Simplified or Misunderstood? Rethinking How We Measure Americans’ Abortion Attitudes in the Post-Roe Era

Standard measures of abortion attitudes, such as the American National Election Survey’s four-point scale, do not capture public opinion on the dimensions that structure the post-Roe abortion policy landscape. While these traditional measures rely on broad, categorical distinctions, contemporary policy debates increasingly hinge on two specific factors: the reason for seeking an abortion and the gestational age of the fetus. To address this mismatch, I develop an original survey instrument that measures opinion along these dimensions. Using data from a large-scale survey (N = 69,752), I show that continuing to use the ANES scale introduces partisan-driven, nonrandom measurement error. Specifically, Democrats and Republicans who select the same ANES response hold systematically different policy preferences, and respondents with comparable policy preferences select different ANES answer choices depending on their partisanship—with Democrats anchoring their answers to a more permissive baseline. These findings underscore the risk of relying on broad-based attitudinal scales that do not evolve alongside the policy debates they are meant to capture.