Is Abortion Dividing Society? Differentiated Attitudes and Contextual Factors. A Quantitative Vignette Study

We investigated in our quantitative study, based on a factorial survey, whether and how people change their skeptical attitude towards abortions when they are given a vignette and, thus, confronted with further information about the life situation of a person who has an unplanned pregnancy. Our target group was men over 41 years of age living in Western Germany, as this population group is the most critical of abortions, according to the ALLBUS, the German General Social Survey. A computer-assisted telephonic interview survey was conducted with 302 people from the target group. After general questions, such as whether abortion should remain a criminal offense under § 218 of the German Criminal Code and only be exempt from punishment under certain conditions, the participants were randomly assigned to three thematic vignettes: financial burden, eugenics or intimate partner violence. Our results show that, even in the target group, only 24.9% of respondents agree that abortion should remain criminalized. In the face of new information, comprehensibility of the decision to have an abortion increased in all three vignettes.