The structure of public attitudes toward abortion

This study is concerned with the ways in which people organize their attitudes toward abortion. The dissertation explores two conceptually distinct aspects of public attitudes toward abortion: characteristics of abortion situations that impinge upon moral acceptance of abortion, and the social and ideological attributes that individuals bring to bear upon their judgments of abortion situations. Two research instruments, a factorial survey and a conventional telephone survey were administered to an age-sex stratified sample of adult respondents from Greenfield, Massachusetts. The factorial survey design was used to generate thousands of hypothetical abortion situations that vary in terms the life course characteristics, health and financial status of the pregnant woman, as well as the overt reasons for an abortion, the phase of gestation, and the views of parents and partners. The results indicate that among the various characteristics that describe an abortion decision, three factors have the most significant impact on abortion attitudes: the reasons individual women provide for their abortion decisions, the phase of gestation, and the general health of the pregnant woman. Second, age differences in abortion attitudes suggest cohort effects on the structure of abortion attitudes. Respondents are also more sympathetic to abortion decisions made by vignette women who share their marital status and parity. Third, a comparative analysis of the two methods used to measure abortion attitudes show that they essentially capture the same structure of attitudes. Supplementary data from a conventional telephone survey was used to place abortion attitudes within a larger context of attitudes and beliefs in three other domains: Sexuality/reproduction, human life, and gender roles. Abortion attitudes are strongly related to human life values and attitudes in the domain of sex/reproduction, but only moderately related to gender role ideology. Furthermore, the abortion belief structure and its links to beliefs and values in other life domains have changed historically, and show variation across subgroups of respondents defined by age, religion and gender. In sum, abortion attitudes are shaped by past experiences, current life circumstances and the overall vague orientation individuals bring many aspects of social and personal life