Majority of Americans Favor Laws Limiting Abortions

Special Report - January 12, 2009
The overwhelming majority of American adults in a recent online poll said they support laws that regulate or limit abortion, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The USCCB commissioned the online survey of 2,341 adults, which was conducted by Harris Interactive on December 10-12. According to the findings, 11 percent of Americans said they favored making abortion illegal under all circumstances, 38 percent favored limiting abortion to instances of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is endangered, 33 percent favored limiting abortion to either the first three months or first six months of pregnancy, and only nine percent said that abortion should be legal “for reason at any time during pregnancy.”

When asked about specific laws regulating abortion, the majority of adults in the poll supported these laws. For example: 95 percent favored laws that require abortions to be performed only by licensed physicians; 88 percent supported informed consent laws;
76 percent supported laws that protect the physicians and nurses from being forced to refer patients for or to perform abortion procedures; 73 percent supported parental involvement laws for minor abortions; and 63 percent supported laws that prevent taxpayer funding for abortions.

“Support for these measures cuts across ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ positions. Over a third (35 percent) of the small minority who said abortion should be legal for any reason throughout pregnancy nevertheless supported three or more of the six laws presented,” Deirdre McQuade, Assistant Director for Policy & Communications at the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said in a press release. “This research indicates how out of touch pro-abortion groups are with mainstream America.” “These same widely-supported, constitutionally valid measures, some of which have been proven effective in reducing abortion rates, are now seriously threatened by abortion advocates and their allies in Congress,” added McQuade.

“Polls like these show how advances in science and knowledge about the earliest stages of human development are having a tremendous impact on our understanding of life,” said Bill Brooks, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council. “It is completely unacceptable to say we have to save the whales, the elephants, the polar bears, and the environment, while we continue to destroy unborn children for convenience sake. All life is a gift from the Creator, and almost all Americans understand the wonder and miraculous nature of this fact.”

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