What Drives the Voting on Abortion Policy? Investigating Partisanship and Religion in the State Legislative Arena

Abstract

Much of the public policy debate on abortion now centers in the nation's state capitals. This research assesses the impact of partisanship and religiosity on the voting behavior of state legislators. Recent research indicates that a legislator's religious affiliation and the religiosity of their home districts can be a powerful predictor of votes on abortion bills, but this research uses a unique data set developed to analyze voting in the Florida House of Representatives to re-test those ideas and test several new ones. This work challenges the notion that member religion or district religiosity is more influential than partisanship in predicting votes on abortion. Ordered probit techniques show partisanship, gender and legislator religion (for Catholic and Jewish members only), to be the most significant predictors of abortion voting behavior. A number of district characteristics are found to be less significant. Theoretically, this suggests that legislators fulfill their party obligations as trustee on the floor of the House, more so than following constituent interests in the classic delegate role, as originally noted by Burke.A noticeable tug-of-war concerning abortion has been taking place in a number of state capitals since the U.S. Supreme Court gave more leeway to the states to deal with the topic in the Webster v. Reproductive

A Comparative Analysis of the Determinants of State Reproductive Healthcare Policies

“…This finding is contradictory to some more recent "morality policy" literature which posits that constituency and not legislator ideology and partisanship determines a state's policies towards abortion-or at the very least haves equal influence (Kahane 1994). Schecter (2001) suggests that further research in this area could bring about a reevaluation of ". .…”

“…A legislator will analyze how many votes are lost or won by voting for or against abortion policies rather than relying solely on party ideology. Interpreting these results as inconclusive, Schecter (2001) engaged in another study comparing partisanship and religion influences and found that partisanship, gender, and legislator religion (for Catholics and Jewish members only) all are significant predictors of how a legislator will vote on abortion policy. In the same study of the Florida House of Representatives, he also found that party partisanship plays a larger role than constituency characteristics.…”

“…They also found that women legislators are more likely to resist passing parental consent laws. Schecter (2001) found that being a male legislator reduced the chance of voting for liberal abortion policies by 25 percent and increased the chance of voting for greater restrictions for abortion by 21 percent. Medoff (2002) found that a state's abortion policy is largely determined by the strength of advocacy groups and political forces.…”

The political economy of Vermont’s abortion bill

“…Partisanship contributes to voting behavior. Schecter (2001) found a significant effect of Democrat legislators to vote pro-choice. In contrast, Medoff (2002) suggest that ideology is rather more influential in voting pro-choice.…”

Influence of religious beliefs on state legislator's voting behavior focus : education lottery

“…The study indicated that the Roman Catholic Church has an impact on the abortion issue owing to its pro-life doctrine and the fact it is one united church, whereas the members of conservative Protestant churches are separate and not united in the same way (O'Connor & Berkman, 1995). Schecter (2001) investigated abortion policy in the 1997 session of the Florida House of Representatives examining the extent to which partisanship or religion was a major influence on state legislators. The analysis of the study indicated that both the political parties of the state legislators and their religious beliefs, particularly if they were Catholic or Jewish, as well as gender, were important.…”