Recently, I have been giving some thought on what might constitute polarisation of attitudes. Especially, I’m interested in whether or not the debate on induced abortion in American society has become more polarised. The recent news on the presence and activities of Women on Waves in Valencia, Spain, has spurred some more thought on this.
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Posts Tagged ‘pro life’
Women on Waves and unintended polarisation
Paradoxical negative spill-over of Catholics’ attitudes on induced abortion
The Catholic church categorically rejects any practice of induced abortion, and, notwithstanding any issues regarding causality, so do its members. Catholic individuals generally have a negative attitude towards induced abortion, indeed. Jelen et al. were able to replicate this in their study on `abortion attitudes in western Europe’. However, they did not find that the average level of objection against induced abortion in a country correlates with the proportion of catholics in those countries. Furthermore, they even found that when individual level catholicism is taken into account, the higher the number of catholics in the country one lives in, the more positive one is regarding induced abortion.
Influence.ME: an R package providing tools for detecting influential data in mixed models.