| 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
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