Finished Thesis, New Job

Just very recently I finished writing my Master’s Thesis, it was graded last week, and today I’m starting my new job as a PhD Candidate. I will be working at the department of Social Risk and Safety Studies, at the University of Twente. I will be working on a project regarding cross-country differences in the socio-economic outcomes of fertility related decisions. I’m sure to be writing more about this project in the coming four years.

Regarding my Master’s thesis, it studies polarization in North American’s abortion attitudes. I was able to locate a very nice lacuna in the literature, and built upon existing literature to solve this lacuna. But, without further ado, I will let the preface speak for itself:

Attitudes on the permissibility of induced abortion vary widely in the United States of America. How people think about abortion has often been the topic of scholarly studies, which highlighted aspects ranging from the level of the streets with protests either ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-choice’, to the level of legislation and Supreme Court rulings, to the public opinion on abortion. The question whether public opinion on abortion has become more polarized received substantial attention of social scientists, as well. This study adds to this body of literature on polarization in the North Americans’ public opinion on induced abortion. It contributes a new explanatory framework on polarization of public opinion which allows much of the existing literature to be brought together, a suggestion for a statistical approach for analyzing hypotheses derived from this model, and new hypotheses derived from this model.
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Unintended Consequences Catholicism and Abortion Attitudes

One of the elegances of sociology is found in the unintended consequences of our actions. In my studies of attitudes towards abortion, I found a nice example of such unintended consequences regarding the Catholic church. But, I doubt that the findings are warranted by the analyses.
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Graph: Abortion Attitudes in United States

I have been writing about abortion a lot, recently, so I decided to provide some more context regarding this important subject, by making some graphics. The first graph I created is on trends in American public opinion regarding induced abortion:

(click on the graph for a larger image)
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U.S. Presidential Abortion Debate

With the U.S. Presidential Election campaigns gaining momentum, the important issues are becoming more and more clear. One such issue that might make or brake a candidate, is the stance they take on abortion. McCain and Palin strongly object against the possibility of women having an abortion, Obama and Biden take a pro-choice stance. More interestingly, though, Obama and Biden explicitly state on their site that it is their goal to protect the Roe vs. Wade ruling, whereas McCain-Palin explicitly state their goal to overrule Roe vs. Wade.

From a social science perspective, I think it is interesting to investigate these issues to a bit more depth, especially to see whether abortion has always been such a dividing line in American Politics.
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