This is a very interesting line of argument. How much of it do you think is due to this:
Many of these women live in cultures and social circles/families where publicly supporting abortion rights is very damaging socially. Even in relaxed conditions, disagreeing with one’s family and friends on an issue that evokes such strong emotions is hard. The women tend to conform unless they have a strong personal opinion to the contrary, and once they conform on the signalling level, they may eventually come to believe themselves that they are against abortion.
If their social environment changes, or they move into a new one, they may change or “reveal” their new pro-abortion-rights opinion very quickly & dramatically.
And however frequent cases like this may be, we also tend to over-estimate their incidence, because we believe ourselves that abortion rights are really good for women, and that the women are the “good” underdogs in this story.
This is a very interesting line of argument. How much of it do you think is due to this:
Many of these women live in cultures and social circles/families where publicly supporting abortion rights is very damaging socially. Even in relaxed conditions, disagreeing with one’s family and friends on an issue that evokes such strong emotions is hard. The women tend to conform unless they have a strong personal opinion to the contrary, and once they conform on the signalling level, they may eventually come to believe themselves that they are against abortion.
If their social environment changes, or they move into a new one, they may change or “reveal” their new pro-abortion-rights opinion very quickly & dramatically.
And however frequent cases like this may be, we also tend to over-estimate their incidence, because we believe ourselves that abortion rights are really good for women, and that the women are the “good” underdogs in this story.