Morality and legality.(Abortion and the Public Opinion Polls, part 1)

Two recent surveys of representative national samples of American women aged 18 and older provide new insights into the attitudes of women concerning the legality and morality of abortion, and the characteristics of women who have had abortions. A survey by the firm of Yankelovich, Skelly and White, commissioned by Life magazine, is unique in the number of questions it asked concerning the morality of abortion. Like many polls in the past, it also explored women's attitudes concerning the legality of abortion. The Yankelovich poll and an ABC News/Washington Post poll were the first surveys to ask women whether they had ever had an abortion. This article analyzes the Yankelovich data and speculates about the political implications of the attitudes expressed, while the article that follows it analyzes the characteristics of women who have had abortions.

Previous polls show that overall, about two-thirds of American women support the right of any woman to have a legal abortion. (*) Three questions in the Yankelovich survey, which polled 1,015 women by phone between September 18 and September 27, 1981, produced about the same results:

* Seventy percent of women agree or agree strongly that "a pregnant woman should have the right to decide whether she wants to terminate a pregnancy or have the child."

* Sixty-seven percent of all women believe that "any woman who wants an abortion should be legally permitted to obtain one."

* Only 32 percent of women state that they would favor a law "which says that human life begins at conception [if] under this proposed law abortion would be a serious crime and could even be considered murder."

The majority even of those respondents in the Yankelovich survey who say that abortion in general should be illegal believe that it should be legal under at least some circumstances. Seventy-seven percent of the women who disagree with the statement that "any woman who wants an abortion should be permitted to obtain it legally" state that abortion should be legal for "a woman whose health is at risk," 62 percent, for "a woman who has been raped," and 60 percent, for "a woman who is carrying a fetus with a severe genetic defect." For the sample as a whole, 92, 88 and 87 percent, respectively, say that abortion should be legal for those reasons ( data not shown). Thus, almost all women surveyed believe that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances.

The most recent surveys report even greater opposition to an antiabortion amendment than does the Yankelovich poll. (One such amendment, sponsored by Senator Orrin C. Hatch [R.-Utah], is now under consideration in the Senate. It would give the Congress and state legislatures concurrent power to restrict or prohibit abortions, with the most restrictive law to apply in a given state.) An NBC News poll conducted January 18-19, 1982, reports that 75 percent of Americans oppose "an amendment to the Constitution which would give Congress the authority to prohibit abortions." (1)