| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores attitudes towards different forms of reproductive rights in Europe, both variation in such attitudes and what factors can help us explain this variation. The gender and politics literature has begun disaggregating women’s issues into sub- categories. Due to the varied nature of the reproductive issues, I argue needs this important sub-category needs to be disaggregated further. One important reproductive issue is abortion, and the relevant factors for explaining variation in individual attitudes are well-established. In comparison, much less is known about what explains variation in attitudes toward assisted reproductive technology (ART), which is an emerging issue in the field of reproductive rights. Drawing on explanations identified for abortion attitudes, I rely on party explanations and cultural and religious explanations to explain individual attitudes towards ART. Employing the most comprehensive survey data available (European Values Study), I test what country-level explanations account for variation in aggregated attitudes toward assisted insemination (AI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) compared to abortion in Europe. I find that political orientation has a relatively little explanatory power for AI/IVF and abortion attitudes, while religiosity is a substantial predictor of negative attitudes towards AI/IVF and abortion. I draw on data from the EVS as well as the Norwegian National Election Study (NNES), which includes variables on both surrogacy and abortion attitudes, to disaggregate attitudes towards reproductive rights further. The results suggest Christian Democratic Party support and religiosity are strong predictors of negative attitudes toward AI/IVF, surrogacy and abortion. My findings point to the importance of disaggregating the sub-category of reproductive issues even further, as the explanatory power of political orientation and religiosity differ between AI/IVF and abortion attitudes, as well as AI/IVF and surrogacy attitudes. | eng |