Fascinating Poll Results

The Pew Research Center and Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one of the most objective and reasonable organizations studying the subject, has released a massive poll of American attitudes on various legal issues and the results are fascinating. The poll was conducted before the John Roberts nomination was announced and it covered a wide range of ongoing legal controversies including abortion, affirmative action, gay marriage and much more. Here are some of the interesting results.

On abortion, the normal 2/3 (65%) of the public says that Roe v Wade should not be overturned; that result has been remarkably consistent over the years. But nearly 3/4 (73%) say that they are willing to accept restrictions on abortion like parental notification for minors. That has also been remarkably consistent in polling data over the years. So with many court watchers speculating that Roberts replacing O'Connor will not lead to Roe's demise but to more restrictions on the right to abortion, it appears the court may be headed to where the public already is. Interesting to note that only 9% of all respondants believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

On stem cell research, they asked an interesting question. They asked which is more important, doing stem cell research that "might result in more medical cures" or "Not destroying the potential life of human embryos involved in this research." The results were almost 2-1 (57%-30%)in favor of stem cell research. Unfortunately, they didn't differentiate between embryonic and adult stem cells. Interesting to note also that a strong majority of Catholics (61%) and mainline Protestants (73%) support stem cell research.

In fact, the results among Catholics are perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole survey. Only 29% of Catholics believed that protecting the potential human life of embryos was more important than stem cell research for potential cures. Only 43% of Catholics were opposed to abortion. Only 42% of Catholics were opposed to allowing doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives. And only 27% of Catholics oppose the death penalty. These are all issues on which the Catholic Church has taken very prominent and bold stances against, and it appears that large majorities of American Catholics do not accept their church's position on those subjects.

On gay marriage, 53% of those surveyed oppose gay marriage, but the same 53% supports civil unions. That represents an increase of 5% in just the last year. And only a small minority, 29%, favor a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, which is also down from 35% a year ago. I think this is a very positive sign overall and represents progress in terms of winning hearts and minds, as they say.

On sex education, 76% of the public say they want schools to teach abstinence before marriage. But 78% of the public says they want the schools to provide information on birth control. And only 30% of those who identified themselves as evangelical Christians were opposed to schools giving information on birth control. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, I've always said that schools should teach both. And on the subject of birth control, 52% of the public believe that the morning-after pill should be available without a prescription - but oddly, only 48% of women agreed with that versus 56% of men.

Lastly, on the Terri Schiavo case, a whopping 74% said that Congress should have stayed out of it. And almost as large a majority believed that even among the groups one would assume would think otherwise - 69% of white evangelicals, 68% of conservatives and 65% of Republicans.