IN OTHER WORDS, NOT A RIGHT:

Relatively few Americans hold an absolutist view on the legality of abortion, a Pew Center report released Friday shows.

The report, one of the most comprehensive surveys on abortion attitudes in years, found that 61 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in some circumstances and illegal in others. Nineteen percent, or about 1 in 5 Americans, think abortion should be legal in all cases, and 8 percent say it should be illegal without any exceptions.

The Center has surveyed the public on abortion for decades, and the latest survey shows that support for legal abortion has remained steady since the Center began surveying people in 1995. Still, the Center's researchers found that most people's attitudes are nuanced and contingent upon a variety of circumstances, such as how far along a person is in their pregnancy and whether the pregnancy endangers a pregnant person's life.

''People don't want to give a simple yes or no answer,'' Senior researcher Besheer Mohamed said. ''Their views are complicated. They're nuanced. And so giving folks a chance to really express that was a big part of our motivation for this.''

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