Religious Americans Less Likely to Favor Compromise on Abortion Issues 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 24, 2005
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new poll of Americans finds that those who more frequently attend church are less likely to want their elected officials to compromise their religious beliefs on the issue of abortion.
This is the second poll on the subject conducted by Public Agenda and it follows a previous survey on religion and abortion in 2000.
Overall, 42 percent of Americans say elected officials should base their votes on abortion issues on their religious beliefs while 51 percent say lawmakers should "be willing to compromise with others whose views are different."
That’s a change from the 2000 poll, which showed only 35 percent favoring a religious belief vote and 57 percent who want lawmakers to compromise.
Those who attend church more than once a week oppose compromise by a 69-23 percent margin and those who attend church weekly oppose it 60 to 32 percent.
However, those who never attend church favor compromise on abortion by a whopping 78 to 17 percent.
Looking at the breakdown among those of various beliefs, evangelicals were more likely than other groups to favor lawmakers voting based on their religious views (61-31%).
All of the other religious groups in the survey wanted lawmakers to compromise with Catholics favoring compromise by a 50-42 margin, non-evangelical Protestants by a 52-42 margin and nonreligious Americans by a 73-19 percent margin.
Three percent of those surveyed said it would depend on the religious views of the lawmakers and four percent said they did not know.
The survey included 1,004 adults and was conducted between July 28 and August 2, 2004;. The margin of error is plus or minus three percent.
