Oral
Mena-Melendez, L.; Bueno, X.; Jozkowski, K.N.; Crawford, B.L.; Turner, R.C.; Lo, W. (2024, July 28- July 31). Abortion Attitudes in the U.S. Across Language of Survey Administration: The Role of Pregnancy and Abortion Knowledge. World Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Annual Meeting, Seoul, South Korea
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional protection for the right to abortion up to fetal viability. State lawmakers are now able to enact legislation that can further restrict abortion. Given that lawmakers represent their constituents, it is important to understand how constituents’ knowledge and awareness of pregnancy, abortion, and abortion laws may be related to abortion attitudes. With a fast-growing Spanish-speaking population in the U.S., it is also imperative to understand differences across language of survey administration. In light of the new abortion legal landscape, it is important to examine if and how the Dobbs decision influenced people’s knowledge, awareness, and attitudes toward pregnancy and abortion. Specifically, we examined whether there are differences by language of survey administration (i.e., English v. Spanish) across the following research questions: (1) are people knowledgeable and aware of pregnancy, abortion, and abortion laws?; (2) how is this knowledge and awareness associated with attitudes toward legal abortion?; (3) are there differences before and after the Dobbs decision?
We collected two waves of longitudinal survey data, in English and Spanish, via Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel®. Wave 1 (N=1,014) was collected in June 2022 (before Dobbs) and Wave 2 (N=898) was collected between October-November 2022 (after Dobbs). We assessed three dimensions of knowledge: (1) pregnancy-related knowledge (e.g., when people believe most women discover they are pregnant, when people believe fetal heartbeat, viability, and pain occur), (2) abortion-related knowledge (e.g., when people believe most abortions occur, percentage of women who have abortions in the US, safety/danger of abortion), and (3) abortion law knowledge (e.g., knowledge of abortion legality at the state/federal level, earliest abortion is banned, knowledge of Dobbs v. Jackson, consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade). Using descriptive analyses and multinomial regression models, we explored the link between knowledge and sentiment toward legal abortion (e.g., support/opposition to abortion, changes in support/opposition post-Dobbs v. Jackson). We controlled for common sociodemographic predictors of abortion attitudes (e.g., education, religiosity, political affiliation) to assess changes in abortion attitudes before and after the decision.
Preliminary results indicate that people’s: (1) knowledge of “when heartbeat occurs” predicts the likelihood of being more opposed to abortion after Dobbs; (2) knowledge of “the safety of abortion during the first trimester” predicts the likelihood of not being more opposed to abortion after Dobbs; (3) knowledge of abortion law does not predict changes in abortion attitudes after Dobbs. Assessing whether U.S. adults are knowledgeable and aware of reproductive health issues and how this may relate to their attitudes and sentiment toward legal abortion is important as public opinion may influence state-level abortion legislation through upcoming ballot initiatives and elections. Additionally, understanding how people’s knowledge and abortion attitudes may differ by language of survey administration contributes to multi-language and cross-cultural public opinion research.