Poll: Americans (and Catholics) oppose religious restrictions on birth control

Pity your local janitor, for the Christian-Right is likely to suffer from another round of exploding heads as a new joint poll from the ACLU and Catholics for Choice reveals that the vast majority of Americans, including Catholics, are all for reproductive rights and don’t want any religious institutions or employers using faith as an excuse to restrict access to birth control:

Key findings include:

• The great majority of Americans (81 percent) says, “The law should not allow companies or other institutions to use religious beliefs to decide whether to offer a service to some people and not others.”

• Sixty-nine percent of Americans think it is wrong for a university to deny birth control coverage. An equal number of Catholics (68 percent) objects, although much of the opposition to this healthcare provision came from Catholic leaders. Seventy-seven percent of Americans, and an equal proportion of Catholics, object to pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions.

• Eighty-seven percent of Americans (and a similar percentage of Catholics), say that a doctor should not be allowed to withhold information about fetal defects for fear a woman might consider an abortion. Sixty-eight percent of Americans, and 66 percent of Catholics, say it is wrong for a doctor to refuse to refer for an abortion.

• Sixty-two percent of Americans and 59 percent of Catholics oppose allowing a Catholic hospital to decline to perform an abortion that is medically necessary to protect a woman’s health.

• Eighty-eight percent of Americans and 86 percent of Catholics believe voters don’t have an obligation to follow a Catholic bishop’s recommendation on how to vote. Seventy-nine percent of Americans and 75 percent of Catholics believe Catholic politicians don’t have an obligation to follow the hierarchy’s directives.

Wait, you mean all that talk about the decimation of religious liberty is just impotent squawking from rapacious ideologues who are actually woefully out of touch with what the general people actually wants, which is for overzealous God-botherers to leave their freedom of choice and right to bodily autonomy alone? Why, color me shocked.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)