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Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 greatly altered the way reproductive rights policy is regulated in the United States. Sole policy-making jurisdiction was given to individual states, and many states have already passed legislation that both expands and restricts abortion access. This research examines what factors have the most influence on state-level abortion policy-making, specifically testing to determine how significant the level of democracy is in deciding how restrictive reproductive rights policies are implemented. Multiple regression models were run using various other variables to examine their impact on state reproduction restriction ranking using multiple subsets of data. Through a combination of a substantial literature review, quantitative data work, and multiple qualitative case studies, it was found that the State Democracy Index as a measure of the level of democracy was the most statistically significant variable when tested with all other included variables. This means the level of democracy is the biggest indicator in explaining how restrictive a state is on abortion policy. Public opinion and the partisanship of state legislatures both have some influence in explaining restrictiveness, but the level of democracy is the most statistically significant, indicating that restrictive policy states are often out of touch with their public opinion. The level of adults with college education was also significant in helping to explain how supportive or restrictive a state is.

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