3 in 5 people in 27 countries say abortion should be legal

Three in five people in 27 countries covering all corners of the globe say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to new polling from the research center Ipsos.

The survey, covering the largest nations and regions in the world, including the U.S., Australia, China, India and Europe, shows 59 percent of adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases while 26 percent say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

In 22 countries, those who say it should be legal outnumber those who say it should be illegal, with rates exceeding 75 percent in Sweden, Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

In five countries — Peru, India, Malaysia, South Africa and Colombia — just 42 percent or lower of adults say abortion should be legal. Peru earns the lowest marks, with just 31 percent agreeing it should be legal in all or most cases.

Japan, China and Brazil are practically split down the middle on the question.

In the U.S., 54 percent of adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Ipsos poll, indicating a slightly smaller share than previous polling showing closer to two-thirds of Americans agree abortion should be legal.

About 27 percent of American adults say it should be illegal in all or most cases, the poll shows.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, upending the nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion and clearing the way for about half of all states to severely restrict or ban abortions and putting the issue back in the forefront of political discussion.

This week, voters in Kansas rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have allowed Republicans to enforce abortion bans.

In the global survey, 80 percent of all adults say abortion should be legal if it threatens the life of a woman, while 76 percent agree it should be legal if the pregnancy is the result of a rape.

While 62 percent of adults in the 27 countries polled say abortion should be legal in the first six weeks of pregnancy, that number drops to 27 percent in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The Ipsos poll was conducted from June 24 to July 8 among 20,523 adults aged 18-74 in the United States, Canada, Malaysia, South Africa and Turkey and 16-74 in the 22 additional countries.

The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points in countries where the polling was among 1,000 or more people and 4.5 percentage points in countries where the polling was 500 or more people.