WASHINGTON — More than a quarter-century after the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion, overall support for the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision seems to be softening as Americans adopt a more nuanced view of the circumstances under which abortions should be allowed, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll.
Despite the increasing level of discomfort with the high court's ruling--43% of current survey respondents express support for Roe, compared with 56% in 1991--the poll shows continued opposition to a constitutional ban on abortion.
Individual opinions about abortion are rife with ambivalence, the poll suggests. Many respondents express positions that on their surface appear to contradict each other but, upon exploration, reveal two strong but competing sets of feelings.
"Americans, in terms of their own code of morality, may view abortion as murder and may be comfortable with it being illegal, but most Americans don't want to impose that on other people," said Susan Carroll, a senior research associate who studies abortion at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "It's kind of a live-and-let-live approach. . . . Most Americans are in favor of letting people make their own individual choices."
More than half of those surveyed say abortion should either be illegal in all circumstances or legal only in cases of rape, incest or when a woman's life is in danger. At the same time, more than two-thirds say that, regardless of their own feelings on the subject, the highly personal decision to obtain an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor.
Even more striking, while 57% of respondents say they consider abortion to be murder, more than half of that group agree that a woman should have the right to choose an abortion.
These conflicting perspectives make abortion a particularly tricky issue for politicians. President Clinton attempted to straddle the ambivalence in his first presidential campaign by saying he wanted abortions to be "safe, legal and rare." So far, neither Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush nor Democratic rival Al Gore have found a similarly deft formulation.
The issue could help--or hurt--both men. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have no clear sense of either candidate's position on the issue at this point in the presidential race. But 34% of poll respondents say that if they learn that a candidate's position on abortion disagrees with their own, it would be enough to change their vote.
