Abortion vs. Sexual Assault: People’s Perceptions of Kavanaugh’s Nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States

ABSTRACT

Public reaction to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States initially centered around abortion. However, approximately two months after the nomination, sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh were made 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. Data were collected from English- and Spanish-speaking participants (N = 2,883) in the United States via Qualtrics’ panel. Using an exploratory hierarchical regression approach, we found that 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 demographic characteristics and participants’ abortion identity (e.g., identifying as pro-life, pro-choice). 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. Researchers should investigate the saliency of sexual and reproductive health issues in relation to Supreme Court nominees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when they were students at Yale University and Georgetown Preparatory School, respectively. However, neither Ramirez nor Swetnick were permitted to testify as part of Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings (NY Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-accusers-women.html).

² Both opponents and supporters of abortion rights point to Kavanaugh’s dissent statement in Garza v. Hargan (2017), in which he affirmed the government’s “interest[s] in favoring fetal life,” as evidence of his anti-abortion perspective. His constructionist approach to the law may also indicate opposition to the decision in Roe v. Wade and a general anti-abortion perspective.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by an anonymous foundation. The funder did not have any involvement in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of the data, writing the report, and the decision to submit the article for publication.