Large numbers of Americans favour certain restrictions on access to abortions, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
The study was conducted in March – after the US Supreme Court’s oral arguments on a Mississippi case that largely banned abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, but before it was reported the court had decided to over-turn Roe Vs Wade, something that has not yet been officially declared. Roe Vs Wade was a 1973 decision that imposed a very liberal abortion law on all 50 US states.
The survey found “nearly two-thirds of the public thinks abortion either should be entirely illegal at every stage of a pregnancy or should become illegal, at least in some cases, at some point during the course of a pregnancy”.
The survey data shows that as pregnancy progresses, opposition to legal abortion grows and support for legal abortion declines. Americans are about twice as likely to say abortion should be legal at six weeks than to say it should be illegal at this stage of a pregnancy. 44% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal at six weeks, 21% say it should be illegal at six weeks, and another 19% say whether it should be legal or not at six weeks “depends.” (An additional 14% say the stage of pregnancy shouldn’t factor into determining whether abortion is legal or illegal)
But “at 14 weeks, the share saying abortion should be legal declines to 34%, while 27% say illegal and 22% say ‘it depends’.”
