College Students' Attitudes Toward Abortion: The Role of Knowledge and Demographic Variables¹

Abstract

The present study sought to determine the role that knowledge of abortion information and various demographic variables play in discriminating between those who approve and those who disapprove of abortion. Four hundred and fifty‐four college students completed the Abortion Knowledge Test, constructed by the researchers, as well as an abortion attitudes questionnaire which asked subjects to indicate their degree of approval or disapproval of abortion in the case of 7 different scenarios. Attitudes toward abortion were significantly predicted by knowledge of abortion‐related information above and beyond the significant influence of degree of religiosity, religion, and age. No significant gender differences were found. Respondents who indicated approval of abortion scored significantly higher on the Abortion Knowledge Test and tended to be older, less religious, and non‐Catholic compared to those who disapproved of abortion.

Adolescent Men's Attitudes in Relation to Pregnancy and Pregnancy Outcomes: A Systematic Review of the Literature From 1980–2009

“…With respect to the relationship between religiosity and pregnancy outcomes, a number of studies on adolescents in the United States and Europe have noted a negative association between religiosity and support for abortion [18,25,26,29,[46][47][48]56,57]. This is consistent with evidence in the adult population [46].…”

“…For example, over two cycles (1988 and 1995) of the U.S.-based NSAM survey, a majority of the young men agreed with the statement that ''a woman should not have an abortion if her male sex partner objected'' (61% in 1988) [25,29]. The endorsement of a man's right to be involved in abortion decision-making has been further explored in many studies on college men's views in individual universities in the United States [37,40,45,46,57]. Overall, the results show male and female endorsements for greater involvement by men [40,37,45,52,57].…”

“…However, another large-scale U.S. survey [29] found that traditional masculinity defined in terms of Male Role Norms Inventory [79] and an abbreviated version of Brannon's Masculinity Scale [80] was not significantly related to adolescent males' belief that a woman should refrain from terminating her pregnancy when her partner objected. Finally, an analysis by gender (male versus female) on adolescents' more general approval of abortion is not available in every study but, where applicable, the views of adolescent men and women appear to be more similar than dissimilar [18,26,39,46,47,48,81; See reference 53 as an exception].…”

Social Judgment of Abortion: A Black-Sheep Effect in a Catholic Sheepfold

“…Researchers have shown that the circumstances of the choice strongly modulate the judgment of abortion. Thus, people may perceive an abortion performed without situational pressure more negatively than they perceive an abortion performed with situational pressure (Esposito & Basow, 1995;Jelen & Wilcox, 1997;Kelley et al, 1993). Situational pressures clearly operate for persons as extenuating circumstances (see Weiner, 1995).…”

Exploring South African adolescents’ knowledge of abortion legislation and attitudes to abortion: Sexual status and gender differences

“…The self-administered questionnaire contained three sections: (i) biographical information, which covered age, gender and sexual status (have had sex/have not had sex); (ii) a measure of abortion attitudes using a 7-point response format ranging from 'strongly disapprove' (1) to 'strongly approve' (7); [6] (iii) a set of 13 questions based on the Termination of Pregnancy Act No. 92 of 1996, assessing knowledge of various components of the SA abortion legislation as devised by D Ramiyad.…”