SUPPORT ON ABORTION FOR MINORITY WOMEN AND WHITE WOMEN

Publication Date

4-5-2019

Document Type

Poster

Degree Type

Undergraduate

Department

Politics and Government

Mentor

Carl Palmer

Mentor Department

Politics and Government

Abstract

The main purpose of the research study was to I investigate the possible bias of minority women or women of color receiving less support than white women when it comes to having an abortion. With there being other research on bias attitudes regarding women of color, there hasn't been much research and known evidence of abortion not being accepted towards minority women over white women. This raised the question of whether white women are more accepted when it comes to getting an abortion than minority woman. To see if the hypothesis was correct, I conducted my own research using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Each participant was paid 25 cents and answered questions asking their age, gender, race/ethnicity, level of education, partisanship, religion, if they know someone who had an abortion, if they believe if abortion was morally wrong or morally acceptable and then the last question was asked through a vignette. The vignette stated a name either Jasmine, Lindsay or Destiny and said, "is 22 and became pregnant on accident. She is not able to financially support the baby when it is born. She is planning on having an abortion since she can't properly care for the baby. Do you support her decision on having an abortion?" The names were used to try to identify each woman from either the Latino, Black or White community. Using different names and the same story was to see if there was a bias towards a minority woman with a name that might indicate they're from these communities over a white woman. Each of the names through the vignette were randomly were assigned to the participant as part of the experiment. The results of the experiment were surprising and did not support my hypothesis. After I gathered my data and ran my regressions, I found that it was the opposite of what I expected. More people supported a specific minority group (Latino/Hispanic community) more than the white woman through the vignette. Most of my participants identified as white, Christian or non-religious, and under 30 years old, I believe my findings were swayed in way because I didn't pull a diverse group of race/ethnicity, religion and more of a variety of age. Most of my variables like age and gender gave me findings that I expected. For example, more males are against abortion and older you are the less likely you are to support abortion.

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