With the terrible events that unfolded over the holiday weekend still reverberating across the country, it is timely that the Christian Research group LifeWay would release the findings of a survey they conducted concerning abortion and the demographics of abortion when it comes to religion. The study was co-sponsored by Care Net, a pregnancy center support organization. Some of their findings:
- 70 percent of the women they surveyed identified as Christians.
- 23 percent of Christian women who have had an abortion consider themselves evangelical Christians.
- Over one third of the women surveyed attend a church once a week or more.
- Over half of the women who attend church regularly have kept their terminated pregnancy secret from their church community.
On the plus side, and probably surprising to many on the right of this issue who frequently share horror stories of women secretly having abortions while good Christian men are powerless, the majority of women based their decision to terminate a pregnancy (regardless of their religious affiliation) on the influence of the father of the unborn child. The influence of the father in this case was followed by the influence of a medical provider. So women who end up terminating a pregnancy aren’t, on the whole, a part of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
There is much more ambivalence when it comes to how safe it is to talk with a pastor about such issues and how applicable local congregation’s religious teachings are when dealing with the ramifications of terminated pregnancies.
- 51 percent of women agree that churches are prepared to provide support to women who choose to keep a child from an unplanned pregnancy.
This is not a good number.
- Only 7 percent said they discussed their decision with anyone at church.
- Twice as many women would not recommend to someone close to them that they discuss their decision regarding an unplanned pregnancy with someone at a local church.
Doesn’t sound like the church is considered welcoming to many women dealing with very tough decisions. Maybe there is another way to look at this? When Christian Post asked an anti-abortion group, here’s how they spun this news.
"I'm not surprised but I don't think that necessarily reflects anything bad about churches," Jeanne Mancini, the president of the March for Life organization that organizes an annual pro-life rally in Washington D.C., told The Christian Post Wednesday.
"That would be fantastic if she went to a church member but the reality is that they know often that they are not doing what's right, so they are not going to go [to someone] who is an expert in morality to find that out," Mancini added. "They want somebody to tell them that it's OK and they are not going to hear that from a church, at least not most churches."
[my emphasis]
Or maybe it’s tied to this reality:
- 64 percent agree that church members are more likely to gossip about a woman considering abortion than help her understand her options.
Turns out Jesus liked to talk smack about people behind their backs. It’s perfect that the president of the March for Life would just go straight to judging the women instead of judging their religious institution’s inability to actually come through and provide an atmosphere that practices what it preaches. Here’s Jeanne Mancini’s Twitter account. Usually pretty active, got super quiet during the Planned Parenthood Christian terrorist act. Strange, right?
Finally, here’s the religious preference breakdown of their survey:
Not so bad, atheists
It won’t be surprising to most on the left that the Christians that kill people in order to protest killing are hypocrites. But this is a nice survey to pass around to your more religious friends since it was conducted by a Christian organization and you can at least get around that usual right-wing rhetorical device of saying your evidence is biased against the Church.
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