Majority of Americans support abortion, assisted suicide, homosexuality: report

Surveys conducted in 2025 found that 52 percent of Americans believe abortion is not morally wrong, 63 percent believe assisted suicide is permissible, and 60 percent have no moral problem with homosexuality.

In part because a significant number of people think the morality of abortion should not determine whether it is legal, higher numbers of Americans believe abortion should be legal, according to Pew Research. 

As of 2026, 60 percent of Americans said they think abortion should be legal in “all or most cases,” in response to a Pew survey. That percentage has remained relatively steady since 1995, when 60 percent of Americans indicated the same support for legal abortion, according to ABC News and Washington Post polls.

Pew Research found that three times more Republicans than Democrats believe abortion is wrong, and white evangelical Protestants were much more likely to believe abortion is morally wrong (78 percent) than white Catholics (55 percent).

Only slightly fewer Americans between 1996 and 2014 thought doctor-assisted suicide should be legal: an average of 58 percent, according to Gallup.

Of the 60 percent of Americans who believe homosexuality is not morally wrong, most believe it is not a moral issue (37 percent), while some think it is morally acceptable (23 percent). Significantly more young people think homosexuality is morally permissible than older adults. Only 30 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 think homosexuality is morally wrong, whereas 46 percent of adults ages 65 and older believe the same.

Pew Research pointed out that Americans are “almost evenly split” on the morality of pornography, as they are on the morality of abortion. Slightly over half of U.S. adults believe viewing pornography is morally wrong (52 percent), while about a third say it is not a moral issue (32 percent) and a small portion say it is morally acceptable (15 percent).

A significant gap exists between older adults and other adults on the question of porn’s morality: 67 percent of those 65 and older say viewing porn is morally wrong, whereas 45 percent of those ages 18-49 say it is morally wrong. An over 10 point gap exists between men and women on the issue: 47 percent of men say porn use is morally wrong, versus 58 percent of women.

Notably, substantially more Americans — 18 percent — believe it is morally wrong to be “extremely rich” (i.e., have billions of dollars) than believe it is morally wrong to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) (9 percent) or use contraceptives (8 percent). Most Americans who believe it is wrong to be extremely rich are Millennials or Gen Z. 

Only 11 percent of Christians were found to be morally opposed to IVF, despite the fact that it entails the conscious creation of scores of “excess” embryonic humans who are eventually killed, and treats human lives like commodities to be bartered over. Catholicism has the highest portion of adherents in the U.S. opposed to IVF, at 15 percent.

Catholics were also the most likely (13 percent) to be morally opposed to contraception, while an overwhelming 91 percent of Americans believe it is not morally wrong.

American attitudes on major moral issues have for the most part not changed much over the past decade. Pew Research Center’s 2013 Global Attitudes found that, at the time, 58 percent of Americans thought homosexuality was not immoral. Of those surveyed in 2013, 49 percent said abortion is morally wrong.