It appears as if the giant party difference in support for abortion under any and all conditions is an artifact of the way the typical abortion survey question is constructed. Most respondents are not thinking about any or all possible circumstances when they answer the question; after all, you cannot think of a circumstance that you don’t know is even possible or likely. But when the A.N.E.S. provided these circumstances to people specifically, like an abortion for a woman who wanted a boy but found out she was having a girl, hardly anyone thought it should be legal to behave this way.
.. The data permit an even closer look at the 57 percent of Democrats who responded that abortion should “always be legal.” Clearly, some of them changed their minds when posed the question about a baby’s sex leading to an abortion.