A majority of respondents -- 62 percent -- said they oppose cutting off federal funding to Planned Parenthood. | Getty Poll: Voters favor Roe, oppose cutting Planned Parenthood funds

A large majority of voters support the 44-year-old Supreme Court decision that established women’s abortion rights — and oppose efforts to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood — according to a new poll released Friday.

The Quinnipiac University poll — which shows 70 percent of voters agree with the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade — was released on the day anti-abortion demonstrators rally in Washington, and six days before President Donald Trump is slated to name his nominee to fill a vacancy on the high court.


Only 26 percent of voters disagree with the ruling in Roe, the poll shows — the fewest since Quinnipiac began asking the question in 2005. Self-identified Democratic voters are nearly unanimous in their support for the abortion-rights decision: 91 percent agree with it, while 7 percent oppose it.

Republicans, on the other hand, are split: 43 percent agree with the Roe decision, while a 54-percent majority oppose it. That closer break stands in sharp contrast to the near-unanimous support for Friday’s “March for Life” events from Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration.

Independent voters, meanwhile, mirror the nation overall: 70 percent agree with the Roe ruling, while a quarter disagree.

Congressional Republicans are pushing to strip federal funding for Planned Parenthood, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that provides health services to women, including abortion services. Currently, the organization receives large amounts of federal funds but is prohibited from using those funds to provide abortions.

Overall, only 31 percent of voters support cutting off federal funding to Planned Parenthood — while twice that many, 62 percent, oppose cutting off funding. A majority of Republicans, 63 percent, support ending the funding, but that’s fewer than the 90 percent of Democrats who oppose cutting federal funds.

Moreover, the poll suggests that support for cutting funding might be even smaller. Quinnipiac asked the 31 percent who favor cutting funding if they would still want Planned Parenthood funding ended if they “knew that federal government funding to Planned Parenthood was being used only for non-abortion health issues such as breast cancer screening.”

A majority, 58 percent, of the voters who supported cutting funding to Planned Parenthood changed their minds and said they no longer favored ending the funding after hearing that statement, the poll shows. Overall, that left just 12 percent of voters who support cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, pollsters say.

The push to defund Planned Parenthood comes amid a broader debate over the future of health care laws — including the fate of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as “Obamacare.”

According to the poll, just 30 percent of voters say Trump and congressional Republicans should keep the law as is. But only 16 percent favor repealing the entire law, the poll shows. A slight majority, 51 percent, think Trump and Congress “should repeal parts of the [health care] law but keep other parts.”

And if the law is repealed, voters overwhelmingly think Congress should pass another law replacing the Obamacare provisions, the poll shows. Only 13 percent of voters think Congress “should repeal Obamacare as soon as possible even if [it has] not decided on a plan to replace it,” while 84 percent think lawmakers should “wait to repeal Obamacare until they have a plan to replace it.”

The poll was conducted January 20-25, surveying 1,190 registered voters by landline and cell-phone calls. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

Results released on Thursday showed little support for Trump’s initial actions in the White House. And a subsequent question — released on Friday along with the abortion and health care results — shows only a third of voters, 33 percent, approve of the individuals Trump “has nominated to be a part of his Cabinet.” More voters, 45 percent, disapprove.