Earlier this year we commissioned an Americans United for Life/YouGov national poll in response to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signing late-term abortion into law in New York, and we found that a supermajority of self-identified pro-choice Americans oppose New York-style late-term abortion.

And earlier this month we released another Americans United for Life/YouGov national poll in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to consider Louisiana’s Democratic-sponsored 2014 “Unsafe Abortion Protection Act,” which ensures that no woman can be abandoned by an abortion practitioner, and that when a woman’s life is threatened from complications arising from an abortion, emergency transfer laws will ensure her access to life-saving medical care. Madeline Fry puts this issue into context:

For some abortion supporters, regulations that require certain medical standards from abortion clinics are a trap — literally, a TRAP: targeted regulation of abortion providers.

Included among this supposed scheme are laws requiring abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. A paper in the American Public Health Association calls them “stringent” and “medically unnecessary.”

Yet a majority of Americans aren’t buying it. The pro-life organization Americans United for Life commissioned a poll by YouGov, a non-partisan polling firm, which surveyed more than 1,300 adults last month to ask them about these medical standards.

What did we find? We found that supermajorities of Americans supporting common sense life-affirming law and policy:

• A vast majority of Americans (78.2%) believe that physicians performing abortions should be able to transfer women who experience complications directly to the emergency room;
• 70% agree that abortion facilities should be held to the same medical standards as any ordinary hospital;
• 73.8% support states being able to pass safeguards that ensure abortion facilities are in compliance with basic medical practices and sanitation;
• Three out of four Americans agree that abortion doctors should be held to the same medical standards as ordinary physicians; and
• Of those surveyed, 43.3% were self-identified pro-choice, 35.5% were pro-life, and 23.9% were neither.

We also spoke with Alexandra DeSanctis on “Life, Liberty, and Law” about the AUL/YouGov poll and SCOTUS as we look ahead to 2020 and its planned hearing of oral arguments in late winter.