Pro‐choice/pro‐elección versus pro‐life/pro‐vida: Examining abortion identity terms across English and Spanish in the United States

Abstract

Objective: We examine how a sample of English-and Spanishspeaking U.S. adults define the terms pro-life/pro-vida and prochoice/pro-elección and explore whether definitions differ by language and/or ethnicity. Methods: We asked a sample of 1504 English-and Spanishspeaking U.S. adults to define the terms pro-choice/pro-elección and pro-life/pro-vida in an open-ended format. We used content and thematic analysis to examine congruence and discordance between how English and Spanish speakers, as well as Latinx and non-Latinx participants, understand these terms. Results: The terms largely appeared to hold common and canonical understandings, but we identified important differences across language and cultural/ethnic groups. For example, Latinx participants opted out of defining the terms more often than non-Latinx participants, and respondents to the Spanish survey had higher rates of uncertainty about and misunderstanding of the terms than respondents to the English version. Conclusions: Our findings suggest language-related variability in understandings of the terms pro-choice/pro-elección and pro-life/pro-vida that could have implications for multilingual and cross-cultural polling on abortion. KEYWORDS abortion attitudes, cross-cultural survey research, sociolinguistics, Prochoice/pro-lifeThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Participant‐driven salient beliefs regarding abortion: Implications for abortion attitude measurement

“…2020; Jozkowski, Crawford, and Willis 2021; Solon et al. 2022), this study provides initial evidence for other potential factors that researchers may consider when developing abortion attitude items. Developing items that consider novel frameworks and contexts has the potential to expand measures used presently in national polls and surveys to uncover more nuance in attitudes that exists within the “murky middle.”…”

“…Yet, we also found that other factors are relevant to people when conceptualizing abortion attitudes such as gestation duration as a relevant context or considering abortion relative to parenting as a potential framework. Heeding others' recommendation for more nuanced measures to assess abortion attitudes (e.g., Bruce 2020;Crawford, LaRoche, and Jozkowski 2022;Hans and Kimberly 2014;Jelen and Wilcox 2003;Jozkowski, Crawford, and Hunt 2018;Jozkowski et al 2020;Jozkowski, Crawford, and Willis 2021;Solon et al 2022), this study provides initial evidence for other potential factors that researchers may consider when developing abortion attitude items. Developing items that consider novel frameworks and contexts has the potential to expand measures used presently in national polls and surveys to uncover more nuance in attitudes that exists within the "murky middle.…”