Ambivalence and (Mis)Information in Americans’ Abortion Attitudes

• In Event: Media Effects on Public Opinion

Abstract

The abortion debate in American politics is often framed in dichotomous terms – as a conflict between pro-life Republicans and pro-choice Democrats. These kinds of labels mask considerable heterogeneity in public opinion. Most Americans don’t think of abortion rights in absolute terms. Instead, they are better characterized as “ambivalent situationists” who support abortion rights in some, but not all circumstances (Norrander and Wilcox 2023). Shoehorning these more nuanced positions on abortion into binary terms in a two-party system tends to flatten out our understanding of opinion in this area. But this nuance has taken on new significance following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which returned abortion policy to the states, requiring state officials to adjudicate among the various circumstances in which their constituents consider it appropriate for women to seek an abortion. This change has also altered the information environment around abortion, with increasing media coverage making the issue more salient (Cassese, Ondercin and Randall, forthcoming) but also more complex, as misinformation proliferates (e.g., CBS News 2023; Pagoto, Palmer and Horwitz-Willis 2023). With abortion politics in flux to this extent, there is a critical need to better understand public opinion about abortion.

In this paper, we seek to better understand how Americans navigate an increasingly complex information environment around abortion. We report the results of an experiment administered as part of the 2023 Congressional Election Study (CES). The experiment used a classification task to manipulate exposure to absolute versus situationist perspectives on abortion, positioning us to better understand how people choose to label their beliefs and the beliefs of others. This approach also allowed us to evaluate how exposure to these two types of perspectives on abortion shapes how people articulate their own issue positions, specifically whether exposure to situationist perspectives moderated their own views, particularly on newer aspects of the abortion debate, such as criminalization.

Our analysis also includes an observational component related to misinformation. We first establish a baseline for belief in misinformation related to abortion and compare levels of abortion-related misinformation to misinformation in other areas (i.e., COVID and election integrity. Beyond this, we evaluate the correlation between these beliefs and abortion attitudes, testing the expectation that misinformation is linked to absolutist rather than situational preferences when it comes to abortion policy. Understanding this link situates us to better envision the role abortion will likely play in the continued polarization of the American electorate.


Works Cited

Cassese, Erin, Heather Ondercin, and Jordan Randall. Forthcoming. Abortion Attitudes and Polarization in the American Electorate. Cambridge University Press.

CBS. 2023. “Misinformation is Flowing Ahead of Ohio Abortion Vote. Some is Coming from a Legislative Website.” CBS News (October 23) https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/ news/misinformation-is-flowing-ahead-of-ohio-abortion-vote-some-is-coming-from-a-legislative-website-3/

Norrander, Barbara and Clyde Wilcox. 2023. “Trends in Abortion Attitudes: From Roe to Dobbs.” Public Opinion Quarterly 87(2): 427-458.

Pagoto, Sherry L., Lindsay Palmer, and Nate Horwitz-Willis. 2023. “The Next Infodemic: Abortion Misinformation.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 25: 1-6.

Authors

• Erin Cassese, University of Delaware

• Phil Jones, University of Delaware

• Joanne Miller, University of Delaware

• Kassra Oskooii, University of Delaware

• Dannagal G. Young, University of Delaware