| Abstract: | Although Combs and Welch reported a trend of decreasing racialdifference in abortion attitudes, Hall and Ferree used datafrom the 1982 General Social Survey to argue that racial differencewere not declining. This paper updates this debate through the1988 General Social Survey and concludes that racial differenceshave indeed declined over time. Morever, when new religiousitems introduced in the 1984 survey are included in the multivariateanalysis, blacks are not significantly different from whitesin their support of legal abortion. This finding obscures amore intersting pattern, however, of offsetting, statisticallysignificant racial differences among respondents of the samegender—black men are significantly less supportive ofa abortion than white men, and black women are significantlymore supportive than white women. |
