Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion
“Adamczyk does a masterful job of unveiling how and why abortion disapproval varies across nations, as well as how these attitudes are changing over time.”
“This book is not just timely, but also a crucial pioneering contribution that is bound to stimulate more multidisciplinary academic explorations and public discussion on abortion and various related issues on a global stage.”
“Blending rigorous survey and media analysis research with compelling insights from experts, Adamczyk uncovers surprising patterns that challenge assumptions of how we may conceptualize abortion. Fetal Positions is an essential read for understanding the nuances of global abortion perspectives.”
Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation
The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the "intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice." To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States.
The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on over 200 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting.
Finalist for Christianity Today’s Book of the Year Award, Marriage & Family Category
Published on February 23, 2025
What explains differences in public opinion about abortion around the globe? In Fetal Positions, Amy Adamczyk makes the case that abortion disapproval is not randomly distributed across the world. In fact, patterns can be found across nations. Adamczyk shows that cross-national differences in public opinion can largely be explained based on a handful of factors—overall levels of religious belief, Catholic proportion, economic and educational development, type of government and government history, and gender inequality.
Using large-scale surveys, in-depth case studies of the US and China, and an analysis of newspaper articles from more than forty countries, Fetal Positions examines the forces shaping cross-national abortion rates and personal abortion decisions, analyzes the links between attitudes and laws, and unpacks the pathways through which personal and country-characteristics shape views.
By offering important insights that can only be gleaned through cross-national analysis, Fetal Positions provides an international focus and fresh perspective on the abortion debate.
Published on February 23, 2025