Causes and Consequences of Public Attitudes Toward Abortion:

A Review and Research Agenda

Ted G. Jelen
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Clyde Wilcox
Georgetown University

April, 2003

A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association,
Long Beach, CA, March 22-24, 2002. We would like to thank Mark P. Petracca and two anonymous
reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
This paper provides a critical review of empirical research on attitudes toward abortion among mass
publics in the United States, with a view toward suggesting promising avenues for future research. We
identify three such themes: Accounting for pro-life movement among mass attitudes in recent years, when
the composition of the U.S. population would seem to trend in a pro-choice direction; explaining the
sources of party polarization of the abortion issue; and anticipating changes in abortion attitudes which
might result from public debate over human cloning.
 Even before the Supreme Court=s landmark decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), abortion has been an

important and divisive issue in American politics. The question of whether a woman has, or should have,

the right to terminate a pregnancy intentionally has been a source of intense controversy for over a

generation. The abortion issue has been what Amy Fried (1988) has termed a Acondensational symbol,@

involving questions of moral theology, human life, gender roles, and sexual morality. The issue has

inspired marches and murder, and spawned a set of competing interest groups that have mobilized tens of

millions of dollars a year to influence public opinion and voting behavior. It has confounded candidates,

and puzzled pundits.

Social scientists have been studying public attitudes toward abortion for more than 30 years.

Abortion opinion is interesting for a many reasons. First, most Americans have an opinion on abortion,

and a substantial majority indicate that the issue is important to them. Abortion is a classic Aeasy@ issue

(Carmines and Stimson, 1980), about which citizens can easily form opinions without great technical

knowledge. In the 2000 National Election Studies, fully 98% of respondents voiced an opinion on

abortion. More than one in five indicated that the issue was extremely important, and another 36%

indicated that it was Avery@ important. Only 15% said that the issue was Anot too important@ or Anot

important at all.@ Other questions in the survey revealed well formed and intense opinion about parental

notification, and Apartial birth@ abortion.

Second, abortion opinion is relatively stable, both at the individual level, and in the aggregate. At

the individual level, abortion opinion is almost as stable as partisanship (Converse and Markus, 1979;

Wetstein, 1993; Wilcox and Norrander, 2002; Sharpe, 1999). At the aggregate level, abortion attitudes

have also been remarkably stable over time (Wilcox and Riches, 2002).

In addition, abortion is an issue that has the power to influence political behavior. It has incited

1
ordinary people to take extraordinary political action that is far greater than any that our standard models

would predict (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, 1995; Maxwell, 2002). Moreover, abortion is one of the

few issues that consistently appears to influence voting behavior at all levels of government B for

President (Abramowitz, 1997; Smith, 1994), for Senate (Cook, et.al.; 1994b), for governor (Cook, et. al.;

1994a), and even for lower offices.

In doing so, abortion divided the party coalitions in the 1980s. The internal party battles over

abortion in the GOP have been highly visible; in 1996 the party=s presidential nominee sought in vain to

attach a plank to the party platform calling for tolerance of different opinions on abortion. But the

abortion issue divided Democrats as well, and highly religious Catholics and evangelicals voted for

Republican candidates in increasing numbers. There is evidence that the abortion issue has led some

citizens to change their partisanship (Adams, 1997). Few issues in modern times have demonstrated such

political force.

Finally, the debate over abortion has taken place in an atmosphere of little new information1 but

intense issue advocacy by pro-choice and pro-life groups. Both sides have employed national survey

research firms to study the best way to frame the abortion debate, and candidates and parties have similar

devoted significant sums to finding ways to move the public. Thus the abortion debate provides an

opportunity to examine the effects of elite frames over time. Are there changes in the rhetoric (defined

here simply as persuasive speech) surround the abortion issue which might affect public attitudes in this

area?

For all of these reasons, public opinion on abortion is of interest to many social scientists. But

after two decades of scholarship, have we answered most of the basic questions? What, if anything, is left

for us to learn? The purpose of this essay is to lay out some avenues for future research on public

attitudes toward abortion. We do not seek to provide an encyclopedic review of the literature, but rather

1 There have been only minor medical breakthroughs,, such as RU-486 and the development of the ability to repair
defective fetuses in the womb.

2
we intend to highlight some of the more important empirical findings concerning public attitudes toward

abortion, and to suggest some promising avenues for future research.

The Measurement of Abortion Opinion

In the United States, two major academic surveys have asked abortion questions for nearly 30

years. The General Social Survey asks respondents whether abortion should be legal for a series of six

circumstances: when the mother=s health is in danger, when the pregnancy is the result of rape, when the

fetus is severely defective, when the family is too poor for additional children, when a single pregnant

woman does not want to marry, and when a married couple wants no more children. These items have

been asked since 1972, and are routinely summed into a single additive scale, or into two scales that

measure support for abortion for physical and social reasons. Similar items have been asked in the

German ALLBUS survey for many years, and in the Polish General Social Survey since 1991 (Jelen and

Wilcox, 1997). The National Election Study has included a single abortion item since 1972, with a

wording change in 1980. The 1980 survey contained both the original and the new wording, allowing

researchers to show the impact on the time series.

Research has shown that the wording of abortion questions does matter. Many citizens would

neither Aallow@ abortion nor Aforbid@ it. Yet one analysis of a media poll that used many different types

of abortion questions showed that most respondents can accurately place themselves on abortion using a

variety of question formats, and that abortion items typically scale quite well (Cook, et. al; 1993c). Thus,

while evidence that observed attitudes toward abortion are somewhat sensitive to variations in question

wording does exist, the operationalization of such attitudes generally seems robust across different

measurement strategies (but see Bishop, et. al, 1985; and Schuman, et.al, 1981).

With well established question formats in place, is there any reason to experiment with different

measurement strategies? It is possible that alternative measurement strategies could help us gain purchase

on abortion opinion.

3
 Abortion questions routinely focus on only one element of abortion B the reasons that a woman

might have to seek an abortion. To use a journalistic metaphor, the questions ask Awhy@ but do not ask

Awho, what, when, where, or how@. Yet there are reasons to think that some of these other dimensions

matter. One poll showed that respondents were much more willing to permit abortions for teenagers than

for married career women (Cook, et.al; 1992), suggesting that citizens draw distinctions based on Awho@

is seeking an abortion. Data from the Los Angeles Times surveys suggest that many of those who would

support abortion for most circumstances in the 1st trimester may oppose abortions for most reasons in the

2nd trimester, and support an outright ban in the 3rd trimester, suggesting that Awhen@ an abortion is

performed matters (Wilcox and Norrander, 2002).2 There is evidence that the public distinguishes

between types of abortions, including a new distinction between medical and surgical abortions,

suggesting that Ahow@ an abortion is performed is significant (Wilcox and Riches, 2002).

More generally, there is considerable evidence that many Americans are ambivalent about

abortion under some circumstances, torn between competing values (Cook, et. al; 1992; Alverez and

Brehm, 1995; Wilcox and Riches 2002). It may be that many citizens hold firm views on abortion under

some circumstances but are less certain about others: committed Catholics may be uncertain over whether

to support abortions when the health of the mother is in danger, others may firmly support abortion for all

physically traumatic reasons but be uncertain about whether poverty is a sufficient justification, and still

others may firmly support abortions for nearly all reasons but hesitate over allowing abortions for married

couples who unexpectedly find themselves pregnant. Future research might seek to identify the specific

circumstances that pose the most difficult decision for a respondent, perhaps by asking the respondent

2
It appears that many Americans seek to balance the right of women to make their own medical decisions
against an emergent value of fetal life, much as the Court sought to balance these considerations in Roe. In the third
trimester, the fetus appears to have substantial rights, but many analysts have suggested that fetal rights in the first
trimester are virtually non-existent.

4
directly, or by measuring the hesitation in response time. Americans do make distinctions among the

circumstances in which women might seek abortions, and we have no clear understanding of which of

these distinctions are most salient to which respondents.

Abortion Opinion in the Aggregate

In the aggregate, abortion opinion is remarkably stable. In the General Social Survey, the mean

score on a six point additive scale measuring support for abortion under the circumstances listed above

rounds to 4 in every year that the survey has been administered. The median score is usually 3

(representing approval of abortion to protect the health of the mother and for rape and fetal defect, but for

no other reasons).

Most studies (Cook, et. al, 1992; Wilcox and Norrander, 2002) show that a substantial minority

of Americans favor abortion virtually without restrictions, and a smaller minority oppose abortion under

most, if not all circumstances. Large majorities favor legal abortion for medical reasons (fetal defect,

health of mother, etc.) while opinion is divided on abortion for social or economic reasons. Thus,

numerous observers (Cook, et. al., 1992; O=Connor, 1996; Sullins, 1999) have reported the existence of a

Asituationalist majority.@ In other words, a slight majority of Americans favor legal abortion under some

circumstances, but not others.

There have been small, but statistically significant changes in aggregate opinion over time. After

the Roe decision in 1973, support for abortion increased. Yet this overall increase masked an underlying

polarization, for some groups of citizens became more opposed to abortion as a result of Roe (Franklin

and Kosaki, 1993). During the 1980s, support for abortion dropped for reasons yet unexplained, and then

rebounded in 1989, just before the Court handed down the Webster decision that permitted some state

regulation of abortion. Wlezien and Goggin (1993) have argued that the public anticipated the Webster

decision, perhaps based on signals sent by party and interest group elites. By the late 1990s, support had

declined again.

5
 Although these changes are small, they are statistically significant.3 Moreover, the ebbs and

flows of public support for legal abortion remain largely unexplained. These changing attitudes may

pose an opportunity to study the effects of elite framing on abortion attitudes, for the political debate on

abortion has ranged from whether it should be permitted to whether teenaged girls should be required to

inform their parents to whether certain late-term abortion procedures should be banned (Wilcox and

Riches, 2002; Wilcox and Norrander, 2002). Presumably elite frames have their greatest effect in moving

respondent positions on the circumstances on which they are most ambivalent. Thus a respondent who is

uncertain about a poverty justification for abortion may respond differently when the public debate is

over state restrictions on abortion, as it was in 1989 after the Webster decision, than they would in 1998,

when the debate is over a ban on Apartial birth@ abortions. In other words, it seems possible, if not likely,

that changes in mass attitudes toward abortion are sensitive to changes in the public discourse

surrounding the issue.

The aggregate stability of abortion attitudes is, in one sense, quite remarkable, given changes in

the attitudinal and demographic composition of the American electorate in the years since Roe. Attitudes

toward sex outside of marriage have become considerably more permissive since the 1970s, and gender

role attitudes have moved substantially in the direction of support for greater equality between men and

women as well (Hoffman and Miller, 1997). Demographically, the proportion of women who self-identify

as homemakers has dropped from over 28% in 1972 to just over 12% in 2000 (Jelen, et. al, 2003). Since

these variables are all associated with pro-choice attitudes, it might be expected that the period since Roe

would have seem large shifts in public opinion in a pro-choice direction. The fact that this pro-choice

shift has not occurred, and, indeed, that net change in abortion attitudes may have moved slightly in a

3
The magnitude of the change is relatively small, but perhaps instructive. In 1972, before the Roe decision,
the mean score on a 0-6 additive scale constructed from the six GSS items was 3.85. In the years after Roe, it rose to
4.13. In the mid-1980s, the mean was 3.84, and in the immediate aftermath of Webster it rose to 4.08. In the later
1990s through 2000, the mean dropped to 3.88. The mean in 2000 was the lowest in the 28 year history of these
items.

6
pro-life direction suggests that a powerful pro-life period effect occurred during the 1980s (and perhaps

more recently as well). Investigating the nature of the observed changes in abortion attitudes, and

comparing these to changes which would have been expected, will likely be a priority for researchers in

the near future.

Although the median and mean abortion opinions may have remained stable over time, there is

some debate over whether the distribution of attitudes has changed. Some analysts (DiMaggio, et. al,

1996; Evans, et., al., 2001) have reported that movement has taken place away from the situationalist

middle, and toward the pro-choice and pro-life extremes. Again, these shifts are small enough to be

controversial (Mouw and Sobel, 2001), but are indicative of a secular trend over time. However, these

shifts do not seem indicative of a more general Aculture war@ (Hunter, 1991; 1994) since abortion attitudes

do not appear to be part of a more general Atraditionalist-progressive@ cultural cleavage (Davis and

Robinson, 1996). Indeed, DiMaggio, et. al report that abortion attitudes are virtually the only social issue

attitudes to exhibit a polarizing trend over the past generation 4According to these studies, the main

source of attitude polarization on abortion is party identification; a subject to which we will return below.

In addition, aggregate stability may well mark individual level change. There have been some

intriguing changes in the correlates of abortion attitudes over time.

Abortion Attitudes as Dependent Variables

Demographics

The literature on the demographic predictors of abortion attitudes is well established, and

generally shows consistent results. Yet there have been some intriguing changes in the relationships

between abortion attitudes and three variables.

Most striking is the decline in the correlation between support for abortion and education.

4
See also Lindaman and Haider-Markel, 2002. For an update of the DiMaggio, et. al. study, in which the
possibility of more general party polarization around cultural issues is reported, see Evans, 2002a

7
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, education was among the strongest demographic predictor of support

for legal abortion. Yet the correlation between abortion and education has dropped steadily through the

1990s. In 1972, the correlation was .31, and in 2000, it was .14. The dropoff is almost entirely confined

to Republicans, which, again, poses some questions to which we will return.

The effects of education are also mediated by religious affiliation and practice (Peterson, 2001).

Active affiliation with an evangelical denomination, or with Roman Catholicism, tends to moderate the

liberalizing effects of education. The effects of religion on the relationship between education and

abortion attitudes are not surprising, but specifying the manner in which religion and education may

interact is a fascinating topic for future research. Do religious people seek out educational experiences

which reinforce their religious training by attending parochial institutions of higher learning? Conversely,

does religion provide a set of countervailing beliefs or values which enables the believer to resist the

prochoice values which appear to result from higher education? (See especially Evans, 2002b).

Second, the race gap in abortion attitudes has reemerged. There has been considerable attention

to racial differences in support for abortion (Coombs and Welch, 1982; Hall and Feree, 1986; Wilcox,

1990; Cook, et. al.; 1992), and this research has generally concluded that differences in religious doctrine

and practice accounted for the lower support among African Americans for legal abortion. During the

late 1980s and early 1990s, the race gap narrowed and between 1989 and 1993 blacks were actually more

supportive of legal abortion than whites in 3 of 4 GSS surveys, even before controls for religiosity. This

change fit patterns of generational replacement, for the oldest African Americans had unusually high

levels of religiosity and low levels of education, and the youngest cohorts had far more education and

significantly lower levels of religiosity. Yet over the latter portion of the 1990s the race gap reemerged,

so that by 2000 the difference in support between blacks and whites for legal abortion was equal to the

overall gap in the combined GSS surveys, and this renewed race gap seems inconsistent with previous

accounts.

8
 Finally, generational differences in support for legal abortion persist, with those who came of age

before the 1960s markedly less supportive of abortion than those who reached adulthood later (Cook; et.

al.; 1992; 1993b; Wilcox and Norrander, 2002. This pattern has remained constant since 1972, but it

masks an important qualification to the stability of abortion attitudes discussed above. Throughout the

period of 1972 to 2000, older, more conservative cohorts have been gradually replaced by younger, more

liberal cohorts, yet the overall mean and median on abortion has remained constant. If the population in

2000 was made up of the same cohort distribution as the population in 1972, support for legal abortion

would be far lower. Thus, generational replacement apparently masks a longer-term secular decline in

support for legal abortion. As noted earlier, the predicted pro-choice change in aggregate abortion opinion

has perhaps been offset by a strong period effect in a pro-life direction.

Religion

Of all the social predictors of abortion attitudes, religion is generally considered to be the

strongest. Religious membership, beliefs, and practices all appear to make independent contributions to

the development of attitudes toward legal abortion. This is not surprising, since a number of religious

groups have taken strong positions against legal abortion. The pro-life position of the Catholic Church is

well-known (Welch, et, al.; 1995), as is the strong and growing opposition of evangelical Protestants.

Indeed, abortion is an important issue for the religious right, and appears to be a potent source of

mobilization for some committed evangelical Protestants. AMainline@ Protestants are generally more pro-

choice than their evangelical counterparts, with Jews and secular citizens even more supportive of legal

abortion (Cook, et. al., 1992; Hoffman and Miller, 1997).

The relationship between religious characteristics and abortion attitudes is, of course, well-trod

ground. However, there remain a number of issues which merit further investigation. For example, it has

been shown (Grindstaff, 1994; Jelen, 1992a; Dillon, 1996) that abortion rhetoric in the United States has

become less explicitly religious and more secular in the years since Roe v. Wade. Even religious leaders

9
who oppose abortion are increasingly likely to invoke scientific arguments, rather than theological ones.

Some evangelical ministers now often invoke the genetic uniqueness of the fetus instead of citing

Scripture in support of a pro-life position. Many Catholic priests now emphasize the psychological trauma

which is the likely result of abortion, rather than invoke some doctrinal notion of natural law. As abortion

has become a political issue, religious leaders have felt compelled to use a commonly understood set of

arguments and concepts to advance a religious viewpoint (Dillon, 1996). Future research might approach

this question more systematically, to determine the implications of the possible Asecularization@ of the

abortion debate.

Further, the aggregate stability of abortion attitudes may mask important changes in the impact of

religion on those attitudes. Sullins (1999) reports that among the youngest cohorts, there has been a

decline in pro-choice attitudes among Protestants, and a clear pro-choice trend among younger Catholics.

This difference is largely attributable to differential trends in church attendance. Younger Protestants are

attending religious services more frequently than their elders, while church attendance has dropped

dramatically among younger Catholics. Similarly, Evans (2002b) has shown an increase in intra-

denominational polarization of abortion attitudes, with such trends being most apparent among Mainline

Protestants and Roman Catholics. This means that there is a growing gap between religiously observant

Catholics and their less-religious counterparts, with a similar trend emerging among non-evangelical

Protestants.

Finally, research has consistently shown that frequent church attendance is associated with

greater opposition to abortion, even when denominational affiliation and doctrinal beliefs have been

controlled. This suggests that frequent church attenders tend to be indiscriminately pro-life, regardless of

the position taken by their denomination on the abortion issue (Cook, et. al, 1992; Emerson, 1996). The

official positions of denominations vary enormously on abortion, from outright condemnation to support

for a women=s prayerful choice, and some Christian denominations are affiliated with a pro-choice

10
religious caucus. Moreover, individual congregations and pastors differ significantly within

denominations (Jelen, 1993). Nevertheless, the empirical evidence to date suggests that even frequent

attenders at congregations in which a pro-choice message is conveyed are more likely to oppose legal

abortion than their less observant counterparts. Of course, there is likely to be a disjunction between the

message articulated by the pastor and the message received by the congregation (Jelen, 1992b), but the

failure of pastoral messages should be randomly distributed, not unidirectional. Himmelstein (1986) has

suggested that frequent attenders are more likely to encounter pro-life messages in the pews, but this does

not fit our observations of liberal Protestant churches. Perhaps this is an area in which some qualitative

research should be done, in which focus groups or participant observation could be used to assess the

reason for the apparent disparity between church doctrine and individual beliefs. It is also possible that

the effects of church attendance on abortion attitudes are mediated by contextual variables, such as

urbanization or region. For example, perhaps exposure to religious messages is a more effective source of

socialization in the South than in the Northeast or on the Pacific Coast. The general point is that religious

socialization does not occur in a vacuum, but takes place within a cultural context which could magnify

or ameliorate its effects. The counterintuitive connection between religious observance in a tradition

which does not consciously promote pro-life values, and the emergence of pro-life attitudes on the part of

the laity within such traditions is an interesting puzzle which merits further investigation.

Another intriguing research question relates the effects of religious observance to changes in the

public discourse surrounding the abortion issue. Why should religiosity become a stronger predictor of

abortion attitudes when public rhetoric surrounding the issue is becoming increasingly less religious? If

the public discussion of legal abortion comes to emphasize issues of science or medicine at the expense of

questions of theology, why should church attendance continue to matter? There is at least a possible

disjunction between the public face of the abortion issue and individual-level socialization by religious

bodies. These apparently disparate findings suggest the possibility that religiously-defined subcultures are

11
important agents of socialization on the abortion issue, and that popular understanding of the issue does

not necessarily reflect elite-level discourse.

Research has also shown that broader religious contexts provide subtle influences on abortion

attitudes. Several studies have suggested that a strong Roman Catholic presence in a particular state

provides support for restrictive abortion policies, but also occasions a pro-choice countermobilization

(Cook, et. al, 1993d; O=Connor and Berkman, 1995). However, there appears to be no equivalent

countermobilization in response to a strong evangelical presence in a particular state, and the effects of

evangelicalism seem to be simply additive. That is, the greater the percentage of evangelicals in a given

state=s population, the more restrictive the state=s abortion policies. The difference appears to be that the

Catholic Church is not simply a strong numerical force in some states (although it clearly is) but also

exerts influence as a formal interest group (O=Connor and Berkman, 1995). Apparently, the organization

strength of the Church in some areas is a highly visible source of support for pro-life policies, which can

motivate corresponding organizational activity on the part of the Church=s opponents (see Segers and

Byrnes, 1994). Evangelical Protestants may be less visibly organized as a lobbying force, and therefore

may occasion less countermobilization.

This difference suggests that future research in this particular area might well focus on state-level

analysis (Cook, et. al.; 1993a). The organizational presence of evangelical groups such as Concerned

Women for America, Christian Coalition, or Eagle Forum clearly varies from state to state (as does the

public visibility of the Catholic Church), and it seems likely that such a public presence is only loosely

related to the proportion of evangelicals in a states population. It would be useful to know whether the

Catholic Church has an organizational advantage over its evangelical counterparts, which are generally

quite decentralized. Alternatively, the organizational force of evangelical groups may be related to

variables other than the numerical superiority (or inferiority) of the lay constituencies of such groups.

12
 Attitudes

Research into mass attitudes toward abortion has revealed that a number of basic orientations (to

which Emerson [1996] somewhat grandly refers to as Aworldviews) are strong predictors of abortion

attitudes. To some extent, these general orientations contribute to our understanding of the relationship

between religious variables and abortion attitudes, by serving as useful intervening variables.

One such general attitudinal gestalt is, of course, respect for human life. Conceptually, the

connection between the general value one places on human life and one=s attitude about legal abortion

seems virtually self-evident. However, using variations in respect for human life as a predictor of abortion

attitudes poses a frustrating measurement problem, since few people would admit to a qualified or lesser

respect for life. Some research (Jelen, 1984; 1988; Cook, et. al., 1992) has employed a measure eliciting a

respondent=s attitude toward euthanasia. Such a measure has been shown to have considerable construct

validity, and exhibits a certain face validity as well. Unlike other Alife@ issues (capital punishment,

military spending, etc.), euthanasia and abortion have in common the fact that the Apersons@ whose lives

are about to be ended do not Adeserve@ their fates. However, such a strategy begs a central question in the

abortion controversy; namely, is the fetus in fact a Aperson@ (Schroedel, 2000)? Presumably, the humanity

of a terminally ill patient is not at issue, but the humanity of the fetus is precisely the issue in one aspect

of the abortion debate.

Of course, even if the methodological problems involved with measuring attitudes toward human

life were resolved, the relationship between such attitudes and attitudes toward abortion represents an

empirical question, which has by no means been resolved. From an ethical standpoint, McDonagh (1996)

has argued that settling the ontological status of the fetus does not provide a simple or straightforward

resolution to the abortion debate. Further, Wilcox and Riches (2002) have shown that many respondents

who believe that life begins at conception nevertheless hold relatively permissive attitudes toward legal

abortion. Similarly, Wilcox and Norrander (2002) have shown that many citizens value both the potential

13
life of the fetus and the womans freedom to choose. This suggests that a more qualitative style of

research design, which would focus on the manner in which ordinary citizens actually make decisions on

the abortion issue, and how they might deal with counterarguments, might well be intellectually

productive.

The role of gender role attitudes on abortion attitudes is apparently quite complex. While some

analysts (Luker, 1984; Schroedel, 2000) have suggested that abortion attitudes are largely driven by

attitudes toward gender roles at the activist level, this does not appear to be the case at the level of the

non-activist public. As noted above, aggregate gender role attitudes and abortion attitudes have not

changed in tandem since Roe. Some analysts have shown gender role attitudes to be predictive of abortion

beliefs (Emerson, 1996), others have suggested that the relationship between feminism and pro-choice

attitudes is weak at the bivariate level, and does not survive the imposition of multivariate controls (Cook,

et. al., 1992). Further, the statistical irrelevance of gender role attitudes to attitudes toward abortion

appears uniform across categories of gender and employment status (Jelen, et. al, 2003). That is, women

employed in the paid labor force are no more or less likely to apply their attitudes about socially-

constructed gender differences than are men or homemakers. Thus, the abortion question, as debated by

elites, does not seem to correspond to the mass publics understanding of the issue.

Thus, while abortion politics and gender politics overlap at numerous points, it does not seem

correct to regard the abortion issue as a simple extension of the politics of gender. This set of findings

seems in turn to pose an interesting question: Absent a relationship with attitudes toward the social roles

of women, what generates support for pro-choice attitudes at the level of the mass public? It seems

unlikely that, in a society as religious as the United States, the mere absence of religious devotion would

be sufficient to provide support for a pro-choice (or, at least, situationalist) plurality. If education, or

participation in the paid labor force does not enhance ones sense of gender egalitarianism, what is it

about these experiences which occasions more frequent pro-choice attitudes among women?

14
 The abortion issue poses questions of moral traditionalism, or, more specifically, of sexual

morality. Some analysts (Jelen, 1984, 1988) have suggested that many members of the mass public view

legal abortion as a means of reducing the risks or costs of sex outside of marriage, by eliminating the

necessity of bringing an unwanted pregnancy to term. Some studies have shown that attitudes toward

appropriate sexual behavior are strong predictors of abortion attitudes (Cook, et. al., 1992) while others

have suggested that this relationship is rendered statistically insignificant by multivariate controls.

Finally, the issue of legal abortion raises questions of personal autonomy and freedom. The pro-

choice frame of Awho decides? Government, or a woman and her physician?@ is very powerful in a nation

in which individual liberty is a core value (indeed, perhaps the core value; see especially Jelen, 1999).

Aside from the importance of these general attitudes individually, the relationships between them

have provided a fascinating set of research questions. Some early research assessed the relative

importance of sexual morality and respect for life among different religious subgroups, but these analyses

need to be extended and elaborated. That is, in the period immediately following the Roe v. Wade

decision, Roman Catholics were more likely to oppose abortion out of respect for human life than because

of traditional attitudes toward sexual morality, while the reverse pattern was observed among evangelical

Protestants (Jelen, 1984). In more recent years, these differences between religious groups have largely

converged (Jelen, 1988). Other work (Alvarez and Brehm, 1995; Schnell, 1993) has shown that internal

conflicts between these sorts of attitudes occasions ambivalence toward abortion. This is an important set

of findings, since this research suggests that Amoderate@ or Asituationalist@ attitudes toward abortion are

not indicative of indifference, but reflect conflicts between deeply held, but incompatible, values. Thus,

Wilcox and Norrander (2002), report that substantial numbers of respondents agree that Aabortion...is a

decision to be made by a woman and her doctor,@ and that A@abortion is murder.@ Such conflicting values

are likely a source of the situationalist majority in the United States, as well as a source of stability of

abortion attitudes. The basic frame (Alife@ versus Achoice@) has been unaltered for over a generation, and

15
many Americans (perhaps uncomfortably) seek to balance these important considerations.

Abortion Attitudes as Independent Variables: Vote Choices and Partisanship

While the distribution and organization of abortion attitudes have remained relatively stable over

time, the same cannot be said of the effects of abortion attitudes on manifestly political attitudes and

behavior. Numerous studies have suggested that abortion attitudes are increasingly strong predictors of

vote choice at a variety of levels of government (Abramowitz, 1995; Cook, et. al., 1992; 1994a, 1994b;

Howell and Sims, 1993). Most analysts suggest that the relationship between vote choice and abortion

attitudes increased after the Supreme Court=s decision in Webster v. Missouri Reproductive Services, in

which the Court granted state governments increased discretion in their ability to regulate the delivery of

abortion services (Wilcox and Norrander, 2002; O=Connor and Berkman, 1995; Wetstein, 1996), although

a few observers suggest that the electoral effects of abortion attitudes were beginning to become apparent

in the 1980s (Smith, 1994).

Several studies (Wilcox; 2001; Jelen, 1997) have demonstrated clearly that the relationship

between abortion attitudes and the more general attitude of party identification has increased over time as

well. This may represent an instance of the phenomenon of Aissue ownership,@ in which a policy stance

comes to be identified with a particular political party (Petrocik, 1996). In other words, the effects of

abortion attitudes on electoral politics are no longer confined to particular electoral contexts (Howell and

Simms, 1993), but have penetrated mass images of the parties in general (DiMaggio, et al, 1996; Evans, et

al., 2001; but see Mouw and Sobel, 2001, for a contrasting view).5

To date, the most thorough analysis of the abortion/partisan relationship has been provided by

Greg Adams (1997). Adams shows that elite polarization (in this case, voting behavior in the U.S. House

of Representatives) on abortion has been increasing, and that mass attitudes on abortion have been

5
Jelen (1997) and Leege (1996) suggest that this phenomenon may be limited to Protestants, and may not
apply to Roman Catholic voters

16
following suit. Thus, the Democrats have increasingly come to be known as the Apro-choice@ party, and

Republicans as the Apro-life@ party (see also Tatalovich and Schier, 1993). Adams suggests that the

dynamics of elite-mass linkages on abortion policy attitudes represents an instance of Aissue evolution,@ in

which party polarization occurs gradually, without an abrupt shift which might represent a Acritical

realignment.@ This in turn represents a more general trend toward ideological polarization among

members of Congress and increased ideological attachments to political parties at the level of mass

publics (Hetherington, 2001). Layman (2001) has shown that this process of polarization around

religious/cultural issues has occurred among delegates to national nominating conventions as well, and

has been reflected in recent party platforms.

As is often the case with genuinely seminal works, Adams= account raises more questions than it

answers. Even if one grants that the primary direction of causality runs from elite to mass (and Adams=

account is hardly conclusive on that point), it is not clear whether mass publics are being socialized by the

parties with which they identify, or whether citizens are choosing their parties on the basis of their

abortion attitudes. On most issues, it is usually the case that the more stable attitude (partisanship) drives

less stable attitudes (issue positions) . In this instance, research on abortion attitudes has shown that, at the

individual level, the stability of attitudes toward legal abortion are unique, in that their stability rivals that

of partisanship (Wetstein, 1993; 1996; Converse and Markus, 1979), which makes a simple assessment of

causality rather difficult.

However, it has been shown that the party socialization phenomenon does occur with some

frequency at the level of party activists (Layman and Carsey, 1998), as well among mass publics (Carsey

and Layman, 1999). In the latter work, Carsey and Layman suggest that, once measurement error has

been taken into account, party identification is somewhat more stable than attitudes toward abortion,

which in turn suggests that partisanship may drive issue attitudes, rather than vice versa. Using panel data

from ANES, as well as making imaginative use of ecological inference, Carsey and Layman show that

17
both processes (partisan change causing changes in issue attitudes, and issue attitudes causing shifts in

party identification) in fact occur empirically.

Although the methodological obstacles in estimating the magnitude of each type of attitude

change remain formidable, the substantive payoff in understanding the dynamics of abortion attitudes

would be impressive. Carsey and Layman suggest that, if indeed partisans are adjusting their issue

attitudes in the direction of greater consistency with their partisanship, the potential for intraparty conflict

may be reduced, and the efficacy of Awedge issues@ may be correspondingly decreased (see also Jelen and

Chandler, 2000).

The party socialization phenomenon also raises the possibility that parties may be supplementing

religious organizations as the primary source of abortion attitudes. To the extent that this is the case,

public discourse on abortion may come to resemble discussions of other issues, and may cease to

resemble the Aclash of absolutes@ which has characterized the abortion debate (O=Connor, 1996; Tribe,

1989), and may, ironically, reflect the preferences of the situationalist majority among the mass public. In

other words, the political parties may in fact be performing their traditional functions as aggregators of

interests, and may tame the public rhetoric surrounding this highly emotional issue. Conversely, the

increased partisan salience of abortion may, in fact, tend to subvert the aggregating functions of political

parties, by raising the importance of an issue which party elites cannot or will not compromise. For

example, in a study of members of the Florida state legislature, Schecter (2002) has shown that the

individual characteristics of legislators, rather than district characteristics, are the strongest predictors of

votes on abortion-related issues in that state.6 If candidates for political office come to regard abortion as

a matter of political (as well as fetal) life and death, this may have important consequences for electoral

competition in the United States.

6
Recently, one of us reviewed a piece for a scholarly journal (through a process of double-blind reviewing)
which reported a similar result for the U.S. House of Representatives.

18
 Within this regard, it is interesting that the correlation between education and abortion attitudes

has declined precipitously among Republicans. This might suggest that those with the highest levels of

sophistication have received and processed the signals of party elites, although it might be expected that

the most sophisticated respondents would also exhibit highly stabile attitudes (Converse, 1964). Yet it

might also represent a true engagement on the issue. During the 1980s, white evangelicals and some

conservative Catholics became active in GOP politics for the first time, and began to rub shoulders with

highly educated mainline Protestants who were generally conservative on economic but not social issues.

It is possible that the influx of evangelicals led at least some moderate Republicans to reevaluate their

views on at least some aspects of the abortion issue. .

It might also be of interest for future research to estimate partisan differences in the changing

relationships between abortion attitudes and electoral attitudes and behavior. It has been shown that

abortion is more salient for Republican than Democratic identifiers (Abramowitz, 1995) and that

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to be aware of dissonant information (specifically, of the

position of House candidates who oppose their party=s dominant position on abortion) at the

subpresidential level (Koch, 2001). It is not clear why such partisan differences might exist. To hazard a

guess, it might be hypothesized that the Democratic (pro-choice) frame is more consistent with the

dominant value of the American political culture: individual autonomy, than is the Republican (pro-life)

frame (Jelen, 1999). Democratic identifiers may experience less cognitive dissonance, and may have less

psychological incentive to attend to the abortion issue than do their Republican counterparts. This poses a

set of intriguing research questions, which may be best be addressed by more qualitative methods, such as

focus groups and participant observation among party activists.

All of this, of course, presents a more fundamental question. If party elites are providing

increasingly polarized cues, to which mass publics are responding in some manner, what is driving the

elites? Why, in particular, would Republican candidates consistently take an unpopular position on a

19
highly visible issue such as abortion? While it has been suggested that party activists are

disproportionately pro-life, Wilcox (1995) has shown that Republican primary voters and contributors to

Republican presidential candidates were not generally more pro-life than the general population in the

late 1980s. Although there is no research to settle this question, the literature suggests a couple of

possibilities. Layman (2001) suggests that strategic candidates may attempt to exploit divisive social

issues such as abortion to enhance their electoral prospects. While the open, competitive nature of party

nominating processes in most U.S. political jurisdictions makes this an attractive hypothesis, the lack of

distinctiveness among primary voters on abortion calls into question this possibility. However, the effects

of candidate strategies may initially be more localized, with general consequences being more direct.

Malcolm McDonald (1998) has suggested that the logic of legislative redistricting may vary,

depending on the partisan composition of the electorate. The standard strategy of gerrymandering in a

partisan electorate is to isolate one=s opponents in very homogeneous districts, and distribute one=s

supporters among several districts to compete for multiple seats in Congress or a state legislature.

However, such a calculation generally assumes the existence of large groups of identifiable supporters

and opponents. If, by contrast, the electorate is primarily independent, or Adealinged,@ a rational Amini-

max@ strategy might be to use the reapportionment process to secure one=s own party=s base. A risk-averse

majority party in a state legislature might well choose to create safe, homogeneous districts for candidates

of its own party. Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, a Democratic state legislator might seek to

create safe districts with African-American majorities to ensure a secure electoral base for the party in the

state legislature and in the House of Representatives.

A corresponding Republican mini-max gerrymander might seek to draw districts in which core

Republican supporters constitute a solid majority. Increasingly, such loyal Republican voters are drawn

from the ranks of white evangelical Christians. As most of the electorate dealigned during the 1970s and

1980s, white evangelical Christians realigned (or, perhaps more accurately, aligned) with the Republican

20
party. In many parts of the country, Republican legislators who seek to act as Adelegates,@ responsive to

the preferences of their constituents, will represent the values of doctrinally and socially conservative

Christians.

If this line of reasoning seems plausible, it follows that there may exist in the U.S. House of

Representatives and in a number of state legislatures a critical mass of Republican legislatures whose

electoral prospects depend on a base of white evangelicals. Such representatives may be motivated not

only to support conservative policies on social issues, but to place such issues (like abortion) on the

legislative agenda. Certainly, the plethora of state-level restrictions on abortion in the wake of the

Webster and Casey decisions supports this hypothesis. Obviously, the existence of such legislative

redistricting, composition, and agenda-setting involves a set of empirical questions.7 Nevertheless,

McDonald=s perspective does provide a possible explanation for the motivation of parties to polarize

around the abortion issue. Layman=s notion of agenda setting on the part of strategic elites may require the

existence of constituencies in which such strategies are electorally feasible. McDonald=s analysis of

redistricting in dealigned electorates seems a promising account of where such constituencies might

exist.8

In any case, future research into the politics of abortion must take into account the empirical fact

that abortion has become a highly partisan issue. However, the causes and consequences of this change

are not well understood, and these questions will provide fruitful avenues of research for some time to

7
Again, Schecter (2002) suggests that district-level variables may be relatively unimportant in accounting
for legislative votes on abortion-related issues.

8
While there are numerous empirical questions involved in this account, all this may provide some
explanatory leverage on phenomena such as the impeachment of President Clinton. Certainly, aspects of the
impeachment proceeding are puzzling: Why did the House insist on pursuing a matter which was so clearly
unpopular with the mass public? Why were House Republicans so enthusiastic about impeachment, while Senate
Republicans seemed eager to dispose of the issue? If House leaders (such as Speaker Hastert) are responding to
religiously distinctive constituencies, the behavior of House Republicans in the face of a nationally hostile majority
may become more intelligible. Similarly, McDonald=s account may help explain why Senators (whose electoral
districts are not subject to manipulation) lacked homogeneous constituencies who might have supported
impeachment (see Jelen, 2000).

21
come.

New Frames, New Constituencies

At various points in this review, we have suggested possible avenues for future empirical

research. Obviously, a substantial body of quality empirical work has been done in the area of mass

attitudes on abortion; equally clearly, there is a great deal more to do.

One area of research which will likely become extremely important is the development of new

frames covering abortion and related issues as populations, environments, and (perhaps especially)

technologies change. Wilcox and Riches (2001) have shown that the variables which have traditionally

accounted for abortion attitudes also explained variation in public attitudes toward RU-486. In a sense,

this is not surprising, since the basic issue - women seeking to terminate pregnancies - remains

unchanged.

However, an emerging set of issues appears to have substantial potential for occasioning a major

reconfiguration in the parameters of the abortion debate. Recent years have seen a great deal of public

controversy over stem-cell research, and the related issue of human cloning. These technological

advances in medicine, and political and public reaction to these advances, seem likely to change the

underlying dynamic of the abortion debate in at least three ways.

First, the stem-cell research issue poses the question of the nature of human life in the starkest

possible terms. The legal system is increasingly called upon to make decisions about the rights borne by

microscopic entities which have the potential to become persons (or who, under some conceptions, are

actual persons), as well as the obligations owed by others to these entities (see especially Krauthammer,

2002). Whether human embryos are persons bearing rights, property to be exchanged or divided in

divorce settlements, or sources of human tissue with medical value pushes public debate to uncharted

areas, and may have fascinating interactions with religious beliefs and memberships (Evans, 2002c). Saad

(2002) has shown that opposition to human and animal cloning is relatively widespread among the

22
American public, and that support for or opposition to such bio-technology is related to church attendance

and respondent self-identification as Apro-life@ or Apro-choice.@ Thus, the correlates of attitudes toward

abortion and toward cloning are somewhat similar, but may be subject to change as bio-technology

becomes increasingly salient.

Second, the medical possibilities raised by stem-cell research have already created new

constituencies, whose members stand to benefit from a discourse which undermines the Asacredness@ of

human embryos. Luker (1984) teaches us that, to a large extent, the abortion debate is about the vested

interests held by women in different life circumstances. The terms of the debate have not changed because

the cast of participants has been quite stable. However, the potential for medical advances using stem

cells or fetal tissue bring new participants to the conversation. People suffering from Parkinson=s disease,

Alzheimer=s, or diabetes all stand to gain from permissive policies governing the use and investigation of

embryonic or fetal tissue.9

It is almost inconceivable that the addition of so many new participants, and new interests, to the

public debate on unborn life would not alter the discourse in very fundamental ways. Similarly,

opposition to bio-technical innovations has created the possibility of a Aleft-right@ coalition between

traditionalist conservative Protestants and environmentalists (McKibben, 2002). To the extent that such

combinations of interest become politically mobilized, it is easy to imagine how the dynamics of abortion

discourse and abortion politics might be subject to fundamental alteration.

Finally, the issue of stem-cell research and medicine may serve to decouple questions of human

life from those of sexual morality. It has been difficult to determine the extent to which pro-life activists

are motivated by a desire to preserve the lives of the unborn, as opposed to taking a public position in

favor of traditional sexual mores. The Amedicalization@ (to coin a hideous phrase) of questions of the

9
On a personal note, the first author=s niece (now nine years old) suffers from juvenile diabetes. Since Cori
was diagnosed with this malady, the entire family (previously quite apolitical) has engaged in intense political
activity, including the assumption of leadership positions in national organizations.

23
ontological status of unborn Alife@ may strip issues such as abortion of their status as Aeasy@ issues, and

bring questions of medicine and science to the forefront of public debate.10 While it is in principle

possible to distinguish the medical use of embryonic tissue from the practice of abortion, it is difficult to

see how such a distinction can be made with any degree of consistency or intellectual honesty. If

questions of human life are transformed from@easy@ to Ahard@ issues, it may be possible to predict the

depoliticization of the abortion debate. At a minimum, the negative judgments made by some pro-life

activists about women who seek abortions, and those made by pro-choice activists about the motives of

their ideological opposites, would likely be tempered by changes in the terms of public discourse.

Discussion: Questions for Future Research

This review of the extant empirical literature on public attitudes toward abortion suggests that,

indeed, there is more to learn about the subject. Throughout this essay, we have made suggestions for

possible new directions for empirical research. Here, we wish to identify four major themes which strike

us as particularly promising.

First, there seems to exist ample room for methodological innovation in the study of abortion

attitudes. To what extent, and under what circumstances, are reported abortion attitudes sensitive to

variation in framing? Does the overall stability of abortion attitudes lead to the expectation that such

attitudes will be relatively insensitive to variations in framing, or do the conflicting values at stake in the

abortion controversy offer strategic elites the opportunity to activate one of these values at the expense of

others? One wonders whether the varying and often incompatible symbols surrounding the abortion issue

can be emphasized in politically consequential ways. Again, this set of findings points to the possible

10
To illustrate, George W. Bush=s equivocal response to the question of stem cell research, and the general
lack of public or interest group reaction, suggests that meaningful frames for this set of issues have not yet been
developed.

24
desirability of studying the processes by which respondents arrive at abortion attitudes. Intensive

interviews with small samples of non-activists might enable researchers to locate the actual questions

which occasion cognitive dissonance among respondents, and to attain a more subjectively adequate

understanding of how these decisions are actually made.

Second, the aggregate stability of abortion attitudes, and the slight movement in a pro-life

direction in the years since Roe, provides the basis for some fascinating questions. Indeed, several

compositional changes in the American population in the post-Roe era would lead to an expectation of

substantial movement in a pro-choice direction. The replacement of older, more conservative cohorts with

younger, more pro-choice citizens, as well as the declining aggregate religiosity of African-Americans

(also the apparent result of generational replacement) would clearly occasion a prediction that, other

things being equal, aggregate opinion would shift in a more permissive direction. Such a prediction would

also be supported by changes in female participation in the paid labor force, as well as rapidly changing

attitudes toward gender roles and sexual activity outside of marriage. Nevertheless, such changes have not

occurred, and whatever limited aggregate movement has tended toward net change in the opposite (pro-

life) direction.

The apparent stability of abortion attitudes, then, is an interesting instance of Aa dog that didn=t

bark.@ In order to offset the pro-choice forces implicit in generational replacement and changing attitudes

about women=s roles and sex, it seems likely that strong period effects might well have occurred in the

1980s and again in the late 1990s. We suggest that such period effects may have involved changes in the

manner in which political and religious elites framed public discourse on abortion. For example, the

public discussion of so-called Apartial birth@ abortion may have diverted public attention away from

questions of Awho decides?@ (presumably, a pro-choice frame) to those involving the ontological status of

late term fetuses. Investigating the possibility of changing elite frames would involve careful analyses of

25
media coverage of the abortion issue across the years since (and immediately prior to) the Roe decision,11

and tracking changes in public opinion corresponding to variations in elite discourse.

A third, and possibly related, set of questions involves the source of partisan polarization around

the issue of abortion. Why has the issue become so important to electoral politics in recent years? Are

mass attitudes driving elite actions, or vice versa? If the latter, what drives strategic elites to adopt pro-

choice or pro-life positions? The research reviewed in this essay has raised at least three possibilities.

First, as Layman (2001) has suggested, strategic elites might use issues such as abortion to gain advantage

in the nominating processes of the political parties. Although virtually all research in public attitudes

toward abortion suggests the existence of an ambivalent, situationalist majority, office-seekers attempting

to enter the electoral arena may seek to mobilize new constituencies. Even though such strategies may

ultimately be self-defeating in general elections, nomination generally precedes the general election.

Second, the logic of legislative resdistricting may created constituencies in which extreme positions on

abortion (perhaps especially extreme pro-life positions) are electorally advantageous. To the extent that

electoral boundaries are subject to forces which are themselves partisan, the process of representation may

create incentives for candidates to take apparently unpopular positions on the abortion issue. Finally, and

most simply, it may be the case that certain elected officials or candidates for political office act out of

conviction, without regard to strategic electoral considerations. Political elites may choose to act as

Atrustees,@ who place a sense of Aprinciple@ above Apolitical considerations.@ Even if such actors are not

numerous, they may provide the means by which abortion continues to occupy a prominent place on the

political agenda.

Finally, it will be interesting to track changes in the sources and distribution of abortion attitudes,

and attitudes toward related issues, as questions of biotechnology (including variations on human cloning)

11
For an early exemplar of this genre of research, see Condit, 1989.

26
become increasingly prominent in public discourse. As different value choices come into play (e.g. the

intrinsic value of potential human life versus possible health benefits for living human), and as different

vested interests are created, it is difficult to imagine that abortion politics will not be transformed in some

very basic ways. While we will not hazard predictions about the nature or direction of such changes, we

would suggest that technical changes in human reproduction and the practice of medicine have the

potential to create moral and political realignments in abortion discourse.

The abortion issue thus poses questions about a variety of aspects of American moral, social, and

political life. Abortion is a salient issue to much of the American public, and thus seems destined to

occupy a prominent place on the agenda of U.S. politics for some time to come. Social scientists in a

variety of disciplines have provided insightful and fruitful analyses of abortion attitudes, and seem likely

to continue to do so. We hope to have facilitated future research in this area, and to have suggested some

promising avenues for future inquiry.

27
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