Six in 10 Americans say they’re opposed to completely eliminating Planned Parenthood’s federal funding — including more than 40 percent who are “strongly” opposed, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
And strikingly, attitudes about Planned Parenthood are virtually unchanged months after a string of secretly taped videos showing Planned Parenthood employees talking about the use of fetal tissue and organs in scientific research from pregnancies that had been terminated at their facilities.
In the poll, 44 percent of Americans say they’re strongly opposed to completely eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and another 17 percent are “somewhat” opposed.
That’s compared with 22 percent who strongly favor eliminating its funding, and another 13 percent who somewhat support it.
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Among that combined 35 percent in favor of eliminating Planned Parenthood’s funding, 9 percent back shutting down the federal government to achieve that goal, while 11 percent are against that tactic. Another 15 percent say they’re not sure.
The NBC/WSJ poll also shows 47 percent of adults holding a positive view of Planned Parenthood, versus 31 percent who have a negative view (+16).
That’s almost identical to the organization’s 45 percent-30 percent fav/unfav score from July (+15) after the video controversy first surfaced. Of course, opinions of Planned Parenthood vary by party: 73 percent of Democrats and 42 percent of independents have a positive view of the organization, compared with just 18 percent of Republicans. The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Sept. 20-34 of 1,000 adults (including nearly 400 reached by cell phone), and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points. This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com
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