Jozkowski, K.N., Turner, R.C., *Weese, J.D., Crawford, B.L., W.L. (2021, November 18 - November 21). Abortion vs sexual assault: People's perceptions of Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) Annual Meeting, Virtual.
Background: Public reaction to Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) initially centered around abortion. However, approximately two months after the nomination, sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh were made public. Both abortion and sexual assault are salient social issues in the United States and seem to provoke strong attitudes from some segments of the public. We examined the extent that people's perceptions of Kavanaugh's stance on abortion and people's attitudes toward whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault were associated with perceptions of Kavanaugh as a good Supreme Court justice.
Method: Data were collected from a national sample of English- and Spanish-speaking participants (N = 2,883) in the United States using quota-based sampling to increase demographic diversity. Participants were asked questions pertaining to socio-demographics, their attitudes toward whether Kavanaugh will support an anti-abortion agenda/restrict abortion, perceptions of whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault, and perceptions of Kavanaugh as a good Supreme Court justice. We used a hierarchical regression procedure to compare the proportion of variance predicted by the independent variables regarding whether Kavanaugh will make a good Supreme Court justice. We also examined abortion identity (e.g., identifying as pro-life, pro-choice), as a moderator for people's perceptions regarding whether Kavanaugh will support an anti-abortion agenda/restrict abortion.
Results: People's perceptions of whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault was a stronger predictor of their attitudes toward Kavanaugh's quality as a Supreme Court justice [F(1,2855) = 1736.54, p < .001] than people's perceptions of him regarding abortion, after controlling for socio-demographics and participants' abortion identity. The interaction of abortion identity as a moderator of whether Kavanaugh will support an anti-abortion agenda/restrict abortion was statistically significant (F(3, 2856) = 56.50, p < .001), but only accounted for 3.8% of the variance in people's perceptions of whether Kavanaugh will make a good Supreme Court justice.
Conclusions: That sexual assault was a stronger predictor could suggest the importance of sexual assault regarding opinions of Supreme Court justices or potential over inflation of abortion as a salient issue. People's perceptions regarding Kavanaugh may also be explained by underlying sexist beliefs, endorsement of traditional gender norms, and rape myth acceptance. Future SCOTUS nominees' conduct regarding sexual assault may become an issue of debate, albeit perhaps not influencing actual confirmation as two justices who have been accused were still confirmed. Researchers should investigate the saliency of sexual and reproductive health issues in relation to Supreme Court nominees.