In 1962, a woman named Sherri Chessen Finkbine, who was the host of a children’s TV show, learned that a tranquilizer she had been taking for chest pains contained a drug known to cause birth defects. This was definitely troubling enough, but Finkbine was pregnant too. Knowing that the fetus was in danger, the mother of four, accompanied by her husband, sought an abortion at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.

A doctor agreed to do the procedure, which at the time was illegal except in atypical health circumstances. But after Finkbine’s story made it into the press, the hospital reversed the decision, and the family of six was at the center of a fiery national moral debate. Eventually Finkbine went to Sweden and obtained an abortion. She was able to exercise her reproductive freedom, but she also lost her job as a result.

That August, the nonpartisan polling group Gallup conducted its first-ever poll concerning abortion, specifically about Finkbine (called “an Arizona woman” in the poll) and her decision to have the procedure. The poll asked: “As you may have heard or read, an Arizona woman recently had a LEGAL abortion in Sweden after having taken the drug thalidomide, which has been linked to birth defects. Do you think this woman did the right thing or the wrong thing in having this abortion operation?” When the poll was released in September 1962, 52% of the nation said the Arizona woman did the right thing; 32% said the abortion was the wrong thing; and 16% had no opinion.

Among those surveyed, 54% of men said it was the right thing, as did 50% of women.

The Gallup press release announcing that poll was headlined “Public Agrees With Abortion Action Taken by Mrs. Finkbine.” Nearly 60 years after the American public was asked to judge a working mother from Arizona, the subject of abortion, in one form or another, continues to have support from a majority of Americans. It just may not feel that way.

Abortion is almost always presented as a divisive and contentious issue. How can it not be when clinic workers know their protesters by name? When clinicians have reported more than 3,000 incidents of protester obstruction and more than 1,000 cases of trespassing at facilities? Since at least the first major wave of murders of abortion providers and their staffers in the 1990s, abortion has been largely presented as a ride-or-(literally)-die issue.

The truth is, though, abortion is largely condoned. One could even say abortion is popular. And while abortion may become more divisive when you dive into party identification, many other societal markers show that the medical procedure and the freedom it allows remain popular issues. Gallup has been tracking abortion as a social issue since 1975, two years after Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court, with one consistent question used to gauge public opinion: “Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances or illegal in all circumstances?”(The analytics company has tracked abortion through other questions starting earlier, but the 1975 question lets us measure (un)favorability over decades.)

When that question was asked in 1975, 55% of Republican voters said abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, with another 18% believing abortion should be legal under any circumstances. Only 25% of Republican voters in 1975 said abortion should be illegal no matter what. When looking at independent voters, these numbers were similar: 58% said abortion should be legal in certain conditions; 24% said legal under any conditions; and only 16% said abortion should be illegal.