This is the first in a series of articles sharing research by Kinsey Institute researchers and their colleagues on a variety of factors affecting the public perception of abortion in the United States.
Polarization and Abortion Labels
Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court in June this year which ended the constitutional right of a pregnant person to choose to have an abortion until fetal viability (approximately 24 weeks), access to legal abortion has become the subject of renewed discussion and debate and has set off a flurry of new abortion legislation across America.
One of the striking features of the debate over legal abortion in the US is the portrayal of a deeply divided public entrenched in mutually hostile views. Mainstream media and legislative figures alike present abortion as a polarizing issue, dividing the American public into two distinct camps: those who support unrestricted access to abortion services (labeled “pro-choice”) and those who support banning or severely restricting abortion (labeled “pro-life”). This is evident in media coverage that uses language like “split,” “divided,” “lines,” and “camps.” Even abortion research has tended to approach the issue working with support vs oppose kinds of frameworks, producing studies that examine what factors can predict whether an individual falls into one group or the other, such as age, political party affiliation, religiosity, or gender.
The amount of polarization on any issue, including abortion access, is important, because having a population sharply divided at opposite extremes can make it extremely difficult to devise solutions or pass legislation that will be accepted and followed by the majority of people. However, recent research shows that choosing to identify with a label like “pro-choice” or “pro-life” does not necessarily translate into adopting specific attitudes or positions on access towards abortion or supporting legislation that provides blanket restriction from or access to abortion.
Studying Complexity in Attitudes About Abortion
Dr. Kristen Jozkowski is a Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute, William Yarber Professor of Sexual Health in the School of Public Health at Indiana University, and one of the Principal Investigators of the Indiana University Abortion Attitudes Project, along with Dr. Brandon Crawford in the School of Public Health at Indiana University. She has been studying the perception of abortion issues in America since 2017. She and her colleagues have conducted studies to investigate whether people’s attitudes towards legal abortion change depending on the situation surrounding the pregnancy – including financial and social repercussions for the mother or medical complications threatening her health or survival, age and development of the fetus, and circumstances like rape or incest – and how those attitudes correspond to identifying as “pro-life” or “pro-choice.”
Participants in their studies were asked if they thought abortion should be legal or not under a variety of different circumstances. Participants who said abortion should always be legal or never be legal were categorized as not being complex in their attitudes – their attitudes are the simplest and the most polarized. Participants who displayed support for abortion under some circumstances, but not others, were categorized as “complex” in their attitudes towards abortion.
Notable Findings
- More religious and politically conservative people tended to report the most complex views.
- Education affected complexity in a varied way. For people with up to 12 years of education, complexity in their attitudes tended to increase. After 12 years of education, their attitudes became less complex, primarily because people became more permissive in their attitudes.
- Over time, people who identify as Democrat have become less complex in their attitudes towards abortion (that is, more polarized), while Republicans and Independents have stayed stable in their level of complexity. Democrats are now 18% less likely to have more complex attitudes when compared to Republicans.
- Individuals who live in a rural setting are 22% more likely to have more complex views toward abortion access than those who live in urban settings.
- In one study, nearly 50% of participants supported women’s access to safe and legal abortion. In another study, 66% supported access to safe, legal abortion, but only ¾ of these respondents identified as “pro-choice.”
Approximately 50% of the respondents had mixed or complex opinions about abortion access and legality, and the majority of respondents favor some level of access to safe and legal abortion. This is consistent with results from previous studies of the issue by other researchers as well.
Participants who support legal abortion include individuals who identify as “pro-life,” but who also believe that abortion should be accessible under some conditions. This reality is not reflected in the simple either/or way that abortion attitudes can be portrayed in the media or discussed in decisions about legislation, and there is a disconnect between the current trend of legislation that severely restricts or outlaws abortion and large segments of the American population that support some level of access to safe, legal abortion.
Research Publications
Jozkowski, K.N., Crawford, B.L., and Hunt, M.E. (2018.) Complexity in Attitudes Toward Abortion Access: Results from Two Studies. Sexuality, Research and Social Policy. 15:464-482. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-018-0322-4
Jozkowski, K.N., Crawford, B.L., and Willis, M. (2021.) Abortion Complexity Scores from 1972 to 2018: A Cross-Sectional Time-Series Analysis Using Data from the General Social Survey. Sexuality, Research and Social Policy. 18:13-26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-020-00439-9