Punishing Women for Miscarriage: The role of Political Orientation and Hostile Sexism

Women’s reproductive autonomy is an ideologically divisive issue, and this divisiveness goes beyond just attitudes toward abortion to include other outcomes such as miscarriage. Previous research has established that hostile sexism is positively associated with punitive attitudes toward pregnant women who flout conventional pregnancy proscriptions. Across three studies (N1 = 296; N2 = 580, N3 = 308) we conceptually replicated this research while shifting the focus from abstract attitudes to concrete policies punishing women for miscarriage, and moving beyond hostile sexism to examine the role of political orientation (including libertarianism). In all three studies, hostile sexism remained a significant positive predictor of support for punishing women for miscarriage even after controlling for political orientation. Conservative and libertarian self-identification were positively associated with support for punishment at zero-order, and in multiple regressions adjusting for sexism and demographic variables, conservatism remained significantly positively related to support for punishment in two studies. Libertarianism was no longer a significant predictor of support for punishment after adjusting for sexism; with this in mind, we conducted mediation analyses and found significant indirect paths from libertarian identification through hostile sexism in two of the three studies. These findings provide evidence for the role of sexism and political ideology in the increasingly punitive post-Roe vs. Wade United States.