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Objective: National public opinion polls and surveys use different questions from one another to assess people's abortion attitudes. We included commonly asked abortion attitude items on a single survey to examine people's attitudes toward abortion legality and abortion restriction to create profiles of people which we then compared across state groups. Concurrently assessing attitudes toward both abortion legality and restrictions is important given the changing abortion legislative climate in the United States. Method: We administered an online survey to U.S. adults (n = 919) via Ipsos probability panel and used latent class analysis to identify classes of participants. Then, we used multinominal logistic regression to make state‐level comparisons. Results: We identified three classes: (1) 35.0 percent—abortion should be illegal/more restricted, (2) 35.1 percent—abortion should be legal/laws should reflect the status quo, and (3) 29.9 percent—abortion should be legal/more available. Trigger‐law states comprise the largest proportion of people who think abortion should be illegal/more restricted, whereas states without trigger laws comprise similar proportions of people from all three classes. Conclusion: Concurrently measuring whether people believe abortion should be legal and the extent it should be restricted can provide a more comprehensive understanding of people's attitudes and demonstrates important state‐level nuances in attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Guided by the Reasoned Action Approach, we used a salient belief elicitation (SBE) to elicit participant‐generated beliefs regarding abortion. SBE is a formative research technique used to elicit people's control (i.e., perceived facilitators and barriers associated with a behavior), behavioral (i.e., perceived positive and negative consequences of doing a behavior), and normative (i.e., influence of important people/peers regarding a behavior) beliefs regarding a particular behavior (i.e., abortion). Methods: We administered our SBE to English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults (N = 608) from NORC's AmeriSpeak® panel. We used inductive content and thematic analyses to assess open‐ended questions. Results: We found that participants' control and behavioral beliefs referenced circumstances used to assess abortion attitudes in polling item (e.g., rape) and reasons people seek abortion (e.g., financial reasons) as well as potential negative emotions (e.g., shame) and positive consequences (e.g., autonomy) associated with abortion. Participants indicated pregnant people's partners and people seeking abortion as salient referents. Conclusion: Participants mentioned several contexts reflected in common measures used to assess abortion attitudes by national polls and surveys. However, we also found other relevant circumstances not reflected in common measures and a range of salient referents. We recommend abortion attitudes measures account for these participant‐driven salient beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how Latinx migrant generation and the circumstances of abortion may be linked to attitudes toward abortion legality among a sample of U.S.‐Latinx adults. Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Multiple‐Indicators Multiple‐Causes modeling, we found that abortion attitudes across different migrant generations are sensitive to circumstances motivating the abortion. We did not find significant differences across migrant generations for generally more endorsed circumstances, such as when the woman's health is at risk or when the pregnancy occurs as a result of rape. However, second and third generations were more inclined to endorse legal abortion than first‐generation for generally less endorsed circumstances, such as low income, being unpartnered, not wanting (more) children, or contraception failure. The social context in which one is raised (i.e., the United States for migrants' descendants or the country of birth for the first‐generation migrants) plays a role in shaping abortion attitudes regarding the less endorsed social‐related circumstances but not for more endorsed circumstances. Further research should consider the inner heterogeneity of the Latinx population as well as the multiple contexts of abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Abortion is common in the United States (US), although access is becoming more difficult for some. In addition to restrictive policies that ban most abortion, limit the number of providers and increase costs, barriers to access also include less supportive cultural climates and stigma related to abortion. Prior to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision of the United States Supreme Court, research suggested that people generally believed it was easy to access abortion, but this research did not examine the underlying factors that drive these perceptions. Methods: In 2019, using data from closed and open‐ended survey questions, we examined differences in people's assessment of abortion access within the state they reside and factors that influence those perceptions. We recruited English‐ and Spanish‐speaking US adults (N = 2599) from Qualtrics' national panel using quota‐based sampling to participate in a web‐based survey. We used multinomial logistic regression to examine predictors of access perceptions across demographic characteristics and thematic analysis to analyze open‐ended responses. Results: Fifty‐three percent of participants believed abortion was easy to access in their state. Spanish speakers and participants from legislatively "hostile" states were more likely to perceive access as difficult. Legality‐related knowledge and pro‐life identity were associated with perceiving abortion access as easy. Conclusions: Prior to Dobbs, participants' interpretation of the ease or difficulty of accessing abortion were subjective. Misconceptions about state abortion laws and the prevalence of providers were common, suggesting a need for more education about abortion laws, policies, and access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We examine how a sample of English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults define the terms pro‐life/pro‐vida and pro‐choice/pro‐elección and explore whether definitions differ by language and/or ethnicity. Methods: We asked a sample of 1504 English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults to define the terms pro‐choice/pro‐elección and pro‐life/pro‐vida in an open‐ended format. We used content and thematic analysis to examine congruence and discordance between how English and Spanish speakers, as well as Latinx and non‐Latinx participants, understand these terms. Results: The terms largely appeared to hold common and canonical understandings, but we identified important differences across language and cultural/ethnic groups. For example, Latinx participants opted out of defining the terms more often than non‐Latinx participants, and respondents to the Spanish survey had higher rates of uncertainty about and misunderstanding of the terms than respondents to the English version. Conclusions: Our findings suggest language‐related variability in understandings of the terms pro‐choice/pro‐elección and pro‐life/pro‐vida that could have implications for multilingual and cross‐cultural polling on abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]