Abortion and euthanasia: Explanatory factors of an association in Thanatos. Analysis of the European Values Study

Abstract

The European Values Study (EVS), and also the World Values Survey (WVS), have for decades included a question that asks about the degree of justification of different behaviors and actions, including abortion and euthanasia. Our research aims to study which factors influence the abortion/euthanasia association in Spain and whether this association is also observed in other countries. A factor analysis of the Spanish sample shows that a number of items related to sexuality and death tend to cluster together. This factor could be called “Eros-Thanatos,” and includes the justification of abortion and euthanasia, in terms of ideological consistency. The analysis shows that in Spain, as well as in Europe generally, not being a religious person is the principal factor associated with the greater justification of abortion and euthanasia. The article analyses whether this association in the Spanish data is something that can be generalized to other European countries or whether, on the contrary, there are factors such as culture and the historical past of the countries that modify the relationship. Correspondence analyses applied to different questions in the questionnaire show that it is possible to establish different dividing lines in Europe according to the values of its citizens, shaping a north-south axis and a west-east axis, in which the processes of secularization in Western Europe or the rise in institutional religion in the former Soviet republics might lie behind.