Recent Gallup polling shows that a majority, 53 percent, of Americans believe in restrictions on the legality of abortion. The poll also found that 48 percent of Americans believe abortion is “morally wrong.”
The survey found that just 43 percent of Americans say abortion “should be legal in all (29%) or most (14%) circumstances,” and 53 percent say it “should be legal in only a few (35%) or no circumstances (18%).”
Historically, the number of Americans who favor more restrictive abortion laws has never dropped below 51 percent since 1994, when the question was first asked by Gallup.
In response to a question about the morality of abortion, 48 percent of those surveyed said it was morally wrong and 43 percent found it to be morally acceptable. The amount of people who found it morally acceptable matches the number of people who believe it should be legal in all or most circumstances.
Gallup notes that “abortion is the moral issue among those tested on which the public is most closely divided” and abortion is also “one of a more limited number of moral issues about which Americans' views have not become more liberal over the past two decades.”
Since 2001, an average of 41 percent have regarded abortion as acceptable and 49 percent as wrong.
"At no point have more Americans said abortion is morally acceptable than have said it is morally wrong," according to Gallup.
The poll was “based on telephone interviews conducted May 1-10, 2018, with a random sample of 1,024 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.”