United States anti-abortion movement
The United States anti-abortion movement (also called the pro-life movement or right-to-life movement) is a movement in the United States that opposes induced abortion and advocates for the protection of fetal life. Advocates support legal prohibition or restriction on ethical, moral, or religious grounds, arguing that human life begins at conception and that the human zygote, embryo or fetus is a person and therefore has a right to life. The anti-abortion movement includes a variety of organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body.[1] There are diverse arguments and rationales for the anti-abortion stance. Some allow for some permissible abortions, including therapeutic abortions, in exceptional circumstances such as incest, rape, severe fetal defects, or when the woman's health is at risk.
Before the Supreme Court 1973 decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, anti-abortion views predominated and found expression in state laws which prohibited or restricted abortions in a variety of ways. (See Abortion in the United States.) The anti-abortion movement became politically active and dedicated to the reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision, which struck down most state laws restricting abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.[2][3]
In the United States, the movement is associated with several Christian religious groups, especially the Catholic Church and Evangelical churches, and is frequently, but not exclusively, allied with the Republican Party.[4][5] The movement is also supported by secular organizations (such as Secular Pro-Life) and non-mainstream anti-abortion feminists.[6] The movement has campaigned to reverse Roe v. Wade and to promote legislative changes or constitutional amendments, such as the Human Life Amendment, that prohibit or at least broadly restrict abortion.[1]
On the other side of the abortion debate in the United States is the abortion-rights movement (also called the pro-choice movement), which argues that pregnant women should have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, ending federal abortion rights and allowing individual states to regulate their own abortion laws.[7]
Demographics
Within the movement
Studies indicate that activists within the American anti-abortion movement are predominantly white and religious. Scholars continue to dispute the primary factors that cause individuals to become anti-abortion activists. While some have suggested that a particular moral stance or worldview leads to activism, others have suggested that activism leads individuals to develop particular moral positions and worldviews.
A 1981 survey of dues paying members of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) by sociologist Donald O. Granberg found that survey respondents held conservative views on sex, sex education, and contraception. Additionally, Granberg's survey provided basic demographic characteristics of his sample: 98% of survey respondents were white, 63% were female, 58% had a college degree, and 70% were Catholic. Granberg concluded that conservative personal morality was the primary mechanism for explaining an individual's involvement in the anti-abortion movement.[63]
A 2002 study by Carol J.C. Maxwell drawing on decades of survey and interview data of direct-action activists within the anti-abortion movement found that 99% of the sample was white, 60% was female, 51% had a college degree, and 29% were Catholic. Like Granberg's 1981 study, Maxwell concluded that anti-abortion and abortion-rights activists held two different worldviews which in turn are formed by two different moral centers.[64]
In 2008, sociologist Ziad Munson studied the characteristics of both activists and non-activists who considered themselves anti-abortion. The anti-abortion activists of Munson's sample were 93% white, 57% female, 66% Catholic, and 71% had a college degree. Of non-activists who considered themselves anti-abortion, Munson found that 83% were white, 52% were female, 45% were Catholic, and 76% had a college degree. In Munson's analysis personal moralities and worldviews are formed as a consequence of participation in anti-abortion activism. Munson's analysis differs from previous scholarly work in its assertion that beliefs result from activism rather than causing activism. For Munson, life course factors make an individual more or less likely to become an activist.[65]
Popular opinion
A 2019 Gallup poll found that men and women in the United States generally hold similar abortion views: "19% of both men and women say abortion should be totally illegal; 31% of women and 26% of men want abortion to be totally legal."[66] In addition, 53% of men and 48% of women favored abortion being legal, but only under certain circumstances.[66]
Gallup polling in 2019 found that 25% of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances; 13%, under most circumstances; 39%, under only a few circumstances; and 21%, under no circumstances.[67] A 2020 poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research similarly found that 37% of Americans believed abortion should be legal under only a few circumstances. This answer was provided by 45% of Catholics and 67% of white evangelical Protestants.[68]
In the Gallup poll, when respondents were first asked about the legality of abortion, 49% described themselves as "pro-life" and 46% as "pro-choice". However, among people who were not asked about legality first, 43% described themselves as "pro-life" and 52% as "pro-choice". Gallup's 2019 polling also found that 50% of Americans believe abortion to be morally wrong, while 42% believe it to be morally acceptable, and 6% believe that it depends on the situation. When asked whether the Supreme Court should reverse their 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, 60% opined that the Court should not, while only 33% said that it should. Polling in 2020 revealed that 32% of Americans are either very or somewhat satisfied about abortion policies as they currently stand, while 24% report being dissatisfied and desire stricter policies and another 22% also express dissatisfaction but desire less strict policies.[69]
According to a 2013 Gallup poll, 15% of Americans with no religious identity are anti-abortion and slight majorities of Catholics, Protestants, Southerners, seniors and nonwhites reported as anti-abortion.[70] A 2019 Gallup poll found that Mormons, the Southern Baptist Convention, and Jehovah's Witnesses have the highest majorities who believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while atheists, agnostics, and Jews have the highest majorities who think the reverse.[71]
Abortion health risk claims
Some anti-abortion organizations and individuals disseminate false medical information and unsupported pseudoscientific[104][105] claims about alleged physical and mental health risks of abortion.[106][97] Many right-to-life organizations claim that abortion damages future fertility, or causes breast cancer,[107][108] which is contradicted by the medical professional organizations.[109][110][111][112][113][114] Some states, such as Alaska, Mississippi, West Virginia, Texas, and Kansas, have passed laws requiring abortion providers to warn patients of a link between abortion and breast cancer, and to issue other scientifically unsupported warnings.[115][116]
Some right-to-life advocacy groups allege a link between abortion and subsequent mental-health problems.[117] Some U.S. state legislatures have mandated that patients be told that abortion increases their risk of depression and suicide, despite the fact that such risks are not supported by the bulk of the scientific literature,[117][118][119][120][121] and are contradicted by mainstream organizations of mental-health professionals such as the American Psychological Association.[122][123][124]