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  • Title: Blacks, whites, and attitudes towards abortion.
    Author: Combs MW, Welch S.
    Journal: Public Opin Q; 1982; 46(4):510-20. PubMed ID: 11655604.
    Abstract:
    Patterns of black and white support for abortion from 1972-80 in the US were examined in order to investigate the significance of race in attitudes toward abortion, analyze the extent to which other factors such as religious practice (religiosity) and demographic characteristics affect these racial differences; and determine what changes, if any, occurred in the salience of race on abortion attitudes during this 9-year period. The General Social Survey (GSS) conducted from 1972-80 were used. These surveys, done annually with the exception of 1979, use national samples of approximately 1500 respondents each year. A modified probability sampling design was used in 1972 through 1974, full probability sampling in 1977-80, and a combination of the 2 in 1975 and 1976. 6 standard questions tapping abortion attitudes were asked in each of these surveys. From these 6 items an additive scale was created, with values ranging from 0, when abortion was opposed in every case, to 6, where approval was given for abortion in each case. This scale was used as a dependent variable in the analyses. There was a great deal of public stability in public attitudes toward abortion. This was particularly the case for the health, rape, and birth defect items, where little change was evident in either race, except for increased black support for abortion when the mother's health is threatened. For the other items, support by blacks appears to have increased during this time, while support by whites dropped slightly. The amount of convergence was not statistically significant. Blacks remained significantly less likely to favor abortion in all 6 instances, they were, by 1978-80, almost equally unlikely to oppose abortion in all cases (9% for whites, 12% for blacks). The mean number of abortion items supported by blacks increased from 3.1 in 1972-74 to 3.3 in 1978-80; white support dropped from 4.0 to 3.9 in 1978-80 (though returning to 4.0 in 1980). Much of the difference in support of abortion, though not all, was due to the different demographic characteristics of blacks and whites, and the greater degree of religiosity of blacks. Most of the factors hypothesized to affect black attitudes appeared to do so: education; income; urban and northern residence; and lesser religiosity where each related to greater support for abortion. There was no direct evidence to support or refute the legitimacy of the "abortion as black genocide" argument, but the fact that opposition to abortion comes from the seemingly more traditional segment of the black community seems to provide some indirect evidence that the argument does not account for the greater black opposition to abortion.
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