Gallup: US Equally Divided on Morality of Abortion

Americans are sharply divided in their opinion of abortion, including an equal split between those who believe it is morally acceptable and those who say it is wrong, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

According to the survey, 46% say that abortion is wrong from a moral perspective. But the 47% who say it is acceptable is an all-time high by two percentage points in two decades that the question has been measured.

Other results from the poll indicate:

• The largest gap regarding the morality of abortion was in 2009, when 56% said it was morally wrong and only 36% said it was acceptable. That gap, for the most part, has considerably narrowed over the past decade.
• Among Democrats, 64% say that abortion is morally acceptable, which is up considerably from a decade ago but actually slightly down from last year. There has been a sharp increase among independents who say abortion is morally acceptable, going up to 51% from only 40% last year. Among Republicans, only 26% consider abortion to be morally acceptable, a number that has remained relatively consistent over the past number of years.
• The public is also equally divided among those who  personally identify as "pro-choice" (49%) and those who consider themselvs "pro-life" (47%). The gap between the two views has remained constant over the past eight years, although pro-life and pro-choice have traded off being the leading view during that time period.
• Democrats largely consider themselves to be pro-choice (70%), while almost three-fourths of Republicans say they are pro-life (74%). Independents are pro-choice by a considerable gap, 53%, compared to only 41% who say they are pro-life.
• Americans remain much more likely to believe abortion should be legal "only under certain circumstances" (48%) than to support it being legal "under any circumstances" (32%) or "illegal in all circumstances" (19%). The nearly one-third of U.S. adults who back fully legal abortions is the highest such percentage since the early to mid-1990s, when it was consistently at that level.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted between May 3 and May 18, with a random sample of 1,016 adults. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

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