Polarization of Abortion Attitudes: Political Identity, Religious Conservatism, and Gender Attitudes

• In Event: 444 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Attitudes and Public Opinion in Political Sociology

Abstract

Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, public discourse has framed abortion as an issue that is polarized on political lines. However, scholarly literature suggests that Americans have not become more politically polarized since the Court’s decision. Using data from the 1985 to 2014 General Social Survey, this study examines both of these claims by exploring changes over time in abortion attitudes associated with political, social, and religious ideologies. By addressing multiple ideological sources, I explore whether and how different dimensions of liberalisms and conservatisms relate to broader changes in abortion attitudes. The results show that abortion attitudes have indeed become increasingly polarized between liberals and conservatives within the given time period. While political identity, religious beliefs, and gender role attitudes are each directly related to public attitudes about abortion, changes in religious conservatism and traditional gender roles cannot account for this trend. This underscores the importance of political identity relative to other ideological factors in understanding the contours of abortion attitudes in the U.S.

Author

• Emily Joo Dorshorst, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee