Religion & Abortion

These edicts represent the collective judgment of the American public when asked to assess the moral dimensions of different kinds of behaviors.

Summary of Findings Public acceptance of homosexuality has increased in a number of ways in recent years, though it remains a deeply divisive issue. Half of Americans (51%) continue to oppose legalizing gay marriage, but this number has declined significantly from 63% in February 2004, when opposition spiked following the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision and […]

Of all the opinions that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. has handed down during 15 years on the federal bench, the one drawing the most attention since his nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court is his support in a 1991 case for a provision in a Pennsylvania law that required women, with few […]

The confirmation hearings for Harriet Miers to become a justice of the Supreme Court will once again highlight a complex web of issues related to abortion, on which she may become the swing vote. While activists on both sides describe abortion as an issue on which there is no middle ground, decades of polling have […]

Summary of Findings Abortion has dominated the early skirmishing over President Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But the public takes a more expansive view of the court’s agenda. Indeed, about as many Americans rate the rights of detained terrorist suspects as a very important issue for the Supreme Court as say […]

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s decision to step down from the Supreme Court sets up a possible next chapter in the nation’s culture wars. If the debate over O’Connor’s replacement turns into a referendum on Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a woman’s right to abortion, the argument is likely to galvanize a significant […]

10:30am-Noon Washington, D.C. Speakers: Congressman David Price (D-NC) Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) David Brooks, columnist, The New York Times; Contributing Editor, Newsweek E.J. Dionne, Jr., Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution; columnist, Washington Post Writers Group Moderator: Luis Lugo, Director, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life LUIS LUGO: Good morning, and thank you all […]

9:00 – 10:30 a.m Washington, D.C. Speakers include: Thomas J. Reese, S.J., Editor-in-Chief, America: The National Catholic Weekly George Weigel, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center Moderator: Luis Lugo, Director, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life LUIS LUGO: Good morning. I’m Luis Lugo, and I am the director of the Pew Forum […]

Panel divided over moral status of human embryo The President’s Council on Bioethics should work to establish a framework for public moral debate and should determine how to make progress in a discussion that is essentially gridlocked over the issue of the moral status of the human embryo, a panel of Christian and Jewish theologians […]