Despite being a defining issue in the culture war, the political psychology of abortion attitudes remains poorly understood. We address this oversight by reviewing existing literature and integrating new analyses of several large‐scale, cross‐sectional, and longitudinal datasets to identify the demographic and ideological correlates of abortion attitudes. Our review and new analyses indicate that abortion support is increasing modestly over time in both the United States and New Zealand. We also find that a plurality of respondents (43.8%) in the United States are consistently “pro‐choice,” whereas 14.8% are consistently “pro‐life,” across various elective and traumatic abortion scenarios. We then show that age, religiosity, and conservatism correlate negatively, whereas Openness to Experience correlates positively, with abortion support. New analyses of heterosexual couples further reveal that women's and men's religiosity decrease their romantic partner's abortion support. Noting inconsistent gender differences in attitudes toward abortion, we then discuss the impact of traditional gender‐role attitudes and sexism on abortion attitudes and conclude that, rather than misogyny, benevolent sexism—the belief that women should be cherished and protected—best explains opposition to abortion. Our review thus provides a comprehensive overview of the demographic and ideological variables that underly abortion attitudes and, hence, the broader culture war.

Feminist scholars have argued that men's control over women's reproductive autonomy is a central feature of male dominance. Building on recent research that shows sexist ideology informs support for restricting women's reproductive autonomy, we examined the relation of sexism and the belief that men should be able to restrict the behavior of women. Study 1 (N = 366 undergraduate psychology students in the United Kingdom) and Study 2 (N = 281Amazon MTurk workers in the United States), showed that controlling for various demographics and ideological measures (e.g., right-wing authoritarianism, support for abortion rights), hostile sexism was related to support for men having the right to prevent their pregnant partner from having an abortion. Further, hostile sexism was also related to the endorsement of men's right to withdraw financial support for the child if a woman chooses not to terminate her pregnancy. Hostile sexism was also uniquely related to support for men's right to veto their female partner's decisions during pregnancy and childbirth. The present studies show that hostile sexism is associated with perceptions that men have the right to constrain women's reproductive choices. Our findings highlight the adverse pressures on women's reproductive autonomy, including sexist ideology, and may suggest that practitioners should be mindful of this when assisting women in discussing reproductive Scholars have argued that because men have enjoyed structural power over women, but also depend on their ability to bear children, men have sought to exert control over

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Libertarianism enshrines individual autonomy as its central political principle, but it has been criticizedfor applying this principle selectively. Reproductive decisions can stress the concept of individual autonomy by placing into conflict the claimed rights of each biological parent to choose. Two studies (N 1 = 296; N 2 = 580) show that among U.S. participants, libertarianism is associated with opposition to women's reproductive autonomy and support for men's. Libertarianism was associated with opposition to abortion rights and support for men's right both to prevent women from having abortions (male veto) and to withdraw financial support for a child when women refuse to terminate the pregnancy (financial abortion). Adjusting for the association between libertarianism and conservatism, only the relationship with opposition to abortion rights was rendered nonsignificant. Mediation analyses suggest that hostile sexism may account for libertarians' selective support for men's and not women's reproductive autonomy.