"The percentage of Americans who support abortion rights has slipped since last year, and opinion on the issue is now evenly divided, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The survey results mark a change from 2007 and 2008, when supporters of legal abortion clearly outnumbered opponents, Pew said. Four in 10 Americans now say they favor making it more difficult to obtain an abortion, up six percentage points from in 2007. Fifty percent oppose making it more difficult, down six percentage points from the earlier survey.

The percentage of those who say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases rose four percentage points since last year to 45 percent. Those who say it should be legal declined seven percentage points to 47 percent.

The shift is largely along partisan lines, the poll indicated. Among Republicans, there has been a seven-point decline in support for abortion rights and a six-point increase in opposition.

“While no single reason for the shift is apparent, the pattern of changes suggests that the election of a prochoice Democrat as president may be a contributing factor," said Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Center’s president.

President Obama reversed a Bush administration rule that prohibited government funding of international family planning clinics that promote abortion. He also supported federally funded embryonic stem-cell research.

But Obama has also often talked about the need to reduce the number of abortions and has called for a search for common ground on the divisive issue.

The poll also suggested that the abortion debate is receding in importance." (Heidi Przybyla, Bloomberg News, October 2, 2009)