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Podcast: Skeptics in the Pub Online Podcast
Episode: The social and cultural factors influencing attitudes to abortion - Lora Adair and Nicole Lozano
Description: Scientific approaches to understanding reproductive choice - the decision to have a child, the decision to terminate a pregnancy, etc. - typically position decision-makers as rational. Attention is paid to economic forces of change (e.g., industrialisation, rising costs of living, globalisation), to explain why people are having fewer children relative to previous generations. What is missing is a description of the internal, psychological process when someone is making a choice about their reproduction, their family constellation, and their future. Are these choices rational? Do people really view children as a calculus of financial gains and losses? We explore...