Almost half of all likely voters in the United States favor a waiting period before an abortion, according to a new Rasmussen survey.
Even though 52 percent of those polled identified as being pro-choice — and just 43 percent were pro-life — 49 percent of likely voters said there should be a waiting period, while just 39 percent said there shouldn’t be one. Eleven percent of those polled were not sure.
The percent of people supporting the mandatory waiting period is the highest it has been since August 2011, Rasmussen reports.
Among 18-39-year-olds, the results were almost the same, with 47 percent supporting the waiting period, 39 percent opposing it and 14 percent not sure. But younger adults are less likely than older Americans to see abortion as morally wrong in most cases.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, fewer females — 46 percent — supported the required wait, compared to 53 percent of men.
The survey comes on the heels of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s decision to block the Obamacare contraception mandate in the final hours of 2013. The Obama administration has since asked Sotomayor to lift the block.
Back in November, the Supreme Court chose not to stand in the way of Texas’ new abortion restrictions, which effectively closed a third of the abortion clinics in the state. Gov. Rick Perry (R) praised the court’s 5-4 decision not to intervene.
The Rasmussen survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted via telephone on Jan. 2. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.
