Daniel Yeager (California Western School of Law) has posted The Psychology of Abortion Discourse (56 University of Memphis Law Review 101 (2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In A Defense of Abortion (1971), Judith Jarvis Thomson said it would be “insane” to deny an abortion sought by a desperately frightened fourteen-year-old rape victim, and “positively indecent”—though not necessarily unjust—to allow one to someone who in her seventh month seeks to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad. For the past half-century since Roe, half of Americans have consistently agreed with Thomson that the moral status of abortion depends on the circumstances surrounding the abortion. This half makes up the “mushy middle,” of which Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe) happens to be a member. The other half, however, would treat all abortions as categorically legal (30% in 2025) or illegal (13% in 2025). According to a 2025 Gallup poll, a quarter of Republicans would outlaw all abortions, while two-thirds of Democrats would outlaw none. For those Republicans and Democrats, an abortion in response to rape should be legally indistinguishable from an abortion for the purpose of sex-selection, and an early abortion legally indistinguishable from a late one.
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