WASHINGTON D.C., June 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – More Americans view abortion as morally wrong than morally acceptable, a new Gallup poll says.
Landing in the “Contentious” category of Gallup’s poll on values and beliefs conducted last month, abortion was rated morally wrong by 47% of respondents, while 43% said it was morally acceptable.
Nine percent of Americans polled think it depends on the situation and two percent had no opinion.
“There has been little to no change in the past 15 years,” on the abortion issue, Gallup reported. The number of Americans morally opposed to abortion ranged from 44% at the lowest point since Gallup first began its annual moral acceptability poll in 2001, to a high of 56% during that same time.
Significant differences in moral acceptability of abortion were reflected in the poll respondents’ political party identification.
Sixty-two percent of Democrats are okay with abortion morally, while just 24% of Republicans said the same. Independents were split at 44%.
Medical testing on animals and doctor-assisted suicide joined abortion in the “Contentious” category, each getting approval by 53% of Americans, according to the poll.
While moral approval of abortion remained static, other issues saw Americans becoming significantly more socially liberal.
“Americans' willingness to describe many issues as morally acceptable has grown since 2001,” Gallup states, “namely for gay or lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage and sex between unmarried people.”
The number of Americans viewing gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable rose from 40% to 60% between 2001 and 2016, while those viewing such relationships as morally wrong fell from 53% to 37%.
The number of those viewing having a baby outside marriage as morally acceptable rose from 45% to 62% in the same time frame. Approval for sex out of wedlock increased from 53% to 67%.
Birth control leads the list of morally acceptable things for Americans, categorized as highly acceptable, with 89% of Americans polled approving.
Divorce came in at 72% approval, an increase of 13% since 2001, and gambling was given the same moral approval as sex outside marriage, at 67%.
Sixty-percent of those polled said medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos is morally acceptable.
Still remaining taboo, or morally wrong for most Americans, is sex between teenagers, along with pornography and cloning animals, each getting rated morally acceptable by about a third of Americans.
Also still morally unacceptable is suicide with just 18% approval, polygamy at 14% and cloning humans at 13%, although support for polygamy increased by 100% and cloning humans by 86% since 2001.
Extramarital affairs get the least approval for moral acceptability, with 10% saying an affair is morally acceptable and 88% saying it is not.
Gallup conducted the survey between May 4-8, on a random sampling of 1,025 adults living in the U.S., age 18 or older, with a margin of error at plus or minus four points.