IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v60y1989i2p185-191.html

Constituencies, ideology, and the demand for abortion legislation

Author

Listed:
  • Marshall Medoff

Abstract

If the Supreme Court were to overturn its basic decision making abortion legal, abortions would not suddenly become illegal. This issue would revert to the states. State legislatures would have to pass new laws if they wanted to ban abortions. Using the Senate vote on the proposed Hatch/Eagleton Amendment, which would have reversed the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion, a model was developed to identify the various constituencies that may be significant in determining whether a state would continue to allow legal abortions. Empirical analysis finds women in white-collar occupations and nonwhites are demanders of legal abortions, while evangelical Christians have a negative impact on the continuation of legal abortions. The empirical results also suggest that there exists a direct relationship between the liberal ideology of a state concerning the role of women in society and its political support of legal abortions. An implication of this study is that, if the legal status of abortion were to revert to the states, nineteen states would almost certainly continue to allow legal abortions while five other states are highly probable. But eighteen states would almost certainly abolish legal abortions and eight other states are unlikely to continue to allow legal abortions. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Suggested Citation

  • Marshall Medoff, 1989. "Constituencies, ideology, and the demand for abortion legislation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 185-191, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:60:y:1989:i:2:p:185-191
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00149245
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00149245
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00149245?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    2. Silberman, Jonathan I & Durden, Garey C, 1976. "Determining Legislative Preferences on the Minimum Wage: An Economic Approach," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(2), pages 317-329, April.
    3. Medoff, Marshall H, 1980. "The Equal Rights Amendment: An Empirical Analysis of Sexual Discrimination," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(3), pages 367-379, July.
    4. Suzanne Tosini & Edward Tower, 1987. "The textile bill of 1985: The determinants of congressional voting patterns," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 19-25, January.
    5. Albert Danielsen & Paul Rubin, 1977. "An empirical investigation of voting on energy issues," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 121-128, September.
    6. Kau, James B & Rubin, Paul H, 1979. "Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 365-384, October.
    7. Medoff, Marshall H, 1988. "An Economic Analysis of the Demand for Abortions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 26(2), pages 353-359, April.
    8. Deyak, Timothy A & Smith, V Kerry, 1976. "The Economic Value of Statute Reform: The Case of Liberalized Abortion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(1), pages 83-99, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leo H. Kahane, 1994. "Political, Ideological and Economic Determinants of Abortion Position: An Empirical Analysis of Stale Legislatures and Governors," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 347-359, July.
    2. Donna S. Rothstein, 1992. "An Economic Approach to Abortion Demand," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 36(1), pages 53-64, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    2. Jacobson, Elaine Mullaly & Emerson, Robert D., "undated". "The Influences Of Id Ogy And Economic Interests On Dairy Legislation," 1989 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 2, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 270466, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. Mark Burkey & Garey Durden, 1998. "The Political Economy of Clean Air Legislation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(2), pages 119-134, March.
    4. Henry Chappell, 1981. "Conflict of interest and congressional voting: A note," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 331-335, January.
    5. Keohane, Nathaniel O. & Revesz, Richard L. & Stavins, Robert N., 1997. "The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy," Discussion Papers 10759, Resources for the Future.
    6. Bohara, Alok K. & Camargo, Alejandro Islas & Grijalva, Therese & Gawande, Kishore, 2005. "Fundamental dimensions of U.S. trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 93-125, January.
    7. Michael Davis & Philip Porter, 1989. "A test for pure or apparent ideology in congressional voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 101-111, February.
    8. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Introduction to the Political Economy of Environmental Regulations," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-12, Resources for the Future.
    9. de Gorter, Harry & Rausser, Gordon C., 1989. "Endogenizing U.S. milk price supports," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt4f58t530, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    10. James Kau & Paul Rubin, 1981. "The size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 261-274, January.
    11. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2010. "The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1967-1998, December.
    12. Cahan, Steven F., 1996. "Political use of income: Some experimental evidence from Capitol Hill," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 69-87.
    13. Glenn Parker & Suzanne Parker, 1998. "The economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 117-129, April.
    14. Richard Damania & Per Fredriksson & Thomas Osang, 2004. "Collusion, Collective Action and Protection: Theory and Evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 279-308, February.
    15. Allen, Abigail & Ramanna, Karthik, 2013. "Towards an understanding of the role of standard setters in standard setting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 66-90.
    16. Pasour, E.C., Jr., 1980. "A Critique Of Federal Agricultural Programs," Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 12(01), pages 1-9, July.
    17. Philip L. Hersch & Gerald S. McDougall, 1997. "Direct Legislation: Determinants of Legislator Support for Voter Initiatives," Public Finance Review, , vol. 25(3), pages 327-343, May.
    18. Medoff, Marshall H., 2003. "The impact of anti-abortion activities on state abortion rates," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 265-282, July.
    19. Sungmun Choi, 2017. "Politician’s ideology and campaign contributions from interest groups," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1733-1746, December.
    20. John G. Matsusaka, 2005. "Direct Democracy Works," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 185-206, Spring.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:60:y:1989:i:2:p:185-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.