ABSTRACT

Public reaction to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States initially centered around abortion. However, approximately two months after the nomination, sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh were made public. We examined the extent that people’s perceptions of Kavanaugh’s stance on abortion and people’s attitudes toward whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault were associated with perceptions of Kavanaugh as a good Supreme Court justice. Data were collected from English- and Spanish-speaking participants (N = 2,883) in the United States via Qualtrics’ panel. Using an exploratory hierarchical regression approach, we found that people’s perceptions of whether Kavanaugh committed sexual assault was a stronger predictor of their attitudes toward Kavanaugh’s quality as a Supreme Court justice [F(1,2855) = 1736.54, p < .001] than people’s perceptions of him regarding abortion, after controlling for demographic characteristics and participants’ abortion identity (e.g., identifying as pro-life, pro-choice). That sexual assault was a stronger predictor could suggest the importance of sexual assault regarding opinions of Supreme Court justices or potential over inflation of abortion as a salient issue. Researchers should investigate the saliency of sexual and reproductive health issues in relation to Supreme Court nominees.

摘要

公众对布雷特·卡瓦诺 (Brett Kavanaugh) 被提名为美国最高法院大法官的反应最初集中在堕胎问题上。然而，在提名后大约两个月，针对卡瓦诺的性侵犯指控被公之于众。我们研究了人们对卡瓦诺在堕胎问题上的立场的看法以及人们对卡瓦诺是否实施性侵犯的态度与卡瓦诺作为一名优秀的最高法院法官的看法相关的程度。数据是从讲英语和西班牙语的参与者那里收集的（N= 2,883) 在美国通过 Qualtrics 的面板。使用探索性层次回归方法，我们发现人们对卡瓦诺是否实施性侵犯的看法更能预测他​​们对卡瓦诺作为最高法院法官的素质的态度 [ F (1,2855) = 1736.54, p< .001] 比人们对他关于堕胎的看法，在控制了人口特征和参与者的堕胎身份（例如，确定为反堕胎，赞成选择）之后。性侵犯是一个更强的预测因素，这可能表明性侵犯对最高法院法官的意见的重要性或堕胎的潜在过度膨胀是一个突出问题。研究人员应调查与最高法院提名人相关的性健康和生殖健康问题的显着性。