump appears less focused on abortion than on other issues — and as a result has done less to restrict it than she would like.

“There are so many other things that take his attention, and I don’t think that is something he ever really put on his platform as a top-tier concern,” she said. 

And beyond abortion, she voiced particular concern over Trump’s comments on in vitro fertilization, which she opposes. Trump has said he might support expanding the availability of IVF, even campaigning on the issue, though that has not translated into actual policies. Because IVF generally involves the creation of multiple embryos — not all of which will necessarily be implanted in someone’s uterus — it has attracted the ire of some abortion opponents, who believe the discarding of excess embryos is immoral.

Voters prioritizing abortion now appear to be more conservative on issues of gender. Of people who said abortion was their top priority, 57 percent also said society would be better served by reverting to “traditional gender roles,” seven percentage points above the general population. The same share also said they believe a fetus has rights starting at conception — a conservative philosophy known as “fetal personhood,” compared with 43 percent of the general population. And 55 percent said they believe transgender adults shouldn’t be able to get gender-affirming care, compared with 42 percent of Americans at large.

SurveyMonkey conducted this poll online from September 8 to 15 among a national sample of 20,807 U.S. adults, with a modeled error estimate of plus or minus 1 percentage point.

Overall, most voters still support abortion rights. About 62 percent of voters said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Majorities of Democrats and independents said they support abortion rights. So did most men and most women. Abortion also retained majority support across education and income levels.

Even if abortion rights supporters did not name it as a singular top issue, some may still struggle to vote for a candidate who is not committed to protecting reproductive rights.

“If somebody came in and was saying we needed to ban abortions across the map, that would totally not be something I’m in for,” said Tiegan Paulson, a 22-year-old student living in Portland, Maine, who voted for Harris last fall. 

Abortion wasn’t his main concern in the past election; foreign policy was, and in particular effective plans to resolve international conflicts. But moving forward, he said, “personal freedoms” — a category in which he includes abortion rights, free speech and LGBTQ+ rights — are on a short list of non-negotiables for a candidate to win his support.

“It would need to be a fairly high priority,” he said. “I would want to see some sort of action plan for abortion and just for personal freedoms more generally: the right to choose what you do with your voice, with your body, with your life, at the very least to the extent that it doesn’t impact anybody else. That seems like a pretty fundamental right that people in this country should have.”