Ideas About Gender and Motherhood Are Related to Support for Legal Abortion

The author assesses the relationship between two gender ideologies – gender essentialism and exclusive motherhood (i.e., the belief that mothers should not work for pay outside of the home) – and endorsement of legal abortion in the United States. The author also assesses whether this relationship differs by the gender of the respondent.

The author uses data from two national probability surveys and ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regression.

The author finds that endorsement of gender essentialism and endorsement of exclusive motherhood are associated with lower endorsement of legal access to abortion; however, the result for gender essentialism is not robust to different conceptualizations of gender essentialism. In the case of exclusive motherhood, the relationship is stronger for men than for women.

It is important to understand the underlying ideologies of restriction of abortion access in the United States. Abortion is either illegal or very restricted in about half of the states in the United States. This restriction on abortion access has economic and health consequences, including poverty for women and their families and severe health consequences, including death.

The author introduces the idea of “exclusive motherhood.” To the author’s knowledge, this is the first chapter that makes a quantitative assessment of the relationship between ideals of exclusive motherhood and abortion ideology. In addition, there is very little research assessing the relationship between gender essentialist ideologies and endorsement of legal abortion. Findings contribute to better understanding the social causes of restricted access to abortion in the United States.