Two-thirds of all Americans
believe that the 1973
Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal throughout the nation should
not be overturned, according to a recent poll conducted earlier this month by
Knowledge Networks and released by The Associated Press and Yahoo.
According to the results, a
full 66 percent of respondents indicated they “would like to see Roe vs. Wade
remain in force.”
One of the nation’s leading
pro-life advocates, however, has claimed that the results are inaccurate and
misleading, and betray the fact that most Americans are still opposed to most if
not all forms of abortion.
"How can we expect Americans
to tell us whether they want Roe vs. Wade reversed when we evade critical
details of what Roe vs. Wade says?" asked Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life,
the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization, in a statement.
While recent polls may
indicate that Americans are generally opposed to the outright abolition of Roe
v. Wade, other polls reveal that a majority of Americans believe that certain
types of abortions – many of which are covered under Roe v. Wade – are wrong,
unjust, and should be abolished.
According to an ABC
news poll conducted on the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision,
while many Americans believed abortion should be “legal in all or most cases,”
or “in some or all cases,” strong majorities of Americans also indicated they
were opposed to partial birth abortions or abortion of pregnancies over 6 months
in duration.
“Consistent with a long
tradition of polling questions on Roe, this month's
poll question hides the fact that Roe permits abortion throughout all nine
months of pregnancy. A majority of Americans have never agreed with such an
extreme policy,” Pavone noted.
According to the Guttmacher
Institute, there were an estimated 1.2 million abortions throughout the United
States last year.
Every year, about two out of
every 100 women aged 15–44 have an abortion.
More Clippings from
2008
