By GEOFF MULVIHILL and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX, Associated Press

Three years after the Supreme Court opened the door to state abortion bans, most U.S. adults continue to say abortion should be legal — views that look similar to before the landmark ruling.

The new findings from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that about two-thirds of U.S. adults think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

FILE – Abortion-rights activists demonstrate against the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade that established a constitutional right to abortion, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 30, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

About half believe abortion should be available in their state if someone does not want to be pregnant for any reason.

That level of support for abortion is down slightly from what an AP-NORC poll showed last year, when it seemed that support for legal abortion might be rising.

Laws and opinions changed when Roe was overturned

The June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door to state bans on abortion led to major policy changes.

Most states have either moved to protect abortion access or restrict it. Twelve are now enforcing bans on abortion at every stage of pregnancy, and four more do so after about six weeks’ gestation, which is often before women realize they’re pregnant.

In the aftermath of the ruling, AP-NORC polling suggested that support for legal abortion access might be increasing.

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Last year, an AP-NORC poll conducted in June found that 7 in 10 U.S. adults said it should be available in all or most cases, up slightly from 65% in May 2022, just before the decision that overruled the constitutional right to abortion, and 57% in June 2021.

The new poll is closer to Americans’ views before the Supreme Court ruled. Now, 64% of adults support legal abortion in most or all cases. More than half the adults in states with the most stringent bans are in that group.

Similarly, about half now say abortion should be available in their state when someone doesn’t want to continue their pregnancy for any reason — about the same as in June 2021 but down from about 6 in 10 who said that in 2024.

Adults in the strictest states are just as likely as others to say abortion should be available in their state to women who want to end pregnancies for any reason.

Democrats support abortion access far more than Republicans do. Support for legal abortion has dropped slightly among members of both parties since June 2024, but nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and roughly 4 in 10 Republicans say abortion should be legal in at least most instances.

Fallout from state bans has influenced some people’s positions — but not others

Seeing what’s happened in the aftermath of the ruling has strengthened the abortion rights position of Wilaysha White, a 25-year-old Ohio mom.

She has some regrets about the abortion she had when she was homeless.

“I don’t think you should be able to get an abortion anytime,” said White, who calls herself a “semi-Republican.”

But she said that hearing about situations — including when a Georgia woman was arrested after a miscarriage and initially charged with concealing a death — is a bigger concern.

“Seeing women being sick and life or death, they’re not being put first — that’s just scary,” she said. “I’d rather have it be legal across the board than have that.”

Julie Reynolds’ strong anti-abortion stance has been cemented for decades and hasn’t shifted since Roe was overturned.

“It’s a moral issue,” said the 66-year-old Arizona woman, who works part time as a bank teller.

She said her view is shaped partly by having obtained an abortion herself when she was in her 20s. “I would not want a woman to go through that,” she said. “I live with that every day. I took a life.”

Support remains high for legal abortion in certain situations

The vast majority of U.S. adults — at least 8 in 10 — continue to say their state should allow legal abortion if a fetal abnormality would prevent the child from surviving outside the womb, if the patient’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy, or if the person became pregnant as a result of rape or incest.

Consistent with AP-NORC’s June 2024 poll, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor protecting access to abortions for patients who are experiencing miscarriages or other pregnancy-related emergencies.

In states that have banned or restricted abortion, such medical exceptions have been sharply in focus.

This is a major concern for Nicole Jones, a 32-year-old Florida resident.

Jones and her husband would like to have children soon. But she said she’s worried about access to abortion if there’s a fetal abnormality or a condition that would threaten her life in pregnancy since they live in a state that bans most abortions after the first six weeks of gestation.

“What if we needed something?” she asked. “We’d have to travel out of state or risk my life because of this ban.”

Adults support protections for seeking abortions across state lines — but not as strongly

There’s less consensus on whether states that allow abortion should protect access for women who live in places with bans.

Just over half support protecting a patient’s right to obtain an abortion in another state and shielding those who provide abortions from fines or prison time. In both cases, relatively few adults — about 2 in 10 — oppose the measures and about 1 in 4 are neutral.

More Americans also favor than oppose legal protections for doctors who prescribe and mail abortion pills to patients in states with bans. About 4 in 10 “somewhat” or “strongly” favor those protections, and roughly 3 in 10 oppose them.

Such telehealth prescriptions are a key reason that the number of abortions nationally has risen even as travel for abortion has declined slightly.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

In 1964, Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” arguing that the medium of communication is as, if not more, important than the message itself. A concept born from the television-obsessed 1960s, it rattles around the new Marvel movie, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which is set in a 1960s-esque retro-futuristic universe Earth 828, where TV is the most important means of mass communication.

Television is also how our heroes, the Fantastic Four, establish their public roles as a quartet of cosmically supercharged scientists and protectors of the planet. They’re not just superheroes, they’re public intellectuals who share their knowledge on educational science programs, and late-night talk shows beamed into every household, which is how we’re introduced to them and their origin story in “First Steps.”

Directed by Matt Shakman, “First Steps” is a total reset of the characters, arriving a decade after the disastrous 2015 “Fantastic Four” movie. Pedro Pascal now plays Reed Richards, the scientist who took a team to space that included his wife, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), his brother-in-law, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and his best friend, Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).

After encountering a cosmic storm, they returned with special powers and acquired new nicknames: Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing.

In the screenplay by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer, the focus is on the foursome as a family. The film is much more of a domestic drama with a little world-saving on the side. Early on, it’s revealed that Sue and Reed are expecting a child, after years of trying. Their happy news is interrupted by a herald, the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) who arrives on Earth 828 to announce that the planet has been marked for consumption by Galactus the Devourer (Ralph Ineson). A worldwide crisis ensues, which is exacerbated when Galactus says he’ll spare the planet in exchange for Reed and Sue’s baby, whom he believes to be a powerful space god. They refuse, and the planet turns on them.

Sue rejects this binary choice, believing there’s a way to defeat Galactus without sacrificing her child. As a mother and leader on Earth 828, Sue ultimately appeals to the world by appealing to them as a family, asking everyone to work together to defeat Galactus, and television broadcast is how she shares her message of unity.

While the 1960s style and Space Age Googie architecture sure is neat, this period setting is also necessary for telling a plausible story that combines mass communication and collective action. If the message in “First Steps” is an allegory for what’s needed to save our own world — unified action against climate change — what we need is a united media landscape, where every person is watching the same news broadcasts at the same time, where facts are agreed upon and not contested, the message consistent and uniform. Which is to say, it’s nothing like the world we inhabit now, which has already been fractured beyond belief.

For a film that engages so much with TV and its power to reach a mass audience, it’s logical to hire a veteran TV director. Shakman, who directed many episodes of the retro family Marvel sitcom “WandaVision,” shepherd this project. That he brings a distinctly televisual — and utterly bland — style to the film is not such a boon for a movie that will be shown in IMAX. The spectacle on display here is nothing to write home about.

Despite the midcentury flair, the film is dull as dishwater visually. Shakman and his “WandaVision” cinematographer Jess Hall favor flat, static, center-framed medium shots of the characters, who spend most of their time inside their skyscraper fortress where the lighting is the same no matter the time of day. The action is unremarkable, and the aesthetic all blends into a kind of bluish-gray blur.

The story itself is simple, and while deeply emotional, it’s still fairly silly. There are a few attempts at banter, but the funniest person in the movie is Paul Walter Hauser as the Mole Man/Harvey Elder, the leader of the underground Subterranea (and there’s not nearly enough of him). Of the four, Pascal delivers the best performance as the fussy, fastidious scientist Reed Richards.
So it’s the message that’s the most interesting element of “First Steps,” and while delivered in a movie medium, it’s ultimately a story about the power of television. Perhaps it would have been best relegated to the small screen then, because the biggest one isn’t doing this movie any favors. A message this urgent shouldn’t be rendered in such a forgettable fashion.

‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for action/violence and some language)

Running time: 1:55

How to watch: In theaters

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TIM BRADY: St. Paul author launches “A Light In the Northern Sea,” a little-known true story of how the people of Denmark banded together during World War II to rescue nearly all of their Jewish citizens from Nazi persecution by ferrying them a few at a time to sanctuary in Sweden. In conversation with award-winning Minnesota nonfiction writer Jack El-Hai. 7 p.m. Tuesday,  Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave S., Mpls. Registration required: magersandquinn.com.

PETE GALLAGHER: Minnesotan signs copies of his novel “Backwashed.” Noon-2 p.m. Saturday, Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.

DANNY KLECKO: Hosts The New York Show, a multi-poet reading inspired by Klecko’s most recent poetry collection “We Talked About New York,” with special guest Erica Christ and Clarence White, David Malcolm Scott, Scott Velsch, Julia Klatt Singer, Thomas Cassidy and Joe Balonie. 4 p.m. July 27, SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul.

(Courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

KYLE MILLS: Best-selling author of nine thrillers featuring Mitch Rapp, a series originally written by the late Minnesotan Vince Flynn, launches the first in a new series, “Fade-In,” an international political espionage thriller about an ex-Navy SEAL who ends up injured and imprisoned by a ring of power brokers who offer him a way out through a high-stakes military mission. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.

ROOT/POVO: Phyllis Root and Kelly Povo discuss their book “Chasing Wildflowers: An Adventurous Guide to Minnesota’s Native Flowers In Their Unique Habitats.” 2 p.m. Saturday, Minnesota History Center, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul.

MAGGIE STIEFVATER: Virginia-based bestselling author introduces “The Raven Boys,” first in her The Raven Cycle series, in a new graphic novel edition. 6 p.m. Friday, St. Catherine University, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, presented by Red Balloon Bookshop. Ticket required. Go to redballoonbookshop.com.

What else is going on

Congrats to St. Paul poet Dobby Gibson for winning the 2025 Four Quartets prize for his poem “Hold Everything” from his collection “Hold Everything,” published by Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press. The prize, for which Gibson will receive $20,000, is a celebration of the multi-part poem presented by the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America.

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Today is Thursday, July 24, the 205th day of 2025. There are 160 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts — two of whom had been the first humans to set foot on the moon — splashed down safely in the Pacific.

Also on this date:

In 1567, Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate her throne to her 1-year-old son James.

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In 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah.

In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War.

In 1915, the SS Eastland, a passenger ship carrying more than 2,500 people, rolled onto its side while docked at the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River. An estimated 844 people died in the disaster.

In 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor.

In 1975, an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific, completing a mission which included the first docking with a Soyuz capsule from the Soviet Union.

In 2010, a stampede inside a tunnel crowded with techno music fans left 21 people dead and more than 500 injured at the famed Love Parade festival in western Germany.

In 2013, a high-speed train crash outside Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain killed 79 people.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Dan Hedaya is 85.
Actor Chris Sarandon is 83.
Actor Robert Hays is 78.
Actor Michael Richards is 76.
Actor Lynda Carter is 74.
Movie director Gus Van Sant is 73.
Country singer Pam Tillis is 68.
Basketball Hall of Famer Karl Malone is 62.
Retired MLB All-Star Barry Bonds is 61.
Actor Kadeem Hardison is 60.
Actor-singer Kristin Chenoweth is 57.
Actor Laura Leighton is 57.
Actor-singer Jennifer Lopez is 56.
Director Patty Jenkins (“Wonder Woman”) is 54.
Actor Eric Szmanda is 50.
Actor Rose Byrne is 46.
Country singer Jerrod Niemann is 46.
Actor Elisabeth Moss is 43.
Actor Anna Paquin is 43.
Former NHL center Patrice Bergeron is 40.
Actor Mara Wilson is 38.
TV personality Bindi Irwin is 27.