Changing abortion attitudes around the world: a within-between analysis of country-level factors

Abstract

There has been a renewed research interest in abortion attitudes in recent years, with a focus on country-level influences in a cross-country perspective. This research typically points to four factors at the country level that should, for different theoretical reasons, influence abortion attitudes: religiosity, gender (in)equality, political freedom, and economic prosperity. We build on this cross-sectional research by analyzing these factors longitudinally using random effects within-between models with the Integrated Values Survey in 88 countries across 32 years between 1990 and 2022. Our results show that political freedom is related to abortion attitudes, but this association exists only cross-sectionally, not longitudinally. Only changes in religiosity and GDP over time were associated with abortion attitudes, and that change in religiosity is the largest macro-level predictor included in our analysis. These results nuance previous literature on abortion attitudes and call into question whether trends in political freedom and gender equality will have the power to influence attitudes on this issue.