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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Report Gauges Public Opinion, 40 Years After Roe v. Wade

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Tuesday, January 22, 2013   

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - As of this week, it's been a hot-button issue for 40 years. The Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, Roe versus Wade, was decided in January 1973. And today, a new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds most Americans - 63 percent - don't want the law to be completely overturned.

Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum, says public opinion has stayed about the same on this issue for the last 20 years. With compilation of the views of 1500 voters across the country, he says many of the findings show just how complex the issue is.

"There's a substantial portion of the U.S. public, 20 percent, who think abortion is morally wrong, but who do not think that Roe v. Wade should be overturned."

Of people younger than age 30 who were surveyed, just 44 percent knew that Roe v. Wade was a case about abortion. Some thought it was about school desegregation, the death penalty, or the environment.

The poll found what Pew calls "deep differences" among religious and political groups about the morality of abortion. But Cooperman says it also found that even people who are personally opposed to terminating a pregnancy seem willing to allow for exceptions.

"Public opinion on this is not as divided into two straightforward camps as one might think. The way we asked the moral question is, 'Do you think that abortion is morally wrong, morally acceptable, or not a moral issue?' And then there was a fourth category, of some people who volunteered, 'Well, it depends on the situation.'"

Fifty-three percent of those polled told Pew that the abortion debate is "not that important" compared to other issues facing the country.

See the poll at PewForum.org.




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