India’s artificially wide ratio of baby boys to baby girls – which arose in the 1970s from the use of prenatal diagnostic technology to facilitate sex-selective abortions – now appears to be narrowing. Son bias has declined sharply among Sikhs, while Christians continue to have a natural balance of sons and daughters.
In recent years, U.S. public opinion has become modestly more positive toward both sides in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
A majority of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but many are open to restrictions; many opponents of legal abortion say it should be legal in some circumstances.
In the new survey, the Center attempted for the first time to pose some of these philosophical questions to a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, finding that Americans largely blame random chance – along with people’s own actions and the way society is structured – for human suffering, while relatively few believers blame God or voice doubts about the existence of God for this reason.
Some Americans clearly long for a more avowedly religious and explicitly Christian country, a March survey finds. However, a clear majority of Americans do not accept these views.