According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, support for legal abortion in the U.S. is at its highest point in over two decades, amid new legislation in several states restricting the procedure.
The poll finds that 60 percent of American adults say the procedure should be legal in all or most cases.
However, the WaPo-ABC News poll also finds that most Americans also want to see restrictions on the procedure, which is consistent with recent polling on how most Americans and the majority of pro-abortion Americans do not support lifting later-term abortion restrictions.
The Hill reports,
That number of support tops the 55 percent who said abortion should be legal in all or most cases in the same poll in 2013. It is the highest level of support since 1995, when the same percentage of respondents supported the procedure remaining legal.
But the poll does show that most Americans want to see some limits on the procedure.
Twenty-seven percent said abortion should be legal in all cases and 33 percent said it should be legal in most cases, while 22 percent said it should be illegal in most cases, with 14 percent saying it should always be illegal.
The majority of Americans also indicated that they did not think abortion access should be expanded: 41 percent said states should "leave the law on women's access to abortion as it is now," [while] 32 percent said abortion access should be expanded. Forty-one percent of those surveyed said it should be harder to access an abortion.
This comes after recent polling showed that the majority of pro-abortion Americans actually oppose lifting third-trimester restrictions and would restrict abortions to – at most – the first three months of pregnancy. The polling took place as states such as Virginia and New York pushed legislation lifting such restrictions and even provided for abortion up until birth.