title: Does state-level context matter for individuals' knowledge about abortion, legality and health? Challenging the 'red states v. blue states' hypothesis.
abstract: Recently, the hypothesis that state-level political context influences individuals' cultural values--the 'red states v. blue states' hypothesis--has been invoked to explain the hyper-polarisation of politics in the USA. To test this hypothesis, we examined individuals' knowledge about abortion in relation to the political context of their current state of residence. Drawing from an internet-survey of 586 reproductive-age individuals in the USA, we assessed two types of abortion knowledge: health-related and legality. We found that state-level conservatism does not modify the existing relationships between individual predictors and each of the two types of abortion knowledge. Hence, our findings do not support the 'red states' versus 'blue states' hypothesis. Additionally, we find that knowledge about abortion's health effects in the USA is low: 7% of our sample thought abortion before 12 weeks gestation was illegal.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Sociology , University of Cincinnati , Cincinnati , USA.
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bessett
authors.forename: Caitlin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gerdts
authors.forename: Lisa L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Littman
authors.forename: Megan L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Kavanaugh
authors.forename: Alison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Norris
mesh_terms: D000024:Abortion, Illegal; D000028:Abortion, Induced / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D000029:Abortion, Legal; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011057:Politics; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: USA; abortion; abortion stigma; culture; politics