Pew Survey Suggests Drop In Support For Abortion Rights, Diverges From Other Recent Findings

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 05 Oct 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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A Pew Research Center poll released Thursday suggests that the public has become more evenly divided over abortion rights in the past year, the New York Times reports. For the bulk of the last two decades, a "clear majority" of U.S. residents has supported legalized abortion, according to the Times. The new poll found that 47% of the 4,013 adults surveyed said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 45% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. These findings were within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points among all respondents, with a larger margin of error among subgroups, the Times reports. A similar Pew poll from 2008 showed that 54% of respondents favored legalized abortion, compared with 40% opposed. The 2009 poll was conducted by telephone across two time periods, the first from Aug. 11 through 17 and the second from Aug. 20 through 27.

According to the Times, "inconsistency" between the new poll and other recent surveys showing steadier abortion-rights support make it difficult to "draw a firm conclusion" on whether attitudes are changing. The discrepancy also "underscores how sensitive poll results are to questions of abortion," the Times reports. A June ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 55% of respondents said abortion services should remain legal in all or most cases, compared with 43% who said it should be illegal in all or most cases. In addition, a June New York Times/CBS News poll -- which worded questions differently from the Pew poll -- found that 36% of respondents said abortion should be generally available, 41% said it should be available but under stricter limits than it is now and 21% said it should be illegal. According to the Times, the results were near the average for Times/CBS News polls across the last 20 years.

Gregory Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said the "size of the shift" in the Pew poll is "modest, but the consistency with which we see it occurring and the implications it has for the overall dynamics of the debate make it significant" (Goodstein, New York Times, 10/2).

Abortion was viewed as a critical issue by only 15% of respondents, a decline from 28% in 2006, Reuters reports. Eight percent of liberal Democrats surveyed viewed it as a critical issue, compared with 34% in 2006. The number of conservative Republicans who view abortion-rights as a critical issue also declined -- from 35% in 2006 to 26% in 2009. Reuters reports that the importance of social issues tends to decline in voters' minds during economically challenging periods (Stoddard, Reuters, 10/1). According to the Times, the new poll did not give any indication as to why there is a shift in opinion, although Pew researchers noted that the shift coincides with the election of President Obama, who supports abortion rights and has pledged to reduce the need for the procedure (New York Times, 10/2).

The poll found that support for a middle-ground approach to abortion rights among white evangelical Protestants dropped from 61% in 2006 to 40% in 2009. However, support for common ground rose among Roman Catholics, from 63% in 2006 to 67% in 2009 (Duin, Washington Times, 10/2).

Three in 10 respondents said Obama would handle the issue of abortion coverage in health care reform "about right," while two in 10 were concerned that he could go too far in supporting abortion-rights. Four in 10 respondents were not aware of Obama's position on the issue (New York Times, 10/2). According to Smith, conservative Republicans in particular said they are "less willing to compromise than they have been in the past and they are more certain of the correctness of their own views" (Gibson, Politics Daily, 10/1).

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