Study: Religion Makes Women No Less Likely To Obtain Abortions

A new study from the Journal of Health and Social Behavior shows that women who attend religious schools who then become pregnant in their teens or twenties are more likely than their public school peers to opt for abortion. Is that the smell of hypocrisy?

Sociologist Amy Adamczyk finds, in fact, that being religious (or not) didn’t make women any more or less likely to choose abortion — meaning that, overall, women were equally likely to have abortions if they were very religious as if they weren’t. However, women that attended religious schools — particularly Protestant-denominated schools — were more likely to opt for abortion than even their Catholic school peers

.However, Adamczyk did find that women who attended school with conservative Protestants were more likely to decide to have an extramarital baby in their 20s than in their teenage years.

“The values of conservative Protestant classmates seem to have an abortion limiting effect on women in their 20s, but not in their teens, presumably because the educational and economic costs of motherhood are reduced as young women grow older,” Adamczyk said.

In Glamour‘s recent article about women who chose abortions, counselors strongly recommended that women who felt abortion was murder choose other options.

“If a woman truly thinks having an abortion is the same as murdering a child you might see on the playground, she should strongly reconsider and seek counseling and other alternatives, such as adoption,” Baker says.

The study indicates, however, that some women likely go straight from the protest lines to the clinics… and then back outside.

Religious Devotion Does Not Impact Abortion Decisions Of Young Unwed Women [EurekAlert]