Most people support bans on abortion after fetal heartbeat is detected, poll shows

Despite mainstream media outcry against pro-life laws limiting or banning abortion, a new poll shows that a majority of voters are supportive of bans on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, according to The Hill.

The results of a Hill/HarrisX survey showed that most voters believe six-week abortion bans, which seek to ban abortions from the point that a fetal heartbeat can be detected, are either too lenient or just right.

Thirty-four percent of voters believe six-week abortion bans are "just right," and 21 percent believe they are too lenient. Forty-five percent of respondents called the bans "too restrictive."

Notably, the poll results show that younger voters are more likely than older ones to be supportive of the bans, and women do not significantly differ statistically from men in their opinions on the issue.

Among voters under the age of 34, 30 percent called six-week abortion bans "just right," and 27 percent said "too lenient." Those results were 36/18 percent for ages 35-49, 38/21 percent for ages 50-64, and 31/17 percent for ages 65 and over.

Pro-life laws have been characterized by Democratic politicians as an attack on women. However, the Hill/HarrisX poll shows that women are mostly aligned with men in how they view the laws.

Forty-three percent of men call the pro-life laws "too restrictive," while 47 percent of women say the same.

"The people who say abortion should be legal in all cases or illegal in all cases is a minority," said Daniel Cox, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to HillTV. "The vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle that abortion should be legal under some circumstances and there's some significant variation."

The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from a statistically representative sample between May 10 and 11, with a 3.1 percent margin of error.