This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

Correlates of Public Views

Reflecting the sociological principle that our social backgrounds influence our attitudes and behaviors, several aspects of people’s social backgrounds are associated with their views on abortion. We can illustrate this by using the GSS question that asks whether respondents support a legal abortion “for any reason.” In the entire GSS sample, about 43 percent support legal abortion for any reason; using a common term for people who favor legal abortion, they are entirely pro-choice.

You have probably heard many times that people who are religious tend to oppose abortion rights much more than people who are less religious. Using the GSS “for any reason” item, we would thus expect that very religious people would be much less likely than other people to favor abortion for any reason.Figure 9.10 "Self-Rated Religiosity and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)" shows this is indeed the case. People who say they are not religious are almost four times more likely than those who are very religious to support a legal abortion for any reason.

Figure 9.10 Self-Rated Religiosity and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)



Source: Data from General Social Survey. (2010). Retrieved fromhttp://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10.

You have probably also heard many times that the Catholic Church is a leading opponent of legal abortion. Does this mean that Catholics themselves are less likely than Protestants to support legal abortion for any reason? The answer to this question is no: Figure 9.11 "Religious Preference and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)" shows that Catholics and Protestants are about equally likely to favor legal abortion for any reason, with Jews and people with no religious preference about twice as likely to favor it.

Figure 9.11 Religious Preference and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)



Source: Data from General Social Surveys. (2008–2010). Retrieved from http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10.

It might make sense to think that women are more likely than men to favor legal abortion. However, there is no gender difference in this regard. As Figure 9.12 "Gender and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)" shows, women are in fact slightly less likely than men to favor legal abortion, although the difference shown in the figure is too small to be statistically significant.

Figure 9.12 Gender and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)



Source: Data from General Social Survey. (2010). Retrieved fromhttp://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10.

Three other aspects of our social backgrounds are rather strongly associated with abortion views: education, our political views, and region of country. People with college degrees are much more likely than those with lower education levels to support legal abortion for any reason (Figure 9.13 "Education and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)"); liberals are twice as likely as conservatives to favor legal abortion (Figure 9.14 "Self-Described Political Views and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)"); and people in the Northeast and West are more likely to favor legal abortion than people in the South and Midwest.

Figure 9.13 Education and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)



Source: Data from General Social Survey. (2010). Retrieved fromhttp://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10.

Figure 9.14 Self-Described Political Views and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)



Source: Data from General Social Survey. (2010). Retrieved fromhttp://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10.

Figure 9.15 Region and Support for Legal Abortion for Any Reason (%)



Source: Data from General Social Survey. (2010). Retrieved from http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10.