Their own reasons for seeking an abortion varied. And 50% more said that abortion’s morality “depends.” Asked to clarify, interviewees named contingencies such as a person’s reasons, beliefs, risks, abortion history, or consent to sex. It also complicates how many of us may understand the ways that ordinary Americans put their values vis-a-vis abortion into practice in real life.Īmong interviewees who disclosed to us a personal abortion experience, 10% told us that they, too, were “morally opposed” to abortion. My co-authors and I call this inclination to offer help that runs counter to another value “discordant benevolence.”įinding morally opposed Americans among willing “helpers” muddies the line between those who support abortion rights and those who oppose them. Our research suggests otherwise: that requests for help from friends and family activate multiple and potentially competing values. And a third, “discretion,” considered treating friends and family as capable of making their own moral decisions.Īll three approaches enabled Americans otherwise opposed to abortion to maintain their personal values - in this case, keeping their moral opposition to abortion - while also exercising what they believed was an obligation to support a loved one. The second, “exemption,” carved out a special allowance for only their own loved ones. The first was “commiseration”: exercising empathy for imperfect loved ones in an imperfect world.
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Our team found three main explanations during our interviews. Talking confidentially with morally opposed Americans willing to help a loved one get an abortion helped us understand this seemingly contradictory behavior. Three-quarters of the hundreds of Americans my team and I interviewed knew someone personally who has had an abortion. women will obtain an abortion by the age of 45. While federal and state courts debate the legal status of abortion, the issue is much more personal for ordinary Americans. Six percent would help pay for the abortion itself.Īmid the backdrop of legislation in Texas permitting citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, these findings may be noteworthy. Forty-three percent would help make arrangements, and 28% would help pay for associated costs. population overall.ĭata from the 2018 General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey fielded since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, revealed that 76% of Americans who were morally opposed to abortion would nonetheless give “emotional support” to a friend or family member who decided to have an abortion. residents, inviting participation in a study regarding a “social issue.” From the nearly 700 who completed a demographic pre-screener online, we selected 217 for in-depth interviews averaging 75 minutes. We mailed letters to 2,500 randomly selected U.S. My research team talked face to face, confidentially, with hundreds of Americans throughout the United States to explore abortion opinions beyond what surveys reveal. Cowan and colleagues, shows that many Americans may be willing to help a friend or family member get an abortion – including those morally opposed to it. My research, in collaboration with social demographer Sarah K. Abortion seekers - more than half of whom are already mothers, many with young children - commonly look to friends or family for help. mean that few Americans can obtain one without help.
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The cost and logistics of undergoing an abortion in the U.S. “eeing how was raised and all the things that had happened to her, I guess it gave me more of a viewpoint where I would still say wrong, but I would never tell anyone, ‘You did wrong,’ or condemn them in my mind,” she said. She explains that her friend wasn’t perfect and neither were her circumstances, but she was still worthy of help. … That’s the black and whiteness of it, for me: Either it’s life or it’s not.” Abortion is “murder,” she told me.īut she has also driven a friend to a clinic to get an abortion.Īs a sociologist, I met this woman in May 2019 while leading a study about how everyday people across the U.S. Republican, Christian and a grandmother, she “can’t believe that anybody could honestly say that life doesn’t begin at conception. A 58-year-old woman whose identity is confidential as part of a research project is among a sizable proportion of Americans who are morally opposed to abortion.