By Christopher White, The Tablet’s National Correspondent
NEW YORK – According to a new Marist poll released Jan.15, seventy- five percent of Americans believe that abortion should be limited to within the first three months of pregnancy.
Further, sixty-five percent – or nearly two-thirds – of Americans believe that if the Supreme Court revisits Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States, that either abortion should be made illegal or that states should be allowed to set their own restrictions on abortion law.
These findings are a part of the eleventh annual Marist Poll on American attitudes toward abortion, which is sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.
(The Knights of Columbus are a principal partner of Crux.)
Between the two major political parties, 75 percent of Democrats self-identified as “pro-choice” and 70 percent of Republicans identified as “pro-life.”
On a conference call on Tuesday, however, Knights of Columbus Vice-President for Communications Andrew Walther and Director of the Marist Poll, Barbara Carvalho observed that the “pro-choice” label does not indicate that the same individuals would oppose regulation or restrictions on abortion.
Instead, they challenged that the debates over labels are not always reflective of the policy questions at hand.
The survey also found that three out of four Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion abroad, widely referred to as the Mexico City Policy. Opposition to this funding includes almost all Republicans (94 percent) and independents (80 percent) and a majority of Democrats (56 percent).
Sixty-two percent of respondents said they oppose abortion of children with Down syndrome and a majority of Americans, fifty-four percent, oppose the use of any taxpayer funding for abortion.
In addition, fifty-five percent of respondents said they believe doctors, nurses, and organizations who have moral objections to abortion should not be required to perform or provide insurance coverage for abortions.
The survey of 1,066 adults was conducted January 8 through January 10, 2019 and the results have a margin of error of ±3.7 percentage points.
Reflecting on the recent data, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said: “As in past years, this poll shows that the pro-choice label on the abortion issue is simply insufficient,
“The majority of Americans – in both parties – support legal restrictions on abortion. Two-thirds of Americans want Roe revisited to allow for state regulation of abortion or to ban it altogether. The majority of the American people deserve to have their opinions heard,” said Anderson.
The findings of the 2019 Marist Poll come in advance of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. The annual event in protest of Roe v. Wade draws tens of thousands of people to the nation’s capitol for what is widely considered to be the world’s largest pro-life gathering.
