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 | Leadership of the Roman Catholic Church |
| Fundamentalists, Evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews and Muslims; |
| Older persons; |
| People with less education; |
| Persons with lower income; |
| Political conservatives; |
| Republicans; and |
| African-Americans. |
Support for widespread abortion access is found more frequently among:
| Membership of the Roman Catholic church |
| Mainline Protestants, liberal Protestants and Reform Jews; |
| Younger persons; |
| People with higher educational attainments; |
| Persons with higher income; |
| Political moderates and liberals, |
| Democrats and Independents; and |
| Whites. |
Are most Americans pro-life or pro-choice?
The question is basically unanswerable, for a number of reasons:
| Some women are pro-life as far as their own situation is concerned, but are pro-choice for others. That is, they would not choose to have an abortion themselves, but feel that all women should be given the freedom to choose. | ||||||||||||||||||
| The term "pro-life" covers a wide range of viewpoints, ranging
from:
| ||||||||||||||||||
| The term "pro-choice" also covers a wide range of viewpoints,
ranging from:
|
According to a year 2000 Gallup Poll, 50% of adults identify themselves as pro-choice; 40% as pro-life. However this poll uses the subjects' own definition of "pro-life" and "pro-choice" which varies from individual to individual.
Comprehensive opinion polls:
A better understanding of where the U.S. and Canadian public stands on abortion can be found from those extremely rare polls which ask subjects multiple questions.
One example is the General Social Survey (GSS). Over the interval from 1972 to 2002, they posed a number of situations to a random sampling of American adults. The Survey continues to be taken on even-numbered years. They described instanced in which a pregnant women might seek an abortion, and asked the subjects whether she should be able to get one. There was a notable rise in the public's approval of abortion between 1972 and 1973 on the order of 5 percentage points; this was probably influenced by the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade which legalized some abortions across America. But otherwise, there was little variation in public opinion over the interval studied. 1 The numbers of subjects was in excess of 31,000, so the margin of error is extremely low:
Some results from the 2002 survey:
The pollsters asked whether the subject thought that a pregnant woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if:
| Situation | Yes | No | Don't know, or no answer |
| There is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby | 703 | 193 | 28 |
| She is married and does not want any more children | 400 | 493 | 31 |
| The woman's own health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy | 825 | 76 | 23 |
| If the family has a very low income and cannot afford any more children | 396 | 496 | 32 |
| If she became pregnant as the result of rape | 721 | 184 | 19 |
| If she is not married and does not want to marry the man | 376 | 519 | 29 |
| The woman wants it for any reason | 387 | 513 | 24 |
In addition, they asked a question about Internet access:
| Question | Yes | No | No answer |
| In the past 12 months have you used the web to find out about or discuss abortion issues? | 30 | 279 | 45 |
Unfortunately, even this survey did not ask a full range of questions, involving:
| The age of the pregnant woman, | ||||||||||
| The stage of her pregnancy, | ||||||||||
| Situations where:
| ||||||||||
| etc. |
References:
- "Public opinion on abortion 1972 to 1993," at: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/
- "1972-1994 General Social Survey Cumulative File: Abortion," at: http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu This appears to be offline as of 2006-NOV.
- "General Social Surveys, 1972 - 2002: Cumulative Codebook," 2003-FEB,
at:
http://www.cpanda.org/ This is a PDF file. You may require software to read it. Software can be obtained free from:
It is a massive
file and may take a long time to load.
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Site navigation: Home page > "Hot" topics > Abortion > Facts > Polls > here |
Copyright © 2005 and 2006 by
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Original posting: 2005-APR-19
Latest update: 2006-NOV-15
Author: B.A. Robinson
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