Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Sociology

First Advisor

Catherine Berheide

Abstract

Building on research conducted by sociologists on the predictors of abortion attitudes, through a secondary analysis of 2016 General Social Survey (GSS) data, with a total of 1571 respondents, I investigate the relationship between demographic identifiers, specifically age, sex, and religious fundamentalism, and approval rates of legal abortion. Using the age variable in GSS and drawing from Generational Cohort Theory, I isolate the generational cohorts baby boomers and millennials and hypothesize that baby boomers will approve of legal abortion in fewer instances than millennials. Moreover, I create Abortion Attitude Indexes from GSS questions on abortion, which enable me to separate the questions into two groups: hard and soft abortions. Drawing from Attribution Theory, I propose that there will be an overall higher approval of hard abortions than soft abortions across both generational cohorts. Ultimately, bivariate and multivariate analysis reported that age and sex are not statistically significant predictors of abortion attitudes. However, religious fundamentalism is moderately significant. Therefore, one hypothesis is supported that the more religiously fundamentalist an individual is, the fewer instances they are likely to approve of legal abortion.

DOI

10.17605/OSF.IO/D6G35

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