What really drives abortion beliefs? Research suggests it ’s a matter of sexual strategies

Martie Haselton, is psychology professor in the UCLA College andJaimie Arona Krems, is an assistant professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University.Many people have strong opinions about abortion — especially in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, revoking a constitutional right previously held by more than 165 million Americans.But what really drives people ’s abortion attitudes?It ’s common to hear religious, political and other ideologically driven explanations — for example, about the sanctity of life. If such beliefs were really driving anti-abortion attitudes, though, then people who oppose abortion might not support the death penalty (many do), and they would support social safety net measures that could save newborns ’ lives (many don ’t).Here, we suggest a different explanation for anti-abortion attitudes — one you probably haven’t considered before — fromour field of evolutionarysocial science.Why do people care what strangers do?The evolutionary coin of the realm is fitness — getting more copies of your genes into the next generation. What faraway strangers do presumably has limited impact on your own fitness. So from this perspective, it is a mystery why people in Pensacola care so strongly about what goes on in the bedrooms of Philadelphia or the Planned Parenthood s of Los Angeles.The solution to this puzzle — and one answer to what is driving anti-abortion attitudes — lies in a conflict of sexual...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news