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Why are Catholic women in the U.S. more likely to have an abortion than their Protestant counterparts?


According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health data, non-Hispanic Catholic women of childbearing age are 29% more likely than their Protestant counterparts to have abortions (full study). The rate is even higher--33%--if Hispanics are factored in. Another way of looking at it: while Protestant women make up about 54% of the population, they account for only 37% of the abortions. Catholic women make up 31% of the population and account for 31% of the abortions.

Given the Catholic Church's longstanding position against abortion, one would think the abortion rate would be far lower than the population as a whole -- and yet, if anything, it seems to be higher.

This paradox puzzles Catholic leaders on both sides of the issue--like Helen Alvare, the former chief pro-life strategist and spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for Free Choice.

The one explanation for which there is at least some anecdotal evidence is that Catholic women appear to experience more feelings of guilt around sex, and more shame about pregnancy outside of marriage.




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Although it is virtually unknown in much public international discourse, the Roman Catholic position on abortion is pluralistic. It has a strong pro-choice tradition and a conservative anti-choice tradition. Neither is official and neither is more Catholic than the other.


The hierarchical attempt to portray the Catholic position as univocal, an unchanging negative wafted through twenty centuries of untroubled consensus, is untrue.


By unearthing this authentic openness to choice on abortion and on contraception in the core of the tradition, the status of the anti-choice position is revealed as only one among many Catholic views.

The bible does not condemn abortion. The closest it gets to it is in Exodus 21:22 which speaks of accidental abortion. This imposes a financial penalty on a man who in the course of a brawl caused a woman to miscarry. The issue here is the father's right to progeny; he could fine you for the misdeed, but he could not claim "an eye for an eye" as if a person had been killed. Thus, as conservative theologian John Connery, S.J. said, "the fetus did not have the same status as the mother in Hebrew Law."



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