Conclusion:This graph defends our hypothesis that states with higher democratic populations tend to have higher abortion rates. The graph shows a relatively strong positive correlation between cook index score and abortion rates.

 

It is also worth noting that states with middle secularism have a much stronger positive correlation between cook index score and abortion rate, compared to states with low and high secularism. This shows that religion also plays a role in the amount of abortions but not as much as political identity.

According to our graph, the data shows that our hypothesis is partially correct. We see that in rural areas, our hypothesis does hold. Regardless of education in rural areas, abortion rate increases as religiosity increases; abortion rate and religiosity have a positive correlation in rural areas. However, in urban areas, the data tell us that abortion rate goes down as religiosity increases, indicating an inverse relationship. Also, in urban areas, there is a higher abortion rate amongst states with a higher education. This could possibly be because in urban areas, there is such a high concentration of ideas and cultures, that those who are religious begin to polarize from those who are agnostic, causing their religious beliefs to strengthen. It is also possible that the higher rates of abortion in those who receive a college education could be due to the knowledge about the gestation period and sexual education that is gained over the course of education. Furthermore, it could be that college students want to finish school and start a career before having a child.

What we found: The data showed that in rural areas  religious attendance does not correlate with abortions. In urban areas the graph shows that as religious attendance goes up the rate of abortions goes down showing a direct correlation.

Therefore our hypothesis is valid for urban area and invalid for rural areas. 

 

                       The first graph displays results that do not support our hypothesis. The abortion rate remains the same over a period of increasing church attendance however, these results are collected from urban areas with smaller populations, suggesting the presence of unknown variables such as differing education or political preference. In the second graph there is a strong negative correlation between abortion rates and church attendance within highly populated urban states. A relationship can be drawn between decreasing abortion rates and higher church attendance in these higher populated states; Texas, Utah, and Georgia. States with a more religious population base will be more inclined to reject abortion within communities, creating lower abortion rates.

Due to the reason that conservatives are known to hold abortions in lower standards than liberals, we believe that states with higher concentration of conservatives among their population will have stricter laws regarding having abortions.

 

 

According to this graph, we notice a negative correlation between the green and orange line, though the orange line is steeper than the green one due to the fact that orange represents the number of states with less restriction on abortion, and the green line represents the moderate restriction on abortion. In addition, the blue line represents the most severe states who has the greatest restriction on abortion. We can conclude from this graph that as the percentage of concentration of republican increases, so the level of abortion decreases, thus expressing a negative correlation. The only line that isn’t decreasing is the blue line, which makes sense since it represents states with the strictest abortion laws so of course it will remain constant.

 

In conclusion both how liberal a state is and the attendance policy of church have an effect on the abortion rate of a state. As the percentage of liberals a state is increases so does the abortion rate, which is a positive relation. Now we added in a third variable, which is church attendance, this variable shows that as the number of church attendees increases, the abortion rate increases less as we move right on the graph. The abortion rate still increases when as the state gets more liberal, but less so when there is a larger population that goes to church. The slope of the line with a high church attendance has a smaller slope than the slope of the line that represents the low church attendance. So states who are more liberal but still have a larger population that attend church will have a smaller abortion rate than a liberal state with a small church attendance.

Hypothesis: States with a higher percentage of women in public office will in turn have higher abortion rates.

 

As you can see from the graph we decided to split it into two different graphs to show a clear representation of the amount of women in office compared to their abortion rate.  The higher the urban rate and higher representation of women in office shows the abortion rate to be at it highest.  The blue line is on a steeper angle than the red line because the high urban areas have more availability to facilities to have an abortion. However, what is unclear is whether the higher percentage of women in the legislature or the higher percentage of urbanization is the bigger contributing factor in the abortion rates. Something we would further test is if the percentage of women in the legislature effects the abortion laws.

We found that there is a strong positive relationship between location and abortion rate and democratic ideology. If you know that a state has a large urban population, according to our scatterplot, there is a high chance that the state also has a high abortion rate. For example, we know that New York has a high urban rate and our data shows that it also has a high abortion rate we believe this is because New York is a blue state which means that there is higher access to abortion. In comparison, Oklahoma has a low abortion rate, a low urban population, and they also are strongly ideologically Republican. This proves our hypothesis that high abortion rate is linked to having an ideologically democratic state. From this scatterplot we can say that there is a positive relationship between abortion rate and urban populations and democratic ideology. 

We think that this geographical relationship can be explained by how ideologically democratic the state is. We found the states with a high urban populations tended to be more ideologically democratic and also had a high abortion rate. We believe this is because the democratic party tends to value access to abortion. 
Lindsey Cookson
Nicholas Hedenkamp
Kris Kolvereid

Conclusion: According to this graph, the higher the amount of people who consider religion important in a state, the lower the abortion rate in that state is. In addition to this, as states get more conservative, states tend to have lower abortion rates. In religious states, however, abortion rates are not as greatly affected by the political affiliation of a state. 

As the graph indicates, a control for the variable of religious importance highlights the strength of the correlation between democratic/ republican states and the abortion rate. The states that have a lower religious importance have a more positive slope, indicating that the more liberal a state, the more abortions are performed. In the states that have high religious importance we see the same correlation, but to a lesser extent.  

The findings in this graph generally support our hypothesis because the abortion rate is not as high is religious states and conservative states. 

This graph shows the rate of abortion vs per capita income when controlling for high vs low percent urban population. We can see a rise in abortion rates in regard to per capita income, and the effect witnessed is much greater in higher percent urban populated areas. 

The amount of variation in abortion rates throughout the 50 states is dependent on political view.  Religious attendance will have a significant effect on abortion rates along with political liberality.    

We believe that the relationship between the cook.index measurement and abortion rates is positively correlated: the more liberal a state is, the higher the number of abortions in that state.  The less liberal a state is, the lower the abortion rate in that state. We also predict that high religious attendance will have a stronger effect on abortion rates than political ideology.

Our hypothesis was somewhat false, as the slopes of the two lines are nearly parallel and thus religious attendance has less of an effect than we predicted it would have. 

Religious attendance of a state has about an equal effect on abortion rates as political ideology, however there is a slightly more significant positive relationship between abortion rates and political ideology in low-attendance states than high attendance.  Religious attendance will shift the slopes (abortion rates per political ideology) so it has a very slight effect outside of political ideology. Overall, however,  we can conclude that political ideology and religious attendance have a nearly equal effect on abortion rates (an additive relationship), and thus our hypothesis was wrong.