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Author: Sanger, Justus
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Woodley, Michael A.
Sanger, Justus
Meisenberg, Gerhard
No Relationship between Abortion Numbers and Maternal Cognitive Ability
Personality and Individual Differences 104 (January 2017): 489-492.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916309631
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Abortion; Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Cognitive Ability; Educational Attainment; National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)

The relationship between maternal cognitive ability (as indicated by g and highest attained educational level) and self-reported numbers of abortions at near-completed fertility is investigated in two, population representative samples of the US: (i) a sample of 1386 women, sourced from NLSY79 (aged 39-47), and (ii) a sample of 842 women (aged 38-45), sourced from NSFG'11-13. No linear relationships between either of the cognitive ability measures and abortion numbers were found, nor were quadratic effects present in these data. Income had an independent negative effect on abortion numbers in the NSFG'11-13 sample, whereas age was a positive independent predictor in the NLSY79 sample. The essentially zero-magnitude association between maternal cognitive ability and abortion numbers may have resulted from the wide scale destigmatization of elective abortion as a birth-control technique in the US following the 1973 US Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Despite this, self-reported abortion numbers data typically underrepresent the true numbers of abortions hence these findings must be considered tentative especially if underreporting is unsystematic with respect to any of the predictors.
Bibliography Citation
Woodley, Michael A., Justus Sanger and Gerhard Meisenberg. "No Relationship between Abortion Numbers and Maternal Cognitive Ability." Personality and Individual Differences 104 (January 2017): 489-492.