Pro‐choice/pro‐elección versus pro‐life/pro‐vida: Examining abortion identity terms across English and Spanish in the United States

Megan Solon, Kathryn J LaRoche, Xiana Bueno, Brandon L Crawford, Ronna C Turner, Wen‐Juo Lo and Kristen N Jozkowski

Social Science Quarterly, 2022, vol. 103, issue 7, 1602-1618

Abstract: Objective We examine how a sample of English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults define the terms pro‐life/pro‐vida and pro‐choice/pro‐elección and explore whether definitions differ by language and/or ethnicity. Methods We asked a sample of 1504 English‐ and Spanish‐speaking U.S. adults to define the terms pro‐choice/pro‐elección and pro‐life/pro‐vida in an open‐ended format. We used content and thematic analysis to examine congruence and discordance between how English and Spanish speakers, as well as Latinx and non‐Latinx participants, understand these terms. Results The terms largely appeared to hold common and canonical understandings, but we identified important differences across language and cultural/ethnic groups. For example, Latinx participants opted out of defining the terms more often than non‐Latinx participants, and respondents to the Spanish survey had higher rates of uncertainty about and misunderstanding of the terms than respondents to the English version. Conclusions Our findings suggest language‐related variability in understandings of the terms pro‐choice/pro‐elección and pro‐life/pro‐vida that could have implications for multilingual and cross‐cultural polling on abortion.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13219

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:socsci:v:103:y:2022:i:7:p:1602-1618

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().