Morality policy at the frontier of science: legislators’ views on germline engineering

Abstract

Religion is increasingly relevant to science policy formation, but how lawmakers’ religious identities are related to their policy views remains poorly understood. To address this gap, we draw on a nationwide survey of state legislators (N = 691) to examine religious and ideological differences in support for germline gene editing (GGE) policy. GGE is an ideal context to examine the relationship between religion, politics, and science policy due to its contemporary salience and moral dimensions. Fixed-effects regressions show that religious differences do not directly explain differences in lawmakers’ support for this technology. However, lawmakers’ political ideologies moderate the relationship between religion and support for GGE. Among the least religious lawmakers, the results reveal only minor differences in liberals’ and conservatives’ support for GGE. Among the most religious lawmakers, however, liberals are nearly five times more likely than conservatives to support this technology.