Contraceptive Context, Conservatism, Sexual Liberalism, and Gender-Role Attitudes as Predictors of Abortion Attitudes

Abstract

Abortion attitudes are influenced by various factors including the context surrounding an abortion and perceivers’ characteristics. This study’s purpose was to determine if past contraceptive use that led to an unexpected pregnancy was a contextual variable that had an impact on abortion attitudes. We investigated conservatism, sexual liberalism, and gender-role attitudes as predictors of abortion attitudes. Support for abortion was neutral-to-slightly favorable, and no gender differences in abortion attitudes were found. There were no differences in abortion attitudes as a function of contraceptive context. Religiosity and erotophobia-erotophilia together were found to be strong, consistent predictors of abortion attitudes.

Keywords:

• Abortion
• attitudes
• religiosity
• erotophobia-erotophilia
• sexism
• gender roles

Acknowledgments

Parts of this article were presented at the Annual Guelph Sexual Conference, Guelph, Ontario (June 2015). The authors thank Marissa Traversa, Derek Straatsma, and Catherine Briggs for their work on this project.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work was supported by under Jerome’s University faculty research grants SJU-IIRG430 and SJU-FRG43015.