UF Study: Even Abortion Proponents And Opponents Ambivalent About It

July 23, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Protests, placards and polarization may not be the complete picture of how the public views abortion, say University of Florida researchers who found that many people waffle on the subject.

Between one-quarter and one-third of Florida voters surveyed said they simultaneously juggled positive and negative attitudes about when a woman should be allowed to have a legal abortion, said Stephen Craig, a UF political scientist who led the study.

“Even voters who identified themselves as being pro-life were sometimes ambivalent about abortion in certain circumstances, while self-identified pro-choicers were ambivalent in other circumstances,” said Craig, whose research is published in the June issue of the journal Political Psychology.

The lesson for politicians and policy makers is they can’t gauge public opinion about abortion solely from the pro and con questions in traditional surveys. They must dig deeper to capture the full complexity of attitudes people have on the issue, he said.

Craig, UF political science professor Michael Martinez and Jim Kane, of the Florida Voter survey organization, surveyed 608 registered Florida voters by telephone in 1998 and 708 in 1999.

They asked respondents to rate on a scale of one to four how positively and then how negatively they felt about abortion under seven circumstances. These were if: a woman wants an abortion for any reason; there is a strong chance of a serious birth defect; a woman is married and wants no more children; a pregnancy seriously endangers a woman’s health; a family has a very low income and cannot afford more children; a pregnancy is the result of rape; and the woman is unmarried and does not want to marry the man.

The survey asked if respondents identified themselves as pro-choice or pro-life. If someone said they were neither, or if they had no opinion, they were classified accordingly, he said.

“A fair number of people expressed both positive and negative feelings toward some of these conditions,” Craig said. “This is true not only among those who are usually classified as moderates on abortion, but also among some of those who are closer to one of the extremes.”

The circumstance of a poor family that cannot afford more children generated the largest number of ambivalent responses in the 1998 survey (33.7 percent of the sample), whereas a pregnancy caused by rape produced the fewest (21.4 percent), he said.

People with apparent black-and-white views also revealed shades of gray in the survey. Those who described themselves as pro-life were much more ambivalent about abortion in cases of rape or when a pregnancy presented a serious risk to a woman’s health. Those who considered themselves pro-choice were much more ambivalent about abortion if a woman is married and wants no more children or a women wants an abortion for any reason, he said.

“A big part of what we think causes people to be ambivalent is that some issues invoke conflicting values,” Craig said.

The survey included a series of agree or disagree questions that tapped two types of values relevant to abortion: moral traditionalism and marriage roles.

Moral traditionalism involves support for traditional values, and an intolerance of behavior and lifestyle choices that are viewed as morally objectionable. (For example, “this country would have many fewer problems if there were more emphasis on traditional family ties” and “the newer lifestyles are contributing to the breakdown of our society.”)

The marriage role questions tap beliefs about whether men and women should have the same kinds of opportunities to pursue careers outside the home, or whether it is more appropriate for men to be the breadwinners while women give top priority to family life, he said. (For example, “it is more important for a wife to help her husband’s career than to have one herself” and “all in all, family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job.”)

The study found ambivalence to be higher among those who were traditionalist on moral questions yet egalitarian with regard to a wife’s role.

Over the years, Craig said he and his co-researchers have come to realize that people feel ambivalent about many political issues. Traditionally, public opinion surveys don’t ask the kinds of questions that allow more subtle attitudes to be revealed, he said.

Craig said he hopes politicians who live and die by the polls won’t be slaves to them. “We found that sometimes what people think is not as evident as it appears to be,” he said.