Abortion remains one of the most contentious global social issues, with attitudes varying dramatically across nations. While individual characteristics like education, income, and personal religious beliefs certainly matter, understanding why entire populations hold different views requires examining the broader contexts in which people live.
In my new book, Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion, I investigate why attitudes about abortion vary so considerably across the globe. Using the last three waves of World Values Survey data—over 200,000 individuals from 88 nations representing the vast majority of the world’s population—alongside systematic analysis of newspaper coverage across 41 countries and dozens of expert interviews in China and the United States, I identify several micro- and macro-level factors that powerfully shape how residents think about abortion.
Five factors —democracy, gender equality, abortion laws, religious context, economic and educational development — emerge as especially powerful for shaping individuals’ disapproval of abortion. Democratic governance, media freedom, and gender equality are especially helpful for understanding how societies develop more supportive abortion views.
Abortion attitudes reflect more than individual moral convictions—they emerge from the broader institutional and cultural contexts that societies create and maintain.
These factors matter because they fundamentally alter how societies discuss controversial issues, whose voices get heard, and what kinds of social arrangements residents observe and internalize as normal. Democratic systems create spaces for diverse perspectives, free media enables complex public discourse, and gender equality normalizes female autonomy—together forming conditions that foster greater abortion acceptance even in places where religious or economic factors might otherwise constrain such attitudes.
This article examines how these democratic and societal gender-related processes create the conditions under which abortion acceptance may develop, offering insights into why some societies have more supportive attitudes toward reproductive rights while others maintain restrictive views.
Why Country Context Matters
While individual-level factors, like education, income, age, religious belief, and marital status, operate consistently across countries, they cannot explain the substantial variation we observe between nations.
If personal characteristics were the primary drivers of attitude differences, we would expect similar distributions of opinions across countries with comparable demographic profiles. Yet this is not what we observe.
Country characteristics represent the shared institutional, cultural, and structural environments that all residents experience regardless of their personal backgrounds. These macro-level contexts create the framework within which individual attitudes form and evolve. When entire populations within a country show distinct attitudinal patterns that persist even after accounting for individual differences, this points to the powerful influence of shared societal experiences.
These country-level forces shape people’s attitudes through multiple pathways. Residents learn about issues through specific media landscapes, witness how their particular governments handle controversial topics, observe locally-embedded social norms through daily interactions, and internalize cultural values transmitted through country-specific institutions. These shared exposures create systematic differences in how residents across nations approach social issues. A country’s political institutions and its broader commitment to gender equality, individual rights, and civic freedoms all shape how residents view abortion. Among these, the type of governance plays a particularly important role.
Democracy Fosters Tolerance
Democracy can have a powerful influence on abortion acceptance. Democratic institutions provide forums for public debate where residents encounter multiple viewpoints on social issues, including the array of reasons women might need or want an abortion. In democracies, residents vote for representatives, engage in public discourse, protest government actions, and access diverse information sources. Because of these influences, residents may become more tolerant of different viewpoints and have greater respect for individual rights. Regular elections incentivize politicians to remain responsive to public preferences rather than imposing singular ideological positions.
Quantitative evidence from Fetal Positions illustrates democracy’s liberalizing effect on abortion attitudes. As shown in Figure 1, residents of democratic and partially democratic societies show significantly more abortion support than those in non-democratic nations.
Figure 1: How Country-Level Democracy and Abortion Laws Influence Individual Disapproval (Society N=88; Individual N=220,239)
Notably, the key distinction lies between non-democratic nations and all others. Partial democracies—societies mixing democratic and autocratic features—show similar levels of abortion acceptance as full democracies. This suggests that even limited democratic openings can foster more tolerant views by providing spaces for diverse perspectives and rights-based discourse.
Media Freedom Creates Complex Discourse
Democratic governance also influences how abortion is framed in public discourse. Countries with greater political freedoms foster more diverse and complex media coverage of potentially controversial issues.
My research team hand coded over 800 English Language newspaper articles from 41 countries over a one-year period. We found striking differences in how abortion is portrayed based on nations’ freedom scores. Countries with high freedom scores—including Canada, Taiwan, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, and the United Kingdom—present substantially more diverse abortion discourse than nations with restricted freedoms like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, and Egypt.
The differences are dramatic. Articles in high-freedom countries average 1.78 different themes per article compared to just 1.02 in low-freedom nations. This diversity encompasses all types of perspectives, not just liberal ones.
As shown in Figure 2, high-freedom countries are more likely to publish news articles that include religious claims-makers (19% versus 4%), morality themes (40% versus 8%), social movement voices (34% versus 15%), protest activities (36% versus 19%), government positions (82% versus 54%), and legal discussions (88% versus 64%).
Figure 2: From Limited to Diverse: How Political Freedom Shapes Abortion Media Coverage (Country N=41; Newspaper N=80; Article N=810)
These findings challenge assumptions about media freedom simply enabling liberal perspectives. Instead, greater freedom fosters richer, more complex public discourse that includes diverse viewpoints across the political spectrum.
Gender Equality Normalizes Female Autonomy
Gender equality within a society also works to increase abortion support, even after accounting for government type. Countries with high gender inequality feature fewer women in leadership positions and limited female representation in prestigious professions. Cultural messages from media, education, religion, and family interactions reinforce traditional domestic roles. When women are largely absent from positions of power, societies develop narrower expectations about women’s capabilities and life paths.
The country religious contextual effect is greater than economic development or democracy in shaping abortion disapproval.
In contrast, gender-equal societies regularly expose residents to women exercising autonomy in education, careers, and public life. These observations normalize female decision-making authority and challenge traditional assumptions about women’s proper roles. When populations witness women succeeding in leadership and demonstrating competence in complex decisions, they internalize these capabilities as normal rather than exceptional.
This cultural shift creates practical implications. Women in more gender-equal societies recognize they have viable options beyond motherhood and marriage—careers, education, and personal goals that may conflict with early or unwanted childbearing. This expanded sense of possibility makes reproductive autonomy seem both necessary and legitimate.
As illustrated in Figure 3, the quantitative relationship between country-level gender inequality and abortion disapproval reflects these cultural dynamics, remaining strong even after accounting for economic development, education levels, democratic governance and a range of personal characteristics, including gender. Within countries, gender equality may also shape how the issue is framed: more equal societies may present abortion through health and medical lenses, emphasizing women’s healthcare needs, while less egalitarian countries may frame it through moral or religious perspectives that prioritize social order over individual autonomy.
Figure 3: National Gender Inequality Shapes Personal Abortion Support Beyond Individual Factors
Reinforcing Institutional Effects
These country-level characteristics don’t operate in isolation but reinforce each other through policy feedback mechanisms. Democratic governance, media freedom, and gender equality tend to cluster together, creating mutually reinforcing environments that either support or constrain abortion acceptance.
Fetal Positions includes a comparative case study analysis of the United States and China.
The relationship between attitudes and abortion policies illustrates these dynamics. As shown in Figure 1 above, countries with major abortion restrictions show average disapproval scores of 7.96, while nations allowing abortion on demand average 7.59. However, the causal relationship runs both directions—supportive attitudes enable liberal policies, while liberal policies help normalize abortion.
In democratic societies with free media and gender equality, residents encounter diverse perspectives on reproductive rights, observe women exercising autonomy in multiple life domains, and participate in political processes where individual rights receive protection. These experiences create cultural contexts where abortion access seems consistent with broader social values.
Other Contributing Factors: Religion and Development
While democracy, media freedom, and gender equality represent strong societal predictors of abortion attitudes, two additional factors deserve mention: religious cultures and economic and educational development.
Personal religious commitment and the strength of overall religiosity across countries are powerful for shaping abortion disapproval. Even non-religious people are more likely to oppose abortion if they live in countries with high overall levels of religious importance. Fetal Positions shows that the country religious contextual effect is greater than economic development or democracy in shaping abortion disapproval.
A second country religious influence is the proportion of Catholic. While individual Catholics do not differ substantially from other religious adherents in their personal abortion attitudes, in Catholic nations—especially those in South America and countries like Poland—residents demonstrate higher levels of abortion disapproval. In these societies, Catholicism operates as a moral authority embedded in politics, media, and national narratives, creating environments where anti-abortion perspectives permeate public discourse regardless of individual religious affiliation.
The Church’s hierarchical structure enables consistent messaging, while its integration into national identity makes abortion opposition seem tied to cultural belonging rather than merely personal faith. This creates a powerful contextual effect where all residents, whether personally Catholic or not, and regardless of their strength of religious beliefs, are more likely to disapprove of abortion than those living in less Catholic nations.
Economic and educational development also transform moral frameworks at the national level. As entire societies transition from agrarian poverty to industrial wealth, their cultural values shift toward individual autonomy and rights. In poorer societies, survival dominates daily concerns and traditional family roles receive reinforcement. Wealthier and better educated nations create space for individual rights discourse and expose populations to diverse perspectives on women’s roles.
Conclusion: Understanding Public Opinion in Context
Abortion attitudes reflect more than individual moral convictions—they emerge from the broader institutional and cultural contexts that societies create and maintain. Democratic governance, media freedom, and gender equality foster environments where residents encounter diverse perspectives, witness female autonomy, and participate in complex public discourse, leading to different patterns of attitude formation.
However, these patterns do not appear in the same way within every country. Rather, individual countries have unique stories that can complicate these general patterns. The United States, for example, saw the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturn women’s constitutional right to abortion despite being considered highly democratic. China presents another striking example—its one-child policy limited the number of children that couples could have for an entire generation, creating unique cultural and demographic contexts around reproduction that differ markedly from global patterns.
These cases illustrate that national trajectories involve complex internal histories, institutional changes, and political dynamics that can override general cross-national patterns. Fetal Positions includes a comparative case study analysis of the United States and China to better unpack these internal dynamics and understand how specific national contexts shape abortion support in ways that transcend broader institutional categories.
The findings presented here illuminate how societal characteristics shape public opinion formation across societies. Countries that restrict media freedom, limit women’s opportunities, and constrain political participation create different environments for attitude development than those with more open institutions. Yet as the US and Chinese examples demonstrate, broad trends interact with specific political configurations, policy histories, and cultural contexts in complex ways.
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While no country fits perfectly into a theoretical mold, the cross-national patterns presented offer important insight: societies with stronger democratic institutions, freer media, and greater gender equality tend to show lower levels of abortion disapproval. These societal features don’t just shape laws or policies—they also influence how people think, what voices they hear, and whose experiences they value.
In an era of rising polarization around reproductive rights, this research underscores the importance of societal contexts in shaping public attitudes. When we consider how opinions about abortion vary globally, we gain a clearer understanding not only of what people think, but also of the societal conditions that make certain perspectives more likely. Recognizing these patterns provides valuable insight for those working to foster more informed, inclusive, and equitable public debates—whether on abortion or other deeply contested issues.
