I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Most Americans favor abortion consent laws and bans on late-term abortions but oppose bans on abortion clinic funding, according to a new Gallup public opinion poll.
In mid-July, Gallup pollsters solicited public opinion on seven abortion restrictions from a random sample of 1,020 adults 18 and older in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Respondents were surveyed by telephone -– cell phone and land line — according to Gallup’s survey methods.
According to the results, seven in 10 Americans favored requiring parental consent for minors and a rule passed in many states requiring women to wait at least 24 hours before obtaining an abortion. About two-thirds of those questioned favored banning late-term abortions, or as was worded in the poll — with quotations — “partial birth abortion.”
There was overwhelming opposition to policies banning health clinics that provide abortion from receiving federal funds for other family-planning programs. The poll showed mixed reaction for laws requiring women seeking abortions to be shown ultrasound images of their fetuses, as well as so-called “conscience laws” allowing pharmacists and other health providers from refusing to provide abortion services.
The restrictions:
Gallup identified few differences on attitudes of the seven restrictions based on gender. Rather, differences arose depending upon which political party respondents identified with. Republican-identified poll respondents favored opt-out “conscience” provisions (62 percent vs. 33 percent of Democrats vs. 46 percent of independents) and stripping federal funds from abortion providers (58 percent vs. 25 percent of Democrats vs. 40 percent of independents). However, the Gallup poll did find partisan consensus among parental consent laws for minors (83 percent among Republicans, 61 percent among Democrats, 71 percent among independents), 24-hour waiting periods (85 percent among Republicans, 60 percent among Democrats, 67 percent among independents) and late-term-abortion bans (72 percent among Republicans, 59 percent among Democrats, 65 percent among independents).
Regionally, the poll found that South and Midwest respondents were more supportive of the restrictions than East and West respondents.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, following this year’s abundance of abortion-related legislation — 19 states enacted 80 laws implementing the aforementioned restrictions in the first half of 2011 -– 24 states now have waiting-period requirements for abortion-seekers and 19 states require that women seek a form of counseling. So far this year, five states -– Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas and Oklahoma –- adopted laws that ban abortion after 20 weeks.
The New Mexico Independent’s sister publication The Florida Independent recently reported on the effect some of these new laws have had on individual states, particularly those that have restricted family-planning funding in the name of defunding the national health-care/abortion-provider Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
