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June 01, 2009
Religious Devotion Does Not Impact Abortion Decisions of Young Unwed Women
Sociologist finds that factors such as grades and parents’ education are more influential than religious involvement for pregnant teens and young adults who face abortion decision
WASHINGTON, DC – Unwed pregnant teens and twenty-somethings who
attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely
to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to
sociological research published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
“This research suggests that young, unmarried women are confronted with
a number of social, financial and health-related factors that can make
it difficult for them to act according to religious values when
deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy,” said the study’s
author, sociologist Amy Adamczyk, an assistant professor at the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City
University of New York.
While previous research has investigated the link between religion and
abortion attitudes, fewer studies have explored religion’s impact on
abortion behavior. To fill this research gap, Adamczyk examined how
personal religious involvement, schoolmate religious involvement and
school type influenced the pregnancy decisions of a sample of 1,504
unmarried and never-divorced women age 26 and younger from 125
different schools. The women ranged in age from 14 to 26 at the time
they discovered they were pregnant. Twenty-five percent of women in the
sample reported having an abortion, a likely underestimate, according
to Adamczyk.
Results revealed no significant link between a young woman’s reported
decision to have an abortion and her personal religiosity, as defined
by her religious involvement, frequency of prayer and perception of
religion’s importance. Adamczyk said that this may be partially
explained by the evidence that personal religiosity delays the timing
of first sex, thereby shortening the period of time in which religious
women are sexually active outside of marriage.
Despite the absence of a link between personal religious devotion and
abortion, religious affiliation did have some important influence.
Adamczyk found that conservative Protestants were the least likely to
report having an abortion, less likely than mainline Protestants,
Catholics and women with non-Christian religious affiliations.
Regarding the impact of the religious involvement of a woman’s peers,
Adamczyk found no significant influence. 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.
Despite Adamczyk’s finding that rates of reported abortions were higher
for young women educated at private religious schools, the type of
religious school was not a factor: Catholic schools had similar rates
as other religious schools.
“Religious school attendance is not necessarily indicative of
conservative religious beliefs because students attend these schools
for a variety of reasons,” Adamczyk said. “These schools tend to
generate high levels of commitment and strong social ties among their
students and families, so abortion rates could be higher due to the
potential for increased feelings of shame related to an extramarital
birth.”
Data for this study came from the National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent Health (Add Health), a three-wave school-based study of the
health-related behaviors of students in grades 7 to 12 at the time of
the first wave. Adamczyk analyzed data from the first and third waves
of Add Health, the first wave taking place from 1994 to 1995 and the
third wave being completed between 2001 and 2002.
The article, “Understanding the Effects of Personal and School
Religiosity on the Decision to Abort a Premarital Pregnancy,” is
available to members of the media in advance of publication on an
embargoed basis. Reporters may contact Jackie Cooper, media relations
officer at the American Sociological Association, at pubinfo@asanet.org or (202) 247-9871, to request the article or author interviews.
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The Journal of Health and Social Behavior is a quarterly journal of the American Sociological Association.