Religion and Women’s Emotional Responses to Abortion

Abstract

The social processes that shape women’s emotional responses to abortions are not well understood, including the role of religion. Using a nationally representative sample of women who have had abortions (N = 1,217), we examine the relationships between religious service attendance, salience, and affiliation and negative and positive emotional responses to abortion. We find a higher importance of religious faith and conservative Protestant affiliation are strongly and significantly associated with higher probabilities of negative emotional responses and lower probabilities of positive emotional responses to abortion. These associations are reduced after accounting for women’s feelings about the rightness of their abortion decision at the time of abortion, suggesting these religious differences are attributable in part to moral incongruence. Our findings have important implications for understanding the prevalence and context of post-abortion emotional distress. Disproportionately negative emotional responses among certain religious women may lead religious groups and individuals to overestimate the prevalence of these responses.

Keywords

abortion religion mental health moral incongruence emotions

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