Abortion is Controversial

Gallup Social Series' Values and Beliefs poll shows that abortion is the most controversial moral issue in the United States.

Each May, the public opinion company Gallup conducts its Values and Beliefs telephone poll on a representative sample of persons in the United States aged 18 or older, as part of the ongoing Gallup Poll Social Series. This poll contains a series of questions prompted with, “I’m going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable, or morally wrong.”

Figure 1: Moral opinions on induced abortion of pregnancy from the Gallup Poll Social Series, Values and Beliefs. (Gallup 2014) Each estimate is associated with some sampling error. However, Gallup does not release information needed to calculate sampling error with its Gallup Analytics summary spreadsheets. Respondents are prompted for either the ‘morally acceptable’ or ‘morally wrong’ answers, whereas the ‘depends on the situation’ responses are volunteered by respondents.

Over the past 22 years, about half of the United States has judged abortion¹ to be generally morally wrong, and about half of the United States has judged abortion to be generally morally acceptable, making it quite a controversial issue.

Define a moral controversy metric as

\(100 - \left| p_w - p_a \right|\)

where p_w is the proportion of a population that judges something to be morally wrong and 𝑝_𝑎 is the proportion that judges it to be morally acceptable. This moral controversy metric is low when there is consensus on whether something is morally wrong or not, and in the extreme case is 0 when 100% of a population agrees that something is morally wrong or morally acceptable. Conversely, this metric is high when there is controversy about an issue, and in the extreme case it is 100 when there are exactly the same proportion of a population that judge something to be morally wrong as who judge it to be morally acceptable.

Figure 2: Moral controversy metrics for four issues from the Gallup Poll Social Series, Values and Beliefs.

Some issues, such as having an extramarital affair, have been relatively uncontroversial during the lifetime of the Values and Beliefs poll because a consistent majority of Americans judge having an extramarital affair to be wrong. Some issues like having a baby out of wedlock began the Values and Belief polling as controversial issues and became less controversial in the past 22 years. Other issues like animal medical testing began with less controversy and gradually became more controversial over the course of the poll. Abortion has remained very controversial throughout the 22 year period.

Indeed, out of the 18 topics ever asked about on the Values and Beliefs moral opinions poll, abortion has been the most controversial issue 11 times out of 22 times that the Value and Beliefs poll has been conducted, and the second most controversial issue another 7 times. It has never been ranked lower than the fourth most controversial issue on the poll. Abortion is quite possibly the most morally controversial issue in the United States.

Furthermore, there is likely to be latent controversy about abortion in other parts of the world even where disagreement about abortion is not so public. For instance, abortion in China does not generate as much acrimony as it does in the United States. However, those who have engaged with a Chinese population in more detailed conversation about abortion have found diverse opinions even if debate about abortion is not a prominent part of public discourse due to cultural differences. (Nie and Kleinman 2005)

References

Gallup. 2014. “How Does the Gallup Poll Social Series Work?” Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/175307/gallup-poll-social-series-methodology.aspx.

Nie, J. B., and A. Kleinman. 2005. Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion. Asian Voices. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

1. Unless otherwise noted, in this article the word “abortion” is used to mean induced abortion of pregnancy.

Technically, the word “abortion” is a generic term. Any process that is aborted before it comes to completion can, in theory, be labeled “abortion.” However, because of its association with abortion of pregnancy and the emotional weight of such occurrence, the word “abortion” is usually used to mean abortion of pregnancy.

Furthermore, even if we just consider “abortion” to mean abortion of pregnancy, there is ambiguity because in the medical literature the word “abortion” is used to mean two different things: spontaneous abortion, which is commonly called “miscarriage” in the vernacular, occurs when a pregnancy terminates without anyone’s intervention; induced abortion occurs when a pregnancy is terminated on purpose. When “abortion” is used in the vernacular it is commonly used to mean induced abortion.

This ambiguity can lead to misinterpretation. For instance, if a study were to report on abortions in a given population, it could be including both spontaneous and induced abortions if it were using the medical literature definition, but it could be excluding what are commonly called “miscarriages” if it were using the common definition.