Is the Political Polarization over Abortion a Black-and-White Issue? An Analysis of the Advocacy Coalitions and Belief Systems

The year 2022 was pivotal in the history of abortion politics and policy in the U.S. Historically, abortion had been on federal and state policy agendas for decades, and it has become even more prominent given recent political events: namely, the confirmation of three U.S. Supreme Court justices appointed by then President Trump and a leaked memo warning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s intention to overturn the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade. Federal level abortion policy changes often trigger an up-tick of state-level legislative activity (Roberti, 2021), and, since both policy practitioners and scholars anticipated that federal policy change was imminent, advocates on both sides of the issue sensed a window of opportunity and mobilized. This has resulted in a patchwork of different and quickly changing abortion regulations across the states (Guttmacher Institute 2023), a trend that will only continue and increase. Although abortion policy is often discussed as a black-and-white conflict characterized by polarization and a lack of compromise, this study explores the validity of such a presupposition by asking how advocates articulate their belief systems about abortion policy and in what ways—if at all—are those beliefs shared within and across coalitions and create fissures within and between coalitions? Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we interviewed advocates, representing both pro-abortion-access and anti-abortion-access perspectives, about their beliefs, coalition allies, and opponents in Colorado. The result reveals nuanced belief systems that address competing conceptions of morality, gender, and life with a tendency toward deep core beliefs. This paper contributes to the ACF literature by highlighting a policy issue not often raised by ACF scholars, bridging morality policy and abortion policy literature with more mainstream policy process research, and surpassing simple “pro-life vs. pro-choice” dichotomies to reveal complex belief systems about abortion.