About
Blog
Links
Events
Internships
Research
Home
Download Current Religious Attendance and Structure of Family of Origin Chart Only (.jpg): Free Download Current Religious Attendance Chart Only (.jpg): Free Download Structure of Family of Origin Chart Only (.jpg): Free
Download PDF (.pdf): Free
Women who worship at least weekly and grew up in intact married families are the least likely to abort their first baby. According to the National Survey of Family Growth, 11.3 percent of women who grew up in intact married families and now worship at least weekly had aborted their first pregnancy, followed by women who grew up in other family structures and now worship at least weekly (11.8 percent), those who grew up in other family structures and now never worship (19.7 percent), and those who grew up in intact married families and now never worship (22.4 percent).
Examining structure of family of origin only, 13 percent of women who grew up in intact cohabiting families have aborted their first pregnancy, followed by women who grew up in married stepfamilies (15.4 percent), those from cohabiting stepfamilies (15.9 percent), intact married families (16 percent), always single parent families (17.2 percent), and single divorced parent families (18.5 percent). It is to be noted that the typical pattern of the intact married family being the strongest is broken here.
Examining current religious attendance only, 11.3 percent of women who worship at least weekly aborted their first pregnancy, followed by those who attend religious services between one and three times a month (14.6 percent), those who attend religious services less than once a month (20.8 percent), and those who never attend religious services (21.6 percent).[1]
Related Insights from Other Studies
Several other studies corroborate the direction of these findings. Stanley Henshaw and Kathryn Kost of the Alan Guttmacher Institute reported that "being a born-again or Evangelical Christian" reduced the risk of an "unintended pregnancy leading to abortion."[2]
Lisa Pearce of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Arland Thornton of the University of Michigan found that the more frequently eighteen-year-olds attend religious services, the more antiabortion they are.[3]
No other significant studies investigated a correlation between abortion and structure of family of origin.
Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D. and D. Paul Sullins, Ph.D.
Dr. Fagan is senior fellow and director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) at Family Research Council. Dr. Sullins is an associate professor of sociology at The Catholic University of America .
[1] These charts draw on data collected by the National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle 6 (2002). The sample consists of women between the ages of 14 and 44 and numbers 7,643.
[2] Stanley K. Henshaw and Kathryn Kost, "Abortion Patients in 1994-1995: Characteristics and Contraceptive Use," Family Planning Perspectives 28 (1996): 140-47, 158.
[3] Lisa Pearce and Arland Thornton, "Religious Identity and Family Ideologies in the Transition to Adulthood," Journal of Marriage and Family 69 (2007): 1227-43.
