Abortion opinion in emerging democracies: Latin America and Central Europe

Abstract

We compare the attitudes of mass publics toward abortion in three Latin American countries (Mexico, Uruguay, and El Salvador) and two countries in Central Europe (the Czech Republic and Poland). We find that, at the level of the mass public, attitudes toward abortion are significantly related to attitudes toward gender roles in Mexico, Uruguay, and the Czech Republic, but not in El Salvador and Poland. Conversely, attitudes toward euthanasia and homosexuality are significantly related to abortion attitudes in all five countries.

Keywords:

• abortion
• attitudes
• European politics
• feminism
• Latin American politics

Notes

1. As it happens, the marginal distributions of abortion attitudes in all five countries under consideration are remarkably stable, with the important exception of Uruguay, in which belief in the justifiability of abortion increased significantly between 1997 and 2005. In 2008, Uruguay passed a relatively lenient abortion law after the observed change in public opinion. Moreover, Rossi and Triuno (2012) have shown that Latin American nations in which there is relatively high support for abortion rights also have relatively liberal abortion policies, with Uruguay being the most permissive in both public opinion and abortion policy.

2. Ideally, of course, we would be able to estimate the models over time. However, different iterations of the World Values Survey contain different nations and do not always maintain continuity among variables. We are only able to estimate the multivariate models at different time points for Mexico, and the results are quite consistent between Waves 3 and 5 for that nation. In particular, the WVS only contains data for El Salvador at one time point, and we hope to maximize comparisons with this most interesting case. With the important exception of Uruguay, in which public attitudes toward abortion have become more liberal, the marginal distributions for the abortion item are quite stable over time.

3. While we acknowledge that this measure is controversial, we would defend its inclusion in the model on the basis of face validity and empirical robustness. In other work (Jelen 2013), the effects of this variable have been shown to be remarkably consistent across diverse nations and across religious traditions, including Protestantism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, and among respondents professing no religious preference. Thus, the relationship between the euthanasia item and attitudes toward abortion seems quite general, and does not represent a surrogate for adherence to Catholic social doctrine or religious teaching.

4. In all five countries, the relationship between these two items was statistically significant, but quite weak. The exclusion of either item in the multivariate models estimated below does not affect any of the results reported here.

5. The bivariate relationships between these items (Pearson's r) are .283 for Uruguay, .278 for Mexico, .064 for El Salvador, .058 for Poland, and .056 for the Czech Republic.

6. When a measure of subjective religiosity (importance of God in one's life) is substituted for church attendance, the results are virtually identical to those presented here.

7. This index had a reliability (Cronbach's alpha) of .606 in El Salvador, .660 in Mexico, .586 in Uruguay, .793 in Poland, and .846 in the Czech Republic.

8. Full models can be found in the appendix.

9. In the Mexican model, the coefficient associated with the “housewife” variable is significant at .051, and the coefficient associated with the “working mom” item is significant at .075.

10. It is perhaps noteworthy that the effects of “confidence in churches” is significant in Mexico, Uruguay, and Poland, but not in the Czech Republic or El Salvador. This may reflect a history of anti-clericalism in the formerly listed nations (see Byrnes 2002; Ramet 2006; Tamadonfar and Jelen 2014).