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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, "." Faith traditions' —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 , 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 . Other work has 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 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 , I 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 and contribute to my . I was particularly interested in decisions about first pregnancies, which are especially pivotal. They can derail a , , 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. regardless of how important faith was to them, how much they prayed, or how often they participated in religious activities.

Sociologists and analyzed 2017 data from Canadian women and . 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 , conservative Christian groups, which are influential in the U.S., generally —including the , America's . The also officially disapproves of abortion, though 6 in 10 U.S. Catholics in all or most cases.

Therefore, in addition to researching the strength of religious belief and involvement, I also examined whether the 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 when they were teenagers were than Catholics or mainline Protestants, which is similar to .

The attitude-behavior gap

My research highlights the disconnect between religion's role in shaping public opinion about abortion .

When it comes to attitudes, . Regardless of which specific faith they affiliate with, people who say religion is important in their lives 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 her first pregnancy. In the U.S., the more influential religious factor seems to be which she belongs to.

Decisions about later pregnancies may be more complicated. For example, about 6 in 10 U.S. abortion patients . 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 . 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.

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