abortion legislation, the hypothesis being that the more embedded a person is in an increasingly conservative religious community, the less likely she will be to experience cognitive dissonance over ambivalent topics like abortion, because she adheres to the amplified religious position on it. It was found that religiosity leads to more dismissive attitudes towards abortion in general. Furthermore, the more conservative a religious denomination is in the terms of Bible literalism, the stricter is the view of its adherents that abortion should be forbidden by law in most or all cases. As Bible literalism entails the belief of being indisputably right about any issue touched by it, it leads to attitude persistence, which keeps the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" activist groups from finding a compromise. However, contrary to what the "Culture- Wars"-hypothesis suggests, data from public opinion polls do not show an increasing polarization in attitudes over the issue.