But the study did find that women who went to private religious schools were more likely to have had an abortion.
The
effect of schools was really dramatic. A woman who had gone to a
religious school was 5 times more likely to have had an extra-marital
abortion than a woman who went to a state school.
On the face of
it this is a pretty strange result. The researcher, sociologist Amy
Adamczyk at City University of New York, thinks it may be down to
social pressures against extramarital births:
"Religious
school attendance is not necessarily indicative of conservative
religious beliefs because students attend these schools for a variety
of reasons," Adamczyk said. "These schools tend to generate high levels
of commitment and strong social ties among their students and families,
so abortion rates could be higher due to the potential for increased
feelings of shame related to an extramarital birth." (Press release)
There's
another possibility, of course. It might be that students who go to
religious schools have restricted access to contraception. This would
fit with an earlier study which found that teenagers who make virginity
pledges are no more likely to abstain from sex, but are less likely to
use contraceptives. It also fits with evidence that more religious
countries have higher abortion rates.
So what else lowered the
abortion rate? Well, the press release and a lot of the media reports
picked up on the fact that Protestants were less likely than Catholics
and women of other faiths to have an abortion.
But what they don't mention is the fact that having no religion was just as effective at reducing abortions!
Here
are the data: Conservative Protestants were 48% less likely to have
their first pregnancy end in abortion. The reduction in women with no
religion was 43%. Those two numbers are statistically indistinguishable.
Now,
this is not because women with 'no religion' were better educated, or
from wealthier homes, or had higher college aspirations, or any of the
extenuating circumstances that might otherwise account for the effect.
All these were taken into account in the analysis.
Nope, it's freedom from religion, pure and simple, that led to fewer abortions."
http://bhascience.blogspot.com/2009/06/religious-schools-result-in-more.html
