Americans are split evenly down the middle on whether abortion should remain legal, an Gallup poll published Monday reveals.
Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll shows that 48 percent of Americans identify as pro-choice while 48 percent identify as pro-life. While roughly half of Americans are pro-choice, more Americans believe that aborting unborn babies is morally wrong than morally acceptable, the poll shows.
Forty-eight to 43 percent of Americans find abortion morally wrong, according to Gallup’s poll. Since Gallup began conducting polls on abortion in the 1990s, the percentage of Americans who find abortion to be morally acceptable has never been greater than those who find it morally repugnant.
Of Americans who think that abortion should be legal in some circumstances, a majority believe that abortions should be legal in a “few” circumstances rather than in “most” cases. Examples of limited circumstances can include cases of fetal abnormality, rape or where the mother’s life is in danger.
The split in pro-life and pro-choice beliefs reveals a rise in pro-life attitudes that has been escalating since the 1990s. Multiple states have banned abortions after 15 weeks into pregnancy, and Iowa banned abortions after six weeks into pregnancy on May 4.
These pro-active measures to protect life reflect Americans’ changing opinions about abortion: Forty-seven percent of Americans identified as pro-choice while 46 percent identified as pro-life in 2000. Only 40 percent of Americans identified as “pro-life” while 51 percent identified as “pro-choice” in 1990. (RELATED: Pro-Life Activists Emboldened With New ‘Intensity’ As The Nation Embraces Life, Report Shows)
Gallup conducted their poll by conducting telephone interviews between May 1 and May 10. Gallup spoke with 1,024 persons age 18 and older in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
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