What the Pew Survey Tells Us about Faith and Abortion

Last night the NRLC convention unofficially kicked off with the annual meeting of the Association for Interdisciplinary Research in Values and Social Change. I am writing this edition ahead of time, knowing that I will be running from hither to yon over the next three days.

I did want to address something I promised I would talk about last week: Part Two of the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. There is much very worth reading (and quibbling with), but our single-issue concern is what this study of some 35,000 people tells us about how people of faith (or shades of faith or no faith—three in 10 “profess no religious identity, but sometimes go to church”) see the abortion issue.

There are problems with the way the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life formulated the basic abortion question—a persistent, systemic weakness in the survey as a whole. They asked people whether abortion should be legal in most or all cases versus illegal in most or all cases.

Had the survey given respondents more choices, no doubt Pew would have found that a solid majority of the respondents opposed the reasons for which almost all abortions are performed. But this nuance-free phraseology still produced only a slim majority for legal most/all.

That caveat noted, what do we learn from the survey, conducted May through August 2007? First and foremost there is a strong association between attending church regularly (at least once a week) and greater resistance to the culture of death.

For examples, 61% of people who say they attend an evangelical protestant church favor making most or all abortions illegal. But that figure jumps to 73% for those who attend weekly or more often.

Among Catholics, 45% favor making most or all abortions illegal. Of those who attend weekly or more, a much larger percentage-- 58%-- fall in that column.

The highest figure of all is among Mormons. Seventy percent say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. But the figure climbs to 78% for those Mormons who attend weekly or more.

Among a category described as “Historically Black Protestant Churches,” 46% told Pew that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. But among those who attend weekly or more often, the figure jumps to 50%.

Even among churches with a much lower overall opposition to most or all abortions, the percentage was much higher among those who regularly attended services. So, according to the Pew survey, among Orthodox Christians, only 30% said they agree that most or all abortions should be illegal. But that figure soared by more than two-thirds—to 51%--among regular attendees.

Likewise with Mainline Protestants. Only 32% of all members agree but 43% of those who go to church regularly did so.

One other important point comes from a 2007 Pew survey of white evangelicals. (I could not find the actual survey online.) The language was even more loaded than that found in Pew’s Landscape Survey. Respondents were asked whether they supported “making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion”!

Notwithstanding the tilt, a whopping 70% of younger white evangelicals agreed; 55% of older white evangelicals did as well. We read at the Pew website that of “39% of young Americans overall who share this view,” but as noted, a fairer question would have garnered much more support.

As we move ever closer to the November elections, you will read nonstop that the abortion issue has “lost saliency.” Or, if they aren’t telling you the abortion issue is vanishing, they will tell you that it no longer hurts pro-abortion candidates the way it has previously.

Don’t be fooled. Although people who take their faith seriously enough to attend services regularly are, generally speaking, most likely to be foes of abortion, there are countless millions of people of faith—and no faith—who draw the line at legalized baby execution.

They just need the smoke blown away and the mirrors polished clean so that they know who favors abortion and who opposes abortion.

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