Asian, African, South American Nations More Pro-Life Than U.S. on Abortion 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 6, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new poll conducted by the Pew Research firm finds that a sampling of nations in Asia, Africa and South America are more pro-life on the issue of abortion than residents of the United States. The poll also found that conservative Christians in each nation are more pro-life than citizens of the nations in general.
Pew conducted the poll to gauge the views of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in the United States and other nations and compare their views to all citizens in those countries.
The poll asked respondents whether they believed abortion was always justified, sometimes justified, or never justified.
In the United States, just 5 percent of those polled said it was always justified, 46 percent said abortion is sometimes justified and 45 percent said it was never justified.
According to the Pew poll, nine other nations on three continents had more pro-life views than the United States.
In Latin America, Brazil residents said abortion was always justified (4 percent), sometimes justified (16 percent) or never justified (79 percent). Citizens of Chile broke down into a 4/23/71 split, and residents of Guatemala divided into a 3/10/85 percent split.
African citizens also took very strong pro-life views as those in Kenya broke down into a 0/11/88 percent split, Nigeria citizens opposed abortion by a 1/4/94 percent margin and South African residents opposed abortion on a 8/16/73 percent split.
Citizens living in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation of the Philippines opposed abortion on a 0/3/97 percent margin, and residents of India broke down into a 9/19/68 split.
The people of South Korea came the closest to those in the U.S. as 0 percent said abortion was always justified, 45 percent said it was sometimes justified and 54 percent said abortion is never justified.
Pew also asked residents of each of the nations a biased question about whether "the government should not interfere with a woman’s ability to have an abortion."
The resulted in the United States skewed quite different from the 55 percent pro-life, 45 percent pro-abortion results most polls continue to show. Pew found 64 percent completely or mostly agreed with the statement while 32 percent mostly or completely disagreed.
Looking at the response from people of other nations to the biased question, citizens of Kenya, Nigeria and the Philippines were most likely to say they disagree with the statement.
Citizens in South Africa, India, Brazil and Chile were about evenly split, Guatemala residents slightly favored the statement, and South Korea residents came closest to the 2-1 split in favor of the statement that Pew found among Americans.
The Pew poll, in each country, found that conservative Christians were more pro-life than the average citizen.
Pew’s survey polled anywhere from 600-1,005 people in each country and the polls were taken from May to September. The polling firm did not mention the margin of error for each poll, but similar polls of the same sample size have about a 3-4 percent margin of error.
Related web sites:
Pew Research international poll –
https://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/pentecostals-topline-06.pdf
