The effects of religious contextual norms, structural constraints, and personal religiosity on abortion decisions

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Abstract

Researchers have established that individual religiosity influences abortion attitudes, and that abortion attitudes, in turn, shape abortion restrictions and access. Less clear is whether religion and abortion structural constraints influence abortion decisions. This study examines the several individual, contextual, and structural factors that could shape the abortion decisions of women who conceive before marriage. Special attention is given to the importance of academic aspirations and structural constraints, in contrast to religious beliefs and county religious context, for making an abortion decision. Hierarchical modeling techniques and two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) are employed. Neither generic religiosity nor conservative Protestant religious context appear to influence women’s abortion decisions. Conversely, young women’s abortion decisions are shaped by academic ambition, identification with a conservative Protestant denomination, proximity to an abortion clinic and the level of public abortion funding in their county of residence.

Introduction

Among young women who obtain an abortion, the majority have conceived out-of-wedlock, and, therefore, have to make a decision about whether to carry their pregnancy to term outside a marital relationship (Henshaw and Silverman, 1988, Torres and Forrest, 1988, Harper et al., 2005). Unmarried women face substantial costs—both emotional and financial—if they choose to carry their fetus to term. When the cost is high, individuals may find it difficult to act according to their personal beliefs. Rather, practical considerations, like whether a woman can continue her education if she carries her pregnancy to term, may be more important for determining whether a woman obtains an abortion.

Along with personal beliefs and ambitions, there are several contextual influences and structural constraints that could influence a woman’s abortion decision. Many states have laws that limit abortion access and clinics that are far away could make obtaining an abortion financially costly and time consuming. However, little research attention has been given to examining which structural constraints (e.g., clinic accessibility, informed consent and waiting period laws, and public funding) are most likely to influence abortion decisions. Likewise, a substantial amount of research attention has been devoted to examining the relationship between religious beliefs and abortion attitudes (Jelen and Wilcox, 2003, Cook et al., 1992, Ellison et al., 2005, Emerson, 1996). Yet, researchers have given almost no attention to whether religious contextual norms influence young women’s abortion decisions. Even if a pregnant woman is not personally religious, the religious attitudes of the people in her midst could shape whether she thinks abortion is immoral and the importance she places on motherhood, even if unplanned and untimely.

This article expands our current understanding about abortion decisions by examining whether county religious context and structural constraints, along with personal religiosity, influence abortion decisions. While personal religiosity and the county proportion conservative Protestant do not appear to influence young women’s abortion decisions, women who identify with a conservative Protestant denomination are less likely than Catholics, and mainline Protestants to obtain an abortion. Likewise, abortion decisions appear to be shaped by whether there is an abortion clinic in the county of residence and the extent of public abortion funding. Several individual and county factors related to academic aspirations and career success also help explain whether or not a women who conceives before marriage obtains an abortion.

Section snippets

Personal religiosity and academic aspirations for abortion decisions

If Americans’ abortion attitudes are an indication of the link between religion and abortion behavior, we would expect that traditionalist Catholic and conservative Protestant women would be less likely than other women to obtain an abortion. Numerous studies have examined Americans’ abortion attitudes. In a review of this literature, Jelen and Wilcox (2003) concluded that religion is one of the most powerful predictors of abortion attitudes. Abortion is one of the main issues fueling

Religious contextual effects for abortion decisions

Aside from personal religiosity, recent empirical work in the sociology of religion has found support for the Durkheimian idea that religious context influences attitudes and behaviors. Much of this research (Stark et al., 1980, Stark et al., 1982, Stark and Bainbridge, 1996, Regnerus, 2004, Adamczyk and Felson, 2006, Welch et al., 1991, Moore and Vanneman, 2003) has focused on how religious norms can influence attitudes and behaviors like delinquency and the timing of premarital sex.

One

Structural constraints for abortion decisions

In addition to the religious context, structural constraints may also be important for whether a young woman obtains an abortion. One important victory for the pro-life movement was the 1992 Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which gave states the right to enact restrictions that do not create an “undue burden” for women seeking abortion. Planned Parenthood v. Casey led to the enactment of a number of state-level abortion restrictions, including in-person counseling one day

Data and measurement

To test the relationship between religion, abortion, and structural constraints, I use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health

Dependent variable

The dependent variable is a dichotomous variable indicating whether the first pregnancy was aborted. In the third wave of interviews Add Health Investigators asked each respondent to indicate the people with whom they had a heterosexual romantic relationship since 1995. Respondents were asked to include all relationships involving a pregnancy, even if they did not consider them romantic relationships. Add Health investigators then asked questions about each person listed, including whether they

Respondent variables

I use three measures of religion at the level of the respondent—private religiosity, public religiosity, and denominational affiliation—to assess the relationship between personal religiosity and abortion behavior.

County-level variables

County religious context is assessed using a measure of the proportion of residents who belong to a conservative Protestant church (for denominations that comprise this category, see Bradley et al., 1992). This measure is based on church membership and adherence data collected every 10 years by the Church Growth Research Center at the Church of Nazarene headquarters in Kansas City. The Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies sponsored data collection and the Glenmary Research

Method and analytic strategy

To examine the influence of county religiosity and structural constraints on an abortion decision I use generalized mixed models (Breslow and Clayton, 1993). Unlike conventional regression models, hierarchical modeling correctly estimates the standard errors of the contextual variables (Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992). This method adjusts for the correlated errors among individuals within the same context (e.g., county) and uses the appropriate degrees of freedom for county-level units. As a result,

Results

Before running the regression models, I first examine bivariate statistics of the relationship between structural constraints and individual and county proportion conservative Protestant by women’s abortion decisions. According to these bivariate statistics which are shown in Table 3, women who reside in counties where abortion is more accessible, there are fewer restrictive laws, or state funding is available, are more likely to get an abortion than other women whose first pregnancy occurred

Discussion and conclusion

This study shows that a woman’s decision to abort a premarital pregnancy is clearly influenced by academic aspirations. Aside from denominational affiliation, factors related to academic opportunity costs are the only other significant variables in the models examined for explaining whether or not a young unmarried women who conceives before marriage obtains an abortion. A number of other studies (Torres and Forrest, 1988, Cooksey, 1990, Finer et al., 2005) have suggested that the greater the

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