Pro-life Americans outnumber pro-choice (5/21/09)

For the first time in 15 years, Gallup polling has found a majority of Americans self-report as pro-life – up sharply in just one year. The annual Values and Beliefs survey found 51 percent of Americans say they are pro-life, while only 42 percent claim to be pro-choice. Just last year, only 44 percent claimed the pro-life label, while 51 percent said they were pro-choice. Forty-nine percent of women say they are pro-life, and 44 percent say they are pro-choice. Men favor the pro-life position by a margin of 54 to 39 percent. 

 

In the past four years, Gallup has found a strong slant in favor of unrestricted abortion, but this month’s poll found 23 percent who said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and 22 percent took the opposite tack, that it should be legal in all circumstances. Fifty-three percent said it should be legal in some circumstances. Other past data determined that a majority in this category want abortion legal only in rare cases – rape or incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger – cases that represent only 2-3 percent of all abortions.

 

While these numbers confirm a long trend – that Americans are increasingly pro-life, many pro-life advocates believe Americans are finally seeing through the pro-choice rhetoric and seeing it as radically pro-abortion. Gallup editor Linda Saad suggests that President Barack Obama’s policies may have contributed to the drastic shift in opinion. Saad writes, "With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation's policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans – and, in particular, Republicans – seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position." Read more at Gallup.com and on LifeNews.com. 

 

A Fox News poll, conducted by the Opinion Dynamics research firm, confirmed Gallup’s findings that a plurality of Americans are now pro-life. A Rasmussen survey, released earlier this month, found that 58 percent of Americans said abortion is morally wrong most of the time; only 25 percent disagreed. Fifty-two percent in the Rasmussen survey think it is too easy to obtain an abortion in America.