Causes and Consequences of Public Attitudes Toward Abortion: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

This article provides a critical review of empirical research on attitudes toward abortion among mass publics in the United States, with a view toward suggesting promising avenues for future research. We identify three such themes: Accounting for pro-life movement among mass attitudes in recent years, when the composition of the U.S. population would seem to trend in a pro-choice direction; explaining the sources of party polarization of the abortion issue; and anticipating changes in abortion attitudes which might result from public debate over human cloning.