Men and women voters are less predictable on abortion than you'd think

So what is it about women that makes them less enthusiastic than men about abortion on demand? Again, the survey offers answers. Using a common statistical method, one can determine the effect of different variables on an outcome of interest — in this case, the odds that someone will agree or disagree with the question. This reveals that the difference between men and women is not, in fact, likely because of their sex, but because of other factors that happen to correlate with sex.

As it happens, religious attendance and biblical literalism, as well as political ideology, were all highly predictive of attitudes toward abortion. Being Hispanic was also associated with being opposed to abortion on demand (even allowing for other variables, such as religiosity).

In contrast, sex and age were usually not independently significant. Probably the mediating factor here is that, according to most surveys, women tend to be more religious than men.

While, on the whole, there isn’t a major difference in the sexes’ attitudes toward abortion, there is one when we separate men and women by ideology. If we look at the data since 2000 (to get a more contemporary perspective), on the liberal end of the ideological spectrum men are consistently less supportive of abortion on demand than women. On the conservative end of the spectrum, it’s women who like abortion on demand less than men do.