A new poll demonstrates that most Americans support the rights of women to make their own health care decisions when it comes to abortion, in spite of restrictive abortion laws being passed throughout conservative statehouses across the country.
Sixty percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases, according to the poll conducted jointly by ABC News and the Washington Post.
Broken down further, 27 percent said it should legal in all cases, without restrictions of any kind. Only 14 percent said it should be illegal in all cases.
Taken together, that amounts to 82 percent of Americans who believe at least some access to abortion for women should exist.
The poll’s figure expressing support in all or most cases is the highest its been in 24 years, since 1995 when the same rate of support was also recorded.
Democratic and Independent respondents overwhelmingly supported abortion rights in all or most cases, while Republicans did not. Interestingly, however, was the statistic cited in the poll about GOP respondents when broken down by gender: 51 percent of Republican men supported abortion in all or most cases, while only 32 percent of women said the same.
JUST IN: 60% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, the most in @ABC News/WaPo polls since 1995.
More also say their state should make it easier, rather than harder, for women to have access to abortion. https://t.co/dYgkK9BGCr
— ABC News (@ABC) July 10, 2019
Respondents overall also seemed oppositional to recent efforts across the country by several states to restrict access to abortion services. Thirty-two percent of Americans thought access to abortion should be made easier for women, while 41 percent were satisfied with how the laws worked presently, and only 24 percent thought access should be made more difficult, the poll found.
At least 10 states across the country passed stricter abortion laws this year, per reporting from CNN, with several others considering passing stronger restrictions as well. In Alabama, for instance, a law was recently signed that restricted abortion in all cases, except to save the life of the mother.
Many believe the restrictions on abortion that were passed earlier this year were an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision from 1973 which granted abortion rights for women.
In late June of this year, the Supreme Court refused to review a lower court hearing that blocked the law passed in Alabama. The decision by the High Court not to hear the case did not look at its recently-passed law, but actually dealt with a separate restriction that was passed in 2016.
“[T]he fight is far from over,” Staci Fox, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said, per a press release from the organization. “We are laser focused on Alabama’s latest attack on reproductive health and rights — HB 314, the outright abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.”