Abortion vs. Sexual Assault: People's Perceptions of Kavanaugh's Nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States

Public reaction to Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States initially centered around abortion. However, approximately two months after the nomination, sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh were made public. We examined the extent that people's percepti...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of sex research 2022-11, Vol.59 (9), p.1073-1081
Main Authors: Jozkowski, Kristen N, Turner, Ronna C, Weese, James, Lo, Wen-Juo, Crawford, Brandon L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abortion
Abortion, Induced
Attitudes
Demography
Female
Humans
Inflation
Male
Nominations
Perceptions
Pregnancy
Pro choice movement
Pro life movement
Reproductive health
Sex crimes
Sex Offenses
State court decisions
Supreme courts
United States
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Public reaction to Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States initially centered around abortion. However, approximately two months after the nomination, sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh were made public. We examined the extent that people's perceptions of Kavanaugh's stance on abortion and people's attitudes toward whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault were associated with perceptions of Kavanaugh as a good Supreme Court justice. Data were collected from English- and Spanish-speaking participants ( = 2,883) in the United States via Qualtrics' panel. Using an exploratory hierarchical regression approach, we found that people's perceptions of whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault was a stronger predictor of their attitudes toward Kavanaugh's quality as a Supreme Court justice [ (1,2855) = 1736.54, < .001] than people's perceptions of him regarding abortion, after controlling for demographic characteristics and participants' abortion identity (e.g., identifying as pro-life, pro-choice). That sexual assault was a stronger predictor could suggest the importance of sexual assault regarding opinions of Supreme Court justices or potential over inflation of abortion as a salient issue. Researchers should investigate the saliency of sexual and reproductive health issues in relation to Supreme Court nominees.
ISSN:0022-4499
1559-8519
DOI:10.1080/00224499.2021.1984377