Examining Social Work Students Knowledge of and Attitudes About Abortion and Curriculum Coverage in Social Work Education

Despite social work's stated commitment to abortion rights, research on this topic is not prolific within the discipline (Begun et al., 2016). If we are to live up to our ethical principles, this should be changed. The authors posit that increasing students’ exposure to and understanding of abortion is necessary in the preparation of competent social work practitioners. Using Begun et al.’s (2016) Social Workers’ Abortion Attitudes, Knowledge, and Training questionnaire, the authors expanded the survey by creating additional questions about social work curriculum coverage and training experiences, as well as further content on abortion. Findings indicate that most social work students believe abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances, and also that abortion laws should be less restrictive in the United States. Reported religion and political affiliation had significant effects on several of the abortion attitude statements. Only 7.2% of respondents indicated that abortion is regularly discussed in social work classrooms, and only 2.7% of respondents report they have received training on the topic of abortion in their field placement. The results suggest that social work curriculum coverage on reproductive justice is tenuous and inconsistent at best, leaving students to grapple without the necessary professional foundation.

Updating A Time-Series of Survey Questions: The Case of Abortion Attitudes in the General Social Survey

Long-running surveys need a systematic way to reflect social change and to keep items relevant to respondents, especially when they ask about controversial subjects, or they threaten the items' validity. We propose a protocol for updating measures that preserves content and construct validity. First, substantive experts articulate the current and anticipated future terms of debate. Then survey experts use this substantive input and their knowledge of existing measures to develop and pilot a large battery of new items. Third, researchers analyze the pilot data to select items for the survey of record. Finally, the items appear on the survey-of-record, available to the whole user community. Surveys-of-record have procedures for changing content that determine if the new items appear just once or become part of the core. We provide the example of developing new abortion attitude measures in the General Social Survey. Current questions ask whether abortion should be legal under varying circumstances. The new abortion items ask about morality, access, state policy, and interpersonal dynamics. They improve content and construct validity and add new insights into Americans' abortion attitudes.

Personalizing Moral Reframing in Interpersonal Conversation: A Field Experiment

Organizations in the contemporary United States face substantial challenges with persuading citizens and moving them to take action. Prior research finds that citizens’ views can be changed and strengthened using frames consistent with their moral values. However, it can be difficult for organizations to tailor their appeals to individuals’ moral values given the difficulty in predicting which moral values matter to which citizens. We present a pre-registered field experiment in which canvassers for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (n = 52) sought to overcome this challenge by listening for individual voters’ (n = 1, 034) moral values and then tailoring their appeals to those moral values. In contrast to an earlier study finding no impact of long-form canvassing on abortion attitudes, we find these conversations had large effects on interest in taking action and some evidence of changes in policy attitudes. This experiment provides a template for practitioners and researchers to build on.

Access experiences and attitudes toward abortion among youth experiencing homelessness in the United States: A systematic review

Objectives We sought to review the literature on the access experiences and attitudes toward abortion among youth experiencing homelessness in the United States. Methods We conducted a systematic review of peer‐reviewed literature published from 2001 to 2019. We included qualitative studies involving US participants that focused on access experiences, views, or accounts of unintended pregnancy and/or abortion among youth experiencing homelessness. We excluded studies published before 2001 as that was the year mifepristone medication abortion was made available in the US and we aimed to investigate experiences of access to both medical and surgical abortion options. Results Our thematic analysis of the data resulted in five key themes that characterize the abortion attitudes and access experiences of youth experiencing homelessness: (1) engaging in survival sex and forced sex, (2) balancing relationships and autonomy, (3) availability does not equal access, (4) attempting self-induced abortions using harmful methods, and (5) feeling resilient despite traumatic unplanned pregnancy experiences. Conclusions Youth experiencing homelessness experience barriers to abortion access across the US, including in states with a supportive policy context and publicly funded abortion services. In the absence of accessible services, youth may consider harmful methods of self-induced abortion. Improved services should be designed to offer low-barrier abortion care with the qualities that youth identified as important to them, including privacy and autonomy.

You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling: How Gender Shapes Affective Polarization

We examine variation in levels of affective polarization for men and women. Using the 1980 to 2016 American National Election Studies, we find that women are more affectively polarized than men. The effect of sex partially works indirectly through political identities and issue positions. Moreover, sex acts as a moderator, with political identities and issues positions have different effects on men’s and women’s level of affective polarization. Three factors create women’s higher levels of affective polarization: women are more likely to be partisans, strength in abortion attitudes, and partisanship has a more substantial influence on women’s attitudes compared to men’s attitudes. Breaking the analysis apart into three time periods: (1) gender gap emergence 1980 to 1988, (2) elite polarization 1990 to 1998, and (3) hyper-partisanship 2000 to 2016 reinforces that partisan strength is central to understanding affective polarization. Additionally, during the 1990s when elite polarization is intensifying the strength of issue attitudes and ideology.

Efficacy, Distancing, and Reconciling: Religion and Race in Americans’ Abortion Attitudes

Religion and race together inform Americans’ abortion attitudes, but precisely how remains contradictory and unclear. Presumptions of shared religious or secular “worldviews” dividing abortion opinion mask variation among racially diverse adherents within the same tradition. Theoretical gaps compel a deeper, qualitative exploration of underlying processes. This article uses close analysis of a religiously and racially diverse, ideal–typical subset of in-depth interviews from the National Abortion Attitudes Study to identify three processes operating at the intersection of religion and race in abortion attitudes: efficacy, distancing, and reconciling. While religion’s effect on abortion opinion remains paramount, accounting for social location illuminates meaningful variation. Findings offer an important corrective to overly-simplified narratives summarizing how religion matters to abortion opinion, accounting more fully for complex religion and religion as raced.

Respecting Life or Respecting Women? Testing Ideologically Competing Explanations of Abortion Attitudes.

Abortion as a problem can be construed from different perspectives. Psychological research on abortion attitudes has focused on testing hypotheses consistent with liberal narratives, according to which opposing abortion is explained by religiosity and lack of support for gender egalitarian views. We propose to analyze the issue from an ideologically diverse perspective, introducing hypotheses consistent with the conservative narratives about abortion, according to which opposition to abortion is explained by respect for human life and moral concerns about sexuality. Using data from multiple samples, including nationally representative surveys over 20 years, we found that variables identified by both the liberal (e.g., religiosity and ambivalent sexism) and conservative (e.g., respect for life and sexual morality) narratives significantly predicted abortion attitudes. Overall, predictors associated with conservative narratives show the strongest association with abortion attitudes. We discuss the value of generating hypotheses from ideologically opposing views to increase our understanding of psychological phenomena.

4318 A Qualitative Study of Men’s Abortion Attitudes in Restrictive States

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Despite its critical importance in reproductive health, access to abortion care continues to be impeded by laws grounded in religious, political, or other ideologies. We will characterize abortion attitudes among US men who live in areas with restrictive abortion laws using qualitative methods. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We will use a semi-structured interview guide to elicit men’s attitudes about abortion, characterized within moral, legal, religious, political, and other domains. Inclusion criteria include English-speaking cisgender men, ages 18 to 65 who live in states with the most restrictive abortion laws as defined by the Guttmacher Institute. We will recruit participants through Facebook ads and interviews will continue until theoretic sufficiency. Using an inductive thematic analysis approach, transcripts will be coded for emergent themes by two researchers independently in QRS NVivo 12.0, with concurrent refinement of themes as interviews are completed. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We will elucidate emergent themes regarding men’s abortion attitudes which could include how men think of abortion as a medical, moral, or personal reality, why they do or do not support abortion provision, among many other possibilities. We anticipate that researchers can use the data obtained from this study to begin to build a conceptual framework of abortion attitudes among US men who lives in restrictive states. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: This study will fill an important gap in the literature by qualitatively characterizing abortion attitudes among a population that has political influence on abortion access. Results can inform policy and advocacy campaigns aimed at shifting public abortion attitudes towards increased acceptance.