The Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, in a study released August 15, noted that 49 percent of adults consider it morally wrong to have an abortion while 22 percent consider embryonic stem-cell research morally wrong.

Some 12 percent view the use of in vitro fertilization as morally wrong.

The findings were based on telephone interviews of 4,006 adults conducted March 21-April 18 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

The survey's results show that opinions on the morality of abortion differ widely among religious groups. Seventy-five percent of white evangelical Protestants and 64 percent of Hispanic Catholics consider having an abortion morally wrong. Fifty-eight percent of black Protestants and 53 percent of white Catholics hold this view while 38 percent of white mainline Protestants and 25 percent of religiously unaffiliated adults see abortion as morally wrong.

Sources

NCR Online

Catholic Culture

Image:CathNews USA

Neither believes he is going to heaven. Goff believes there is "a force that is beyond mankind" - but "I don't believe in an afterlife." Key said "I can't tell you what happens the moment you die but I don't believe you go to another form." I do think you have a spirit that moves to the next - it's part of you and it lives on in your children. But I just don't believe you go off to dancing around in the clouds."

Both leaders submitted to 45-minute interviews with Family First director Bob McCoskrie in front of 220 people at the annual Forum on the Family at Mangere's Life Convention Centre on Friday. But on the moral issues that concerned Mr McCoskrie, they were surprisingly akin.

Both were prepared to look at same-sex adoptions, both supported a split drinking age of 20 at bottle stores and 18 in pubs, both were sympathetic towards euthanasia, and neither had any stomach for changing the laws on smacking or abortion.

Source:

• NZ Herald
• Image: TV3