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Existing research within the Terror Management Theory (Greenberg et al., 1986) literature provides support for the idea that both sides of an issue (e.g., abortion regulation/accessibility) may be threatening or affirming to the ideologies of different people, which may have inherent existential implications. Specifically, abortion regulation may make existential concerns more salient for women, people with liberal political beliefs, and those who are not religious; however, and conversely, those who are men, who have more conservative political beliefs, and who are religious may instead be existentially threatened by abortion accessibility. Specific Aim: This study examines whether abortion attitudes and their relationship to ideological variables are associated with death-thought accessibility and existential concerns compared to a different but similar political issue (capital punishment). Specifically, we aim to explore the impact of ideological variables on abortion attitudes (compared to capital punishment attitudes), and whether a combination of factors will increase death thought accessibility (DTA) and existential concerns among those who are women and may be more liberal and less religious, while those who are not women, less liberal, and more religious to feel less existentially threatened. A variety of moderators will be explored.

Theorizing from Courtney & Goldenberg (2021) implicates an adaptive function of viewing parts of the body as detached objects in the context of difficult health-related diagnoses and treatment options. The current epistemic qualitative study investigates the language used by women with breast cancer about their breasts and breast cancer treatment options. We will explore the expectation that, generally, wording with objectified undertones (e.g., "thing", "detached") will materialize in essay-style responses.