Young Adults View Life Issues

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Young Adults View Life Issues

Special Report - July 3, 2012
A new poll from Students for Life of America finds that young adults are more pro-life than they are often portrayed. On June 22, SFLA pointed out that the results of the poll of 800 18-24 year olds, which asked their position on a variety of life-related issues, “tracked similarly to other national polls that have been released on abortion in recent years.” Among the poll’s findings are:

More than three-fourths (77 percent) of 18-24 year olds surveyed predict that they will vote in the 2012 elections. In 2008, more college-aged voters (49 percent) went to the polls than in any election in 16 years. Slightly under half of them (43 percent) were first time voters.
A 42 percent “plurality of young Americans, including every major demographic and geographic group, said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supports forcing institutions to pay for procedures that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.”
Young Americans actually tend to be “pro-contraception,” not “pro-abortion,” although they are “much less likely to self-identify as pro-life than the public as a whole.”
Condensing the variety of pro-life and pro-abortion positions into simply “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” yields “near-parity between the two sides (45 percent pro-choice, 44 percent pro-life).”
More than one-fourth (27 percent), a plurality of respondents, “selected ‘abortion should only be legal in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother” as the position most similar to their own on abortion.’”
“Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of 18-24 year olds support making sex-selective abortions illegal in the United States.”
“Nearly half (48 percent) of college-age adults did not know whether Planned Parenthood offered abortions to pregnant women.”

SFLA executive director Kristan Hawkins pointed out the difference between many assumptions made about the views of young adult Americans and the actual findings in various polls, including SFLA’s recent poll. “We know that when it comes to youth and their attitudes on social issues and elections, there are a lot of assumptions made,” said Hawkins in a press release on the poll results. “And yet, what we have been witnessing and what has been reflected in recent polling by other organizations especially Gallup is that the tide is turning in this generation on issues, especially abortion.”

Related resources:
More Americans View Abortion As Wrong - June 7, 2011
Majority of Americans Now Pro-Life - May 19, 2009
Majority of Americans Favor Laws Limiting Abortions - January 12, 2009
Poll Finds Public Opinion Reversal on Roe - May 23, 2007
Abortion Polls - March 13, 2006