facebook
rss
twitter
  • About
    • Contact
    • Elementary & Secondary Education Department
    • Social Concerns Department
  • Legislative Review
  • Issues
    • Catholic Education
    • Faith and Politics
    • Health Care
    • Life and Dignity
    • Marriage and Family
    • Religious Liberty
    • Social Justice
  • Bishops’ Statements
    • En Español
  • Resources
    • Bulletin Inserts
    • Church Documents
    • PA Catholic Statistics
    • Related Sites
    • Send A Letter to The Editor
  • Subscribe
    • RSS Feeds
    • Via E-mail
  • Contact
  • Podcast

Most Americans want health care reform, oppose abortion coverage

September 28, 2009
by Hill
abortion, conscience protection, health care reform, pro-life
Comments are off

A nationwide survey commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has found widespread public opposition to including abortion in health care reform and majority support for conscience rights protection – views shared by those who favor efforts to pass health care reform.

Conducted by International Communications Research (ICR) from September 16-20, 2009, the phone survey of 1,043 U.S. adults found that 60 percent favor – and only thirty percent oppose – “efforts to pass health care reform to provide affordable health insurance for all.” Focusing on that sixty percent, the survey found that:

  • Sixty percent of those favoring reform oppose – and only 25 percent support – “measures that would require people to pay for abortion coverage with their federal taxes.”
  • By a 49-39 percent plurality, those who favor reform oppose “measures that would require people to pay for abortion coverage with their health insurance premiums”; and
  • Among those favoring reform, those who favor maintaining “current federal laws that protect doctors and nurses from being forced to perform or refer for abortions against their will” outnumber those who oppose keeping such laws in place by a margin of two to one (60-30).

Opposition to abortion coverage was somewhat stronger in the total sample of U.S. adults – for example, 67 percent of the total sample opposed requiring people to pay for abortion coverage through their taxes and 56 percent opposed making them do so through their insurance premiums.

The survey also asked: “If the choice were up to you, would you want your own insurance policy to include abortion?” Sixty-eight percent of U.S. adults said ‘No’ and only 24 percent said ‘Yes.’

“The USCCB survey confirms other recent polls conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (August 30-September 1) and Rasmussen Reports (September 14-15) on health care policy and abortion,” said Deirdre McQuade, Assistant Director for Policy & Communications at the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. “With each passing week it gets clearer: The American public generally does not want to pay for abortion coverage and does not want health care reform used to promote abortion,” she said.

“Abortion is not health care. The bishops of the United States are working hard to ensure that health care reform serves the most vulnerable among us – especially the poor, immigrants, and the unborn,” McQuade said.

For more information on the U.S. bishops’ position on health care reform, visit http://www.usccb.org/healthcare/.

Survey Methodology
ICR / International Communications Research, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, PA, is a top-ranked and nationally recognized market research organization. ICR fielded this study in their national, weekly EXCEL Omnibus telephone survey on behalf of the USCCB from September 16-20, 2009, interviewing a nationwide sample of 1,043 adults aged 18 and older. EXCEL is weighted to provide nationally representative and projectable estimates of the population ages 18+. At a 95 percent level of confidence, the margin of error for this sample of 1,043 is +/-3.0 percent. A full methodology and profile of the pollster are available upon request.

Social Share
  • google-share

News From Around PA

  • Candelmas at Saint Anastasia Church
  • USCCB: President of U.S. Bishops Conference on Bishops’ United Position Against the Evil of Abortion
  • After Biden comments, U.S. bishops say they have ‘united position’ on abortion
  • Victims of violence in Congo share their grief with pope
  • School Counselor, Long Term sub until June 2023 Oakland Catholic High School
  • Remembrance of the Living
Click To Read More

Post Archives

Unable to load Tweets

Follow

Recent Posts

PCC Capitol Wrap for Thursday, 2-1-23
Feb 02, 2023
PCC Capitol Wrap for Wednesday, 2-1-23
Feb 01, 2023
PCC Capitol Wrap for Tuesday, 1-31-23
Jan 31, 2023

All Issues

  • Catholic Education
  • Faith and Politics
  • Health Care
  • Life and Dignity
  • Marriage and Family
  • Religious Liberty
  • Social Justice

banner

Sign up to join the Catholic Advocacy Network today!

CClogo© 2021 Pennsylvania Catholic Conference. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Bookmark and Share Site by Halibut Blue® | Login