Conclusions
The chief findings of the two studies were: (a) both attitudes and case circumstances greatly affected subjects' impressions of the abortion client; (b) there was some evidence to support the hypothesis that, when need for an abortion is more obvious (e.g., woman's health endangered, woman unmarried), the attitudecriterion correlation is relatively lower; (c) however, even in these apparently more urgent situations, attitude had a very substantial effect on the respondent's judgments. A peripheral finding was that religiosity seemed to imitate attitude toward abortion, as a predictor variable, since the former variable related to the criteria (although not as strongly) whenever the latter did.
Thus, while certain conditions softened the impressions that the antiabortion people had of an abortion client, these circumstances did not greatly weaken the attitude-impression relationship. The antiabortion respondents still saw the abortion client in a less favorable light than did the proabortion people, regardless of the implied need for an abortion. It would seem that the potent attitude effects observed were due to the inherent nature of the topic: abortion is a sensitive, highly salient, issue. The subjects appeared to hold well-defined beliefs about abortion and, according to present findings, these beliefs sharply affected their reactions to an individual who typified the issue.
The subjects of this study were student nurses with little clinical experience; possibly different results would obtain for experienced nurses (or for male subjects, as has been suggested already). The author is not aware of any person perception studies which evaluate abortion as a potential stigma which may influence a nurse's or other professional's tacit or explicit reactions to a patient. However, earlier research has indicated that nurses' willingness to perform various clinical services for abortion patients is a direct function of their general attitudes toward abortion (Allen et al., 1973), and that nurses' attitudes toward abortion also seem to affect the quality of care given to abortion patients (Harper et al., 1972).
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Fischer, E.H. Student nurses view an abortion client: Attitude and context effects. Popul Environ 2, 33–46 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00972600
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00972600