Four years ago this month, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, dramatically reshaping reproductive policy across the country.
At the time, abortion dominated the news. Journalists tracked state abortion bans, court challenges, and stories of women navigating a rapidly changing legal landscape. Politicians debated the issue, proposing a range of policy responses.
Today, abortion is no longer front-page news.
Instead, the headlines are dominated by President Donald Trump — his latest statement, controversial appointment, legal battle or social media post. The modern media environment is built around novelty and conflict, and few figures generate more of either than Trump. In many ways, abortion has been crowded out of the national conversation.
But the absence of headlines should not be mistaken for the absence of importance.
For millions of Americans, especially young women, abortion remains a deeply consequential issue that continues to shape both their lives and their political views.
Indeed, one of the central findings of our recently published book, “Not Going Back: Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Dobbs America,” is that the policy changes following Dobbs have fundamentally altered how Americans think about abortion.
For decades, public opinion on abortion was remarkably stable. Most Americans occupied a middle ground. They generally supported legal abortion in at least some circumstances while also expressing support for certain restrictions.
That stability disappeared after Dobbs.
As states enacted abortion bans and restrictions, public opinion moved in the opposite direction. Americans became more supportive of abortion rights, more skeptical of government restrictions and more likely to identify as pro-choice.
Why?
Part of the answer is that abortion became less abstract.
When Roe was in place, many Americans rarely thought about how abortion policy affected their own communities. After Dobbs, they began seeing stories about women traveling across state lines for care, doctors facing legal uncertainty, and families confronting difficult pregnancy complications. What had once seemed like a distant political debate became a real-world issue with tangible consequences.
Our research finds that lived experience matters. Individuals who have had abortions, know someone who has had an abortion, or better understand the realities of reproduction are significantly more likely to support legal abortion access. In other words, people’s views are shaped not simply by ideology but by experience and knowledge.
This helps explain another important change since Dobbs: the emergence of a significant gender gap on abortion. For decades, men and women held surprisingly similar views on the issue. Today, women are substantially more supportive of abortion rights than men.
That shift is not difficult to understand. Women are more likely to see abortion not as an abstract political controversy but as a health care issue that could affect them, their daughters, their friends or their families.
These changes have political consequences.
Republican leaders increasingly prefer not to discuss abortion. There are practical reasons for this. Public opinion has shifted in a direction that makes the Republican Party’s commitment to abortion bans and restrictions less popular than they were before Dobbs. Efforts to portray 12- or 15-week bans as moderate compromises have often failed to gain public support. Meanwhile, Democrats have become more energized by the issue, prioritizing it more highly than Republicans for the first time in recent history.
Donald Trump himself has often appeared uncomfortable discussing abortion. Unlike some social conservatives, he has never seemed personally invested in the pro-life cause. He understands that abortion remains a politically complicated issue for Republicans and would often prefer to focus public attention elsewhere.
But whether politicians want to talk about abortion is ultimately beside the point.
The issue continues to affect people’s lives. Young women continue to make decisions about education, careers, relationships and family formation in a post-Dobbs world. Health care providers continue to navigate new legal realities. Families continue to confront difficult and deeply personal decisions.
Four years after Dobbs, abortion may no longer dominate the headlines. Yet the effects of the decision are still unfolding every day and ensuring that public opinion on abortion is not going back to its pre-Dobbs stasis.