Poll Shows 55% of Americans Support Heartbeat Bills Banning Abortions on Babies With Beating Hearts

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   May 15, 2019   |   5:49PM   |   Washington, DC

Despite the outrage from the mainstream media and Hollywood about Georgia’s new heartbeat law, polls show that a majority of Americans do support laws that protect unborn babies in the first trimester.

A new Hill-HarrisX survey found that 55 percent of voters said they do not think laws banning abortions after six weeks – when an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable – are too restrictive, according to The Hill.

“The people who say abortion should be legal in all cases or illegal in all cases is a minority,” researcher Daniel Cox with the American Enterprise Institute told Hill.TV. “The vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle that abortion should be legal under some circumstances and there’s some significant variation.”

The May 10-11 poll found that 21 percent of voters said six-week abortion bans are “too lenient,” 34 percent said they are “just right” and 45 percent said they are “too restrictive.”

Pollsters noted that the differences of opinion between male and female voters were minimal. However, there were significant differences between age groups. Interestingly, young voters were more supportive of heartbeat laws than older generations.

Here’s more from the report:

A 52 percent majority of respondents 65 years of age and older said they believed that six-week abortion bans are too restrictive. Thirty-one percent said they were just right while 17 percent said they were too lenient.

Among voters between the ages of 50-64, 41 percent said the new laws were too restrictive, 38 percent said they were just right, and 21 percent said they did not go far enough.

A 45 percent plurality of voters between 35-49 said the laws were too restrictive, 36 percent said they were just right and 18 percent said they were too lenient.

The youngest voters polled, those 34 and under, were most likely to say the abortion bans did not go far enough, although far less than a majority — 27 percent — said this. Forty-three percent said the laws were too restrictive while 30 percent said they were just right.

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The findings are not unique. Gallup polls consistently have found that a majority of Americans think all or most abortions should be illegal. In 2018, 53 percent of respondents said abortions should be legal in only a few (35 percent) or no circumstances (18 percent).

In February, a Rasmussen poll found that just 21 percent of voters support New York’s new late-term abortion law, which allows abortions for basically any reason up to birth. A full 66 percent oppose the law, including 44 percent who identify as “pro-choice” on abortion.

According to a national poll by Marist University, three in four Americans (75 percent) say abortion should be limited to – at most – the first three months of pregnancy. This includes most of those who identify as Republicans (92 percent), Independents (78 percent) and a majority of Democrats (60 percent). It also includes more than six in 10 (61 percent) who identify as “pro-choice” on abortion.

The U.S. is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Even most European countries prohibit or heavily restrict abortions after the first trimester.

Georgia and a number of other states have passed heartbeat bills recently to protect unborn babies after six weeks of pregnancy. However, the abortion industry is challenging all of them in court.