Support for legal abortion is widespread in many places, especially in Europe
Majorities in most of the 27 places around the world surveyed in 2023 and 2024 say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Majorities in most of the 27 places around the world surveyed in 2023 and 2024 say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
In 2020, properties in 102 of the 198 countries and territories in the study were targeted in incidents tied to religion.
More than 18 years after the Netherlands became the world’s first country to allow same-sex marriage, Austria became the latest European nation to legalize the practice.
In many European countries and the United States, women do not actually differ significantly from men in their views about abortion.
While Slovakia is majority Catholic, around seven-in-ten Czechs are religiously unaffiliated – the highest share of unaffiliated adults in 34 European countries surveyed.
The Catholic Church remains closely tied to Europe. Catholics are the largest religious group in many of the continent’s most populous countries.
When it comes to public attitudes on religion, national identity and the place of religious minorities, Greeks, like their neighbors to the East, hold more nationalist and less accepting views than do Western Europeans.
Two-thirds of Irish adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a level of support reflected in a recent vote in Ireland on legal abortion.
Americans and Western Europeans have broadly similar views on certain social and political issues. For example, majorities of Americans and Western Europeans see immigrants as beneficial to their economies and support certain rights for gays and lesbians.
Most Christians in Western Europe today are non-practicing, but Christian identity still remains a meaningful religious, social and cultural marker. Read 10 key findings from our new survey.
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