Constituencies, ideology, and the demand for abortion legislation

Marshall Medoff

Public Choice, 1989, vol. 60, issue 2, 185-191

Abstract: If the Supreme Court were to overturn its basic decision making abortion legal, abortions would not suddenly become illegal. This issue would revert to the states. State legislatures would have to pass new laws if they wanted to ban abortions. Using the Senate vote on the proposed Hatch/Eagleton Amendment, which would have reversed the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion, a model was developed to identify the various constituencies that may be significant in determining whether a state would continue to allow legal abortions. Empirical analysis finds women in white-collar occupations and nonwhites are demanders of legal abortions, while evangelical Christians have a negative impact on the continuation of legal abortions. The empirical results also suggest that there exists a direct relationship between the liberal ideology of a state concerning the role of women in society and its political support of legal abortions. An implication of this study is that, if the legal status of abortion were to revert to the states, nineteen states would almost certainly continue to allow legal abortions while five other states are highly probable. But eighteen states would almost certainly abolish legal abortions and eight other states are unlikely to continue to allow legal abortions. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Date: 1989
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DOI: 10.1007/BF00149245

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