Gendered Divides in Online Discussions about Reproductive Rights

2025-07-07

AI Summary

This study examines how gender, geographic political orientation, and institutional events—such as the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and the prior draft opinion leak—jointly shape public discourse on abortion rights on X (formerly Twitter). Method: Leveraging nearly ten million posts, we integrate inferred user gender, ideological affiliation, and geolocation to conduct large-scale social network and computational content analysis. Contribution/Results: First, in conservative regions, gender—distinct from ideology—significantly amplifies attitudinal polarization and affective divergence. Second, institutional instability markedly increases online engagement among abortion-supporting women in high-risk jurisdictions. Third, identity-based self-categorization functions as a structural mediator in political expression. Collectively, findings demonstrate that abortion discourse is not solely driven by ideological polarization but is fundamentally structured by intersecting gender–geography dynamics. This provides novel empirical evidence for understanding intersectional political behavior in digital public spheres.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Natural Language Processing: Discourse, Pragmatics & Argument Mining
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Argumentation

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments

Abstract

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization marked a turning point in the national debate over reproductive rights. While the ideological divide over abortion is well documented, less is known about how gender and local sociopolitical contexts interact to shape public discourse. Drawing on nearly 10 million abortion-related posts on X (formerly Twitter) from users with inferred gender, ideology and location, we show that gender significantly moderates abortion attitudes and emotional expression, particularly in conservative regions, and independently of ideology. This creates a gender gap in abortion attitudes that grows more pronounced in conservative regions. The leak of the Dobbs draft opinion further intensified online engagement, disproportionately mobilizing pro-abortion women in areas where access was under threat. These findings reveal that abortion discourse is not only ideologically polarized but also deeply structured by gender and place, highlighting the central role of identity in shaping political expression during moments of institutional disruption.

Problem

• Gender moderates abortion attitudes in conservative regions
• Gender gap in abortion attitudes grows in conservative areas
• Dobbs draft leak mobilized pro-abortion women disproportionately

Innovation

• Analyzed 10M gender-inferred X posts
• Gender moderates abortion attitudes regionally
• Dobbs leak mobilized pro-abortion women