Many factors can shape how someone views abortion – gender, age and education, to name a few. Around the world, however, religious belief is the most powerful predictor that someone will disapprove, as I document in my 2025 book, “Fetal Positions.” Faith traditions’ teachings about abortion vary – and there is diversity of opinions within faiths, too. On average, though, people who say that religion is important in their lives are far more likely to think abortion is morally wrong.
But here’s the paradox: There’s a difference between abstract views and personal decisions. On average, strong religious beliefs and involvement in a religious community do not make an American woman less likely to terminate her first pregnancy, so long as she conceives without a potential marriage partner.
The picture becomes even more complex when we consider not just how religious someone is but which tradition they belong to. Young American women in conservative Protestant churches are about half as likely to say they have aborted a premarital pregnancy than Catholics and mainline Protestants, regardless of how devout they are, according to my co-authored research. Other work has found similar differences among Christian groups. There were too few respondents from other religions to fully assess differences, though unmarried young Jewish women in the U.S. likewise appear to have higher odds of obtaining an abortion than conservative Protestants.
Religion’s role in women’s actual decisions about whether to have an abortion is far more nuanced than abortion attitudes alone would suggest. Understanding these relationships can help lawmakers, advocates and the public develop policies that reflect lived realities, rather than relying on assumptions about ideology alone.
Beyond the clinic
Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, I followed approximately 5,000 women over six years. The data covers a period from the mid-1990s, when the women were teenagers, to the early 2000s, when they were in their early 20s.
My goal was to examine their views about abortion, their sexual behavior, whether they had a premarital pregnancy, and whether they gave birth. The survey also asked respondents to indicate their religious affiliation; how much they regularly attended services, participated in youth group activities and prayed; and how important religion was in their lives.
Longitudinal data is especially useful for sorting out patterns between religion and abortion, compared to surveys that look at a single moment in a woman’s life. For example, if someone is seeking an abortion, but their faith tradition disapproves, that cognitive dissonance may affect how she answers questions about her beliefs.
These six years of data form the basis of my earlier studies and contribute to my recent book. I was particularly interested in decisions about first pregnancies, which are especially pivotal. They can derail a college education, limit career opportunities, and reshape long-term goals in ways that can feel irreversible at a young age.
I focused only on unmarried young women who were pregnant for the first time. Approximately 25% of the women who had a premarital pregnancy during the six-year period said that they had terminated it. This percentage was roughly the same regardless of how important faith was to them, how much they prayed, or how often they participated in religious activities.
Sociologists Lexie Milmine and Tina Fetner analyzed 2017 data from Canadian women and came to a similar conclusion. They found that neither religious affiliation nor religious service attendance was significantly associated with the odds that a woman reported one or more abortions.
Type, not intensity
There is one religious factor that makes a difference, though: the type of tradition women report belonging to when they were teenagers.
Although various faiths hold different views of abortions, conservative Christian groups, which are influential in the U.S., generally oppose it – including the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination. The Catholic Church also officially disapproves of abortion, though 6 in 10 U.S. Catholics say it should be legal in all or most cases.
Therefore, in addition to researching strength of religious belief and involvement, I also examined whether the type of Christian religious affiliation mattered in shaping abortion decisions.
Focusing on the same group of unmarried young women, I found that regardless of how much they attended religious activities, prayed or reported that religion was very important in their lives, those who affiliated with a conservative Protestant faith when they were teenagers were less likely to terminate their first pregnancies than Catholics or mainline Protestants, which is similar to findings from other research.
The attitude-behavior gap
My research highlights the disconnect between religion’s role in shaping public opinion about abortion versus its influence on women’s actual decisions.
When it comes to attitudes, the relationship is clear and powerful. Regardless of which specific faith they affiliate with, people who say religion is important in their lives on average express stronger opposition to abortion.
But when women face the reality of an unintended pregnancy, religion’s influence is more nuanced. The strength of her personal devotion fails to explain whether a woman will actually choose to terminate her first pregnancy. In the U.S., the more influential religious factor seems to be which specific religious tradition she belongs to.
Decisions about later pregnancies may be more complicated. For example, around 6 in 10 U.S. abortion patients have had at least one child. It’s not clear how religion shapes mothers’ decisions about how an unexpected pregnancy would affect their family.
In the U.S., public opinion about reproductive rights is largely driven by different religious factors. When it comes to individual decisions about pregnancy, though, which religious tradition someone is affiliated with seems to hold the most sway – at least for first pregnancies outside of marriage.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Amy Adamczyk, City University of New York
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Amy Adamczyk has received funding from a range of organizations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Department of Homeland Security, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
