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Birth Control, Divorce Top List of Morally Acceptable Issues
Social & Policy Issues

Birth Control, Divorce Top List of Morally Acceptable Issues

by Art Swift
Chart: data points are described in article

Story Highlights

  • 89% say birth control morally acceptable; divorce, 72%
  • 10% believe extramarital affairs are acceptable; cloning humans, 13%
  • Republicans and Democrats split on several issues

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Birth control, divorce, sex between unmarried men and women, and gambling top a list of morally acceptable issues, while Americans deem polygamy, cloning humans and extramarital affairs as the least acceptable.

Moral Acceptability
Regardless of whether you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that it is morally acceptable or morally wrong.
  2016
  %
Highly acceptable
Birth control 89
Largely acceptable
Divorce 72
Sex between an unmarried man and woman 67
Gambling 67
Having a baby outside of marriage 62
Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos 60
Gay or lesbian relations 60
The death penalty 59
Buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur 59
Contentious
Medical testing on animals 53
Doctor-assisted suicide 53
Abortion 43
Largely unacceptable
Sex between teenagers 37
Pornography 34
Cloning animals 34
Highly unacceptable
Suicide 18
Polygamy 14
Cloning humans 13
Married men and women having an affair 10
Â鶹´«Ã½AV, May 4-8, 2016

 

For the past 15 years, Â鶹´«Ã½AV has asked Americans to rate the moral acceptability of different issues. Of the 19 issues included in this year's survey, a majority of Americans view 11 as morally acceptable. Americans' willingness to describe many issues as morally acceptable has grown since 2001, , having a baby outside of marriage and sex between unmarried people. On other issues, including abortion, cloning animals and wearing clothing made of animal fur, there has been little to no change in the past 15 years. On a year-to-year basis, Americans' views of the moral acceptability of any of these issues have not changed much since 2015.

Birth control is the issue that the largest percentage of Americans approve of, with 89% deeming it morally acceptable. Eight others -- ranging from divorce to medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos -- fall into the "largely acceptable" category, with solid majorities rating them as morally OK. Americans are split on three issues in the "contentious" category: medical testing on animals, doctor-assisted suicide and abortion.

At least half of Americans consider seven issues on the list "morally wrong." In the "largely unacceptable" category, sex between teenagers, pornography and cloning animals are deemed wrong by at least 56%, with roughly a third calling these acceptable. In the "highly unacceptable" category are suicide (18% morally acceptable vs. 73% morally unacceptable), polygamy (14% vs. 82%) and cloning humans (13% vs. 81%). Extramarital affairs rank as the least morally acceptable activity on this list, with 10% saying they are acceptable versus 88% saying they are not.

Republicans, Democrats Split on Moral Acceptability

There are some key differences in how partisans view these moral issues. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to deem sex between an unmarried man and woman as acceptable, along with having a baby outside of marriage and abortion. Republicans, on the other hand, are more likely than Democrats to believe the death penalty is acceptable, as well as to support buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur and medical testing on animals.

Moral Acceptability, by Party Identification
  Republicans Independents Democrats
       
Birth control 87 87 94
Divorce 67 68 83
Sex between an unmarried man and woman 54 70 78
Gambling 63 66 74
Having a baby outside of marriage 49 64 73
Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos 44 63 73
Gay or lesbian relations 44 62 75
The death penalty 74 56 47
Buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur 71 59 45
Doctor-assisted suicide 44 53 64
Medical testing on animals 64 52 43
Abortion 24 44 62
Sex between teenagers 25 36 52
Pornography 22 36 46
Cloning animals 31 33 39
Suicide 9 20 25
Polygamy 10 16 18
Cloning humans 10 13 17
Married men and women having an affair 8 12 9
Â鶹´«Ã½AV, May 4-8, 2016

 

Bottom Line

Americans broadly agree on the moral acceptability of several prominent social issues. Most consider birth control and divorce as OK, while the vast majority disapprove of polygamy, cloning humans and extramarital affairs. Although polygamy and cloning humans have seen , more than 80% of the public still oppose them.

Gay or lesbian relations, having a baby out of wedlock and sex between unmarried men and women have seen substantial increases in public acceptance since Â鶹´«Ã½AV began asking about them, but issues such as the death penalty and medical testing on animals have seen declining acceptance. In general, in the 21st century, Americans believe more key issues are morally acceptable than they used to, .

Historical data are available in .

Survey Methods

Results for this Â鶹´«Ã½AV poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 4-8, 2016, on the Â鶹´«Ã½AV U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,025 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

View complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the works.


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