by Mary Margaret Olohan
A majority of white evangelicals strongly supports restrictions on abortion, a national poll released Thursday shows.
Sixty-seven percent of white evangelicals said they support making abortion illegal except in cases of rape or incest or in case of a threat to the mother’s life, a poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found.
The poll results showed white evangelicals differ greatly from other religious groups on this subject — though 67 % of white evangelicals support strong restrictions on abortion, 39% of white Protestants, 33% of nonwhite Protestants, and 45% of Catholics support strong restrictions on abortion.
Abortion is not the only topic white evangelicals are at odds with other religious groups. The poll also questioned whether the government should bar discrimination against LGBTQ persons in housing, workplaces and schools. While about 60% of Catholics and both white and non-white Protestants support government barring of discrimination of LGBTQ people in these places, a third of white evangelical Protestants support such measures.
The poll’s findings show that this evangelical constituency is more solidly aligned with President Donald Trump than other religious American groups — and white evangelicals are more likely than these other religious groups to say their religion will influence their politics.
Evangelical Trump-supporter Rev. Franklin Graham, who is the son of the late Christianity Today founder Rev. Billy Graham, said Trump’s stances on abortion are a major reason the president has such staunch support among evangelicals.
Graham made news Dec. 20 when he called out the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today for invoking his father’s name in an editorial calling for Trump to be impeached.
.@CTMagazine released an editorial saying @POTUS Trump should be removed from office & they invoked my father’s name, so I felt I should respond. Yes, @BillyGraham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree w/ their piece. He’d be disappointed. https://t.co/XO5Fj0hxnc
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 20, 2019
“I don’t think evangelicals are united on every position the president takes or says, but they do recognize he is the most pro-life-friendly president in modern history,” Graham said, the AP reported. “He has appointed conservative judges that will affect my children and grandchildren’s lives, long after he’s gone.”
The poll was conducted among 1,053 U.S. adults from Dec. 5 to 9 using a sample representative of the U.S. population with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
– – –
Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Pro-Life Supporters” by Brian Stansberry. CC BY 3.0.
