Managing Religion and Morality Within the Abortion Experience: Qualitative Interviews With Women Obtaining Abortions in the U.S.

• Author: Michele Coleman,Lori Frohwirth,Ann M. Moore
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.289
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Published date: 01 December 2018

Managing Religion and Morality Within the Abortion

Experience: Qualitative Interviews With Women

Obtaining Abortions in the U.S.

Lori Frohwirth, Michele Coleman , and Ann M. Moore

Most women in the United States are religious, and most major religions in the United States

doctrinally disapprove of abortion. A substantial proportion of U.S. women have abortions. Although

relationships among religious beliefs, abortion attitudes, behaviors, and stigma have been found in

previous research, the relationship between stigma and religion is understudied. In-depth interviews

conducted with 78 women having abortions at nine sites in the United States found religion to

permeate abortion stigma manifestations and management strategies identif‌ied in previous research,

for religious and religiously aff‌iliated respondents as well as those who did not claim a religious

aff‌iliation. Health-care providers, religious leaders, researchers, and advocates need to recognize the

inf‌luence religion has on the experience of obtaining an abortion for all women in theUnited States.

KEY WORDS: abortion, religion, stigma

Background

Religion and abortion are closely connected in political and social discourse

in the United States. Most major religions express doctrinal disapproval of

abortion (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2013a), and this

condemnation is ref‌lected in individuals’ stated beliefs; research has demon-

strated a strong connection between individual religiosity and negative abortion

attitudes (Adamczyk, 2013; Alvarez & Brehm, 1995; Craig, Cane, & Martinez,

2002; Emerson, 1996; Hoffman & Mills Johnson, 2005; Jelen & Wilcox, 2003; Sahar

& Karasawa, 2005; The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2008; Woodrum

& Davison, 1992). Recent polling found that, when asked if abortion was morally

wrong, almost half of Americans said that it was (47 percent), with only 13

percent reporting that abortion was morally acceptable, and 27 percent stating

that abortion is not a moral issue. Larger percentages of Protestants and Catholics

reported believing abortion to be morally wrong (56 and 58 percent) and only 20

percent of those without an aff‌iliation held this belief (The Pew Forum on

Religion and Public Life, 2013b).

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 10, No. 4, 2018

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.289

#2018 The Authors. World Medical & Health Policy Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Policy Studies Organization

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use

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adaptations are made.

Both religious aff‌iliation and the experience of having an abortion are

common in the United States; 77 percent of Americans aff‌iliate themselves with a

religion (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2015), and 79 percent of

women of reproductive age do so (Jerman, Jones, & Onda, 2016). One out of

every four American women will have had an abortion by age 45 (at current

abortion rates) (Jones & Jerman, 2017). Religiously aff‌iliated women in the United

States therefore do obtain abortions despite doctrinal disapproval of the practice;

approximately 60 percent of the over 900,000 women who obtained an abortion in

2014 claimed a religious aff‌iliation (Jerman et al., 2016). Nor does it appear that

there is a striking difference between the abortion-related behavior of women

who are aff‌iliated with “mainstream” religions versus all women. Current

demographics show that Catholic women obtain abortions at the same rate as all

other women with Mainline Protestants at a slightly lower rate. Abortion-related

behavior is different at the ends of the spectrum, however; Evangelicals obtain

abortions at half the rate of all women, and women with no aff‌iliation at nearly

double the rate of all women (Jerman et al., 2016). Studies have found that

religion plays an inconclusive and context-specif‌ic role in women’s decision

making about whether to terminate a pregnancy (Adamczyk, 2008, 2009;

Adamczyk & Felson, 2008; Williams, 1982).

Due to the high levels of religious aff‌iliation and religiosity of the U.S.

population, this religious disapproval has implications for individual women

choosing to have an abortion. These women (both those who claim a religious

identity and those who do not but live in this country’s highly religious culture,

where religious values are often intertwined with social and public policy) must

decipher from a myriad of messages whether abortion is the right option for

them and manage the implications of their decision within their own religious

and moral frameworks. Foster, Gould, Taylor, and Weitz (2012) documented this

potential conf‌lict in her survey of 5,387 abortion patients at one U.S. clinic in 2008

regarding their decision to terminate. Thirty-six percent of these women reported

having spiritual concerns about abortion and 28 percent were not at peace

spiritually with their decision.

These concerns suggest a concept of religiously informed abortion stigma

not addressed in the previously discussed literature. Stigma has been studied

since the 1960s and applied to reproductive outcomes and abortion in particular

beginning in the late 1990s. Goffman’s (1963) theory of social stigma, often

considered the preeminent stigma theory, def‌ines stigma as an “attribute that is

deeply discrediting” which “taints” an individual’s identity. Goffman also

theorizes stigma-management strategies. Typically, individuals affected by

stigma hold the same beliefs as society at large about what is considered

“normal,” and understand which aspects of themselves are stigmatized; they

then often correctly perceive they will not fully be accepted by society when in

possession of the stigmatized trait. This causes shame because the individual

cannot ever reach “normal” status. The individual can attempt to correct the

blemish by mastering an area or activity considered close to the shortcoming,

for example, a person who uses a wheelchair becoming a marathoner. The

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