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“Precious Life”- A Pro-Life Essay by Ashley Osbahr, first-place winner in junior category of Pro-Life Essay Contest

Precious Life

Pro-life. What does that mean? Pro-life to me, means that I believe that a new human life is created at the moment of conception and has the same rights as any other human, therefore abortion is wrong. I have three reasons why I am pro-life. First and foremost, I am a Christian. I am pro-life simply because God wants me to be. Secondly, I believe any human life taken intentionally is modern day human sacrifice. Third, is that I have lost a sibling while he or she was only weeks old and know the heartache of a lost life.

The number one reason I am pro-life is because God is in charge of life and death. He did not create us to do this for him. In the Ten Commandments, God tells us “thou shalt not kill.” Yet millions of unborn babies are killed every year worldwide. We are created in the image of God. “We” means everyone – big or small, young or old, disabled or not. God created us all.

The second reason I am pro-life is that ending a human life by abortion is modern day human sacrifice. In studying ancient history, I learned that humans were killed as sacrifices to false idols. Now we “sacrifice” our unborn children to our modern idols such as money, self-desires and convenience. People are taught that children are expensive, a burden to carry and will prevent them from pursuing their own dreams. All people are to be treasured and motherhood received as a gift from the Lord.

Not only am I pro-life for the reasons above, but I have also seen first hand how precious life is even when it is small. When I was around ten years old, my mom was pregnant and we had already seen the baby’s heartbeat on ultrasound. Sadly, when the baby was only eleven weeks old, my mom had a miscarriage. She had the baby at home and even though the baby was smaller than my thumb, I could see that it was a human being. The baby had arms, legs, eyes, ears and a nose. I knew this baby was a true gift, made by God. Since then, my family has been blessed with two more children and I have realized that no matter how small, babies are a gift from the Lord.

In conclusion, the three reasons that make me pro-life are God, knowing that abortion is human sacrifice, and how much I still love my lost sibling. I believe as our founding fathers did when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” All human life, born or unborn, has value. It is time we all start respecting and protecting it.

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Pro-life Speech & Essay Guide

Are you daring to be bravely and boldly pro-life, and giving a class speech or writing an essay on a life-related issue?

If you are, YOU ROCK! And we put together a few tips and tricks to help you knock it out of the park.

Choosing a topic.

The first, and sometimes, most challenging, part of writing a speech or essay is choosing what to write about. Fortunately, if your aim is to compose your paper on a pro-life topic, you have lots of great options.

There are a variety of life issues impacting our society today. Choosing to speak or write about one of these from the position that all life deserves dignity and respect is very admirable. Your paper is not just a homework assignment, but a chance for you to educate your fellow classmates (and teachers) about the facts surrounding life issues and even change their minds.

When choosing your topic, keep in mind that some are very specific and others are broader. How precise your topic is will determine how you outline your composition, what evidence you research, and what you choose to explain in further detail later on. Here are some examples of broad and specific topics:

Broad topics:

• Healing after abortion
• Planned Parenthood
• Development of the unborn child/the science of Life
• Human dignity
• Physician assisted suicide
• Organ donation

Specific topics:

• Abortion hurts women
• Abortion hurts men
• Abortion procedures
• Why do women have abortions
• Abortion around the world
• Abortion clinics in Illinois
• Is it a baby, or is it just tissue?
• When does life begin?
• Milestones in the first nine months of pregnancy
• The 20 week ban on abortion (when can a baby feel pain?)
• Pro-life is pro-woman
• A man’s role in the abortion debate
• Why Planned Parenthood should be defunded
• Alternatives to In Vitro Fertilization/Alternative solutions to fertility problems
• Healthcare directives
• How to choose the best hospice
• The dangers of physician assisted suicide
• Why are you pro-life?

Knowing your audience.

Before even thinking about how you’re going to write your speech or essay, take a minute to think about who your audience will be. Will it be your fellow classmates? Your teacher? An organization or student group?

Knowing who you are talking or writing to can dramatically change how you present your information. Students in your class may have no background knowledge on the topic you are about to present, so more detailed information and explanations might be necessary. Your audience might also include some individuals who are pro-choice or indifferent on your topic. In this case, it would be helpful to spend some time reviewing common pro-choice arguments so you understand where they are coming from. On the other hand, a church group or pro-life club may be very receptive to your position and have some knowledge of your topic. This means you might adjust your presentation to focus only on information they will find new or helpful.

Also, when talking about topics such as abortion, don’t forget fact that there may be someone in your audience who has had an abortion or has been impacted by it in some way. Hence, the tone which you choose to take is extremely important. It can influence how well your audience responds to you and how open they are to listening to what you have to say.

In our experience as an educational organization, we recommend being very factual and realistic, but doing so with a loving and compassionate tone. It’s also helpful to bring along or provide a resource to those in your audience who may need healing, counselling, assistance, or more information – such as Illinois Right to Life.

Gathering your sources.

Before you begin your research, it’s helpful to start gathering your sources first. Based on the subject or argument you choose, you are going to want to obtain your information from sources that have special expertise on your topic. For example, in researching the development of the unborn child, scientific and medical studies in the field of neonatology may be ideal. Information from those who specialize with pregnancy and birthing, such as Obstetricians and Gynecologists, could give tremendous credibility to your speech or essay as well.

Rest assured – all the information found at Illinois Right to Life (on our website or in our printed materials) is fact based and credible – so go ahead and use it! We only choose from the best sources when we research our information. Furthermore, our sources are intentionally linked or cited in all our articles and webpages, so you can refer to them directly.

Note: It is best practice to link or cite your information to the primary source (the study, article, or data report where the information came from) rather than a secondary source (the place where you found the link).

When researching information on life-related issues, here some suggested, credible sources you might find helpful:

• American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG)
• Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Illinois Department of Public Health
• Charlotte Lozier Institute
• Alliance Defending Freedom

Facts, facts, and more facts.

One of your greatest tools when supporting your claims is science, because the reality is: science is pro-life! For example – the scientific and medical communities are both in agreement that life begins at fertilization. A human being, separate from the mother, is created, with its own unique set of DNA. Hair color, eye color, skin color, sex, and body type are already determined. All of this = scientific fact.

That’s why, don’t be afraid to embellish your speech or paper with facts, statistics, and studies. The truth is in the science.

Note: Make absolutely, positively, sure you reference and cite ALL your researched information with your sources, using either MLA or APA format (or what is required by your teacher).

Tell a personal story.

There are many, many individuals who have come forward to share their personal stories and experiences with abortion, adoption, euthanasia, and other life-related issues. Some of these include people who have been hurt by abortion, survived abortions, chose life, were placed in adoptive homes, and more. Perhaps, you have a personal story or experience as well that you feel comfortable sharing.

Testimonies like these can be incredibly powerful and informative at the same time. Students and teachers alike can be captivated and moved by a real-life story (note: a story can make a great attention getter).  Combining real-life experiences with facts is an extremely effective way to educate your audience.

Researching the opposing arguments.

As we mentioned before in “Knowing your audience,” there may be students, teachers, or other individuals among those you are speaking or writing to that are pro-choice or indifferent on life issues. One strategy is to put yourself in their shoes, identify the key questions and arguments they may have, and address them in your presentation.

Regardless of who you are speaking to however, reviewing and refuting the common pro-choice arguments is a great practice that can really bolster the credibility and persuasiveness of what you present. Some common opposing questions and arguments are:

• It’s a woman’s body.
• It’s not a baby. It’s just tissue.
• No one can really know that human life begins before birth.
• I’m personally against abortion, but I’m still pro-choice.
• Everyone should have the right to choose.
• This is a religious issue.

Like we’ve said before, science and the facts are on your side. Check out our website for information and answers to arguments and questions just like these. “Our They Say, You Say” video series is also a great place to find pro-life responses to many common pro-choice claims.

Being interactive.

There’s nothing better than listening to a presentation that’s both informative and engaging. To help your audience better understand what you’re presenting and get them involved at the same time, things like visual aids, props, games, and questions for the audience can be great additions to your presentation.

When deciding what to use, think outside the box. Visual aids and props can be multimedia presentations, pictures, handouts, or items. For example, you might use a fetal development model to show the development of the unborn child with actual, life size, representations that your classmates can see, touch, and hold.

In addition, games and questions to get your audience interacting with you can be both fun and educational. It’s often helpful to design your activity so that it conveys a specific scientific fact, concept, or statistic. For example, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that because of abortion, one-third of your generation is missing today. One way to help your audience understand this reality might be to have one-third of the class stand up and then ask the rest of the students how they would feel if their friends who are standing had never been born. Then, follow this up with an explanation that this is exactly what abortion has done to your generation – wiped out one-third of your friends and peers that could be in your class today.

So be creative! And have fun with it.

Using Illinois Right to Life as a resource.

Through all your research, writing, and preparing, we want you to know that Illinois Right to Life is here to help! We have tons of information on several different pro-life topics and life-issues, published and made easily accessible on our website at IllinoisRightToLife.org. Also, don’t forget to check out the some of our neat handouts and brochures. You can be absolutely sure all our materials are 100% fact-based and credible.

If you have a specific question you’d like answered, feel free to email us at [email protected] or call 312.422.9300.

Thank you for sharing the pro-life message and helping us turn Illinois pro-life.

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Why Pro- Life?

The case for inclusion.

Abortion ends the life of a human embryo or fetus. Is this killing morally permissible? Or is it an injustice?

More than 150 years ago, a Boston physician named Horatio R. Storer pointed to the heart of the issue. "The whole question," he observed , "turns on ... the real nature of the foetus in utero ."

Does the unborn child have a right not to be intentionally killed? Does she matter like we matter? Does she count as one of us?

Yes, she does. This position is based on a fact of science and a principle of justice .

Science: The unborn is a human being

First, the unborn (the human zygote, embryo, or fetus) is a human being—a living human organism at the earliest developmental stages. This is a fact established by the science of embryology. Four features of the unborn human are important:

Distinct. The unborn has a DNA and body distinct from her mother and father. She develops her own arms, legs, brain, nervous system, heart, and so forth.

Living. The unborn meets the biological criteria for life. She grows by reproducing cells. She turns nutrients into energy through metabolism. And she can respond to stimuli.

Human. The unborn has a human genetic signature. She is the offspring of human parents, and humans can only beget other humans.

Organism. The unborn is an organism ( rather than a mere organ or tissue)—an individual whose parts work together for the good of the whole. Guided by a complete genetic code, she needs only the proper environment and nutrition to develop herself through the different stages of life as a member of our species.

"Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, a zygote," explains the textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology . "This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."

The scientific evidence , then, shows that the unborn is a living individual of the species Homo sapiens , the same kind of being as us, only at an earlier stage of development. Each of us was once a zygote, embryo, and fetus, just as we were once infants, toddlers, and adolescents.

Related articles

Why the unborn is a human being

Why unborn humans have rights

Equality and abortion are mutually exclusive

The three main arguments for abortion—and where they go wrong

Pro-life persuasion: How to discuss abortion with logic and grace

How a shallow view of the self underlies arguments for abortion

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Justice: All human beings have human rights

Second, all human beings have human rights. Everyone counts. This is a principle of justice.

Unborn humans are different from most born humans in a number of ways, but those differences aren't relevant to whether or not someone has rights. Unborn children may look different from older human beings, but appearance has nothing to do with value. Unborn children are less physically and mentally developed, but toddlers are less developed than teenagers, and that doesn't make them any less important. Unborn children are dependent on someone else , but so are newborn children and many people with disabilities.

Defenders of abortion often argue that unborn humans aren't "persons" who have rights because they lack certain characteristics. One problem with this view is that it excludes more human beings than just unborn children. If unborn children aren't persons because they lack higher mental functions , for example, then human infants , people in temporary comas, and patients with advanced dementia aren’t persons either.

Another problem is that this approach undermines equality for everyone . If characteristics like cognitive ability or physical independence make us valuable, then those who have more of those characteristics are more valuable than those who have less. None of us are equal according to this view.

Historically, every single attempt to divide humanity into those who have rights and those who are expendable has proven to be a colossal mistake. Why think abortion is any different?

The truth is that we have human rights simply because we are human —not because of what we look like, or what we can do, or what others think or feel about us , but rather because of what (the kind of being) we are. That's why every human being matters, and every human being matters equally.

Why abortion is unjust

The argument for the pro-life view, then, may be summarized like this:

The unborn is a human being.

All human beings have human rights, which include the right not to be intentionally killed.

Therefore, the unborn human being has human rights.

This is why abortion—the intentional killing of human beings in utero (through lethal suction , dismemberment , crushing, or poisoning )—is unjust. It's why both pregnant women and their unborn children deserve our respect, protection, and care.

Answering arguments for abortion

Here are some of the most common arguments offered in defense of abortion—and why they don't work.

Many abortion supporters say that women have a right to choose , or that we should trust women and let them decide . People do have the right to choose to do lots of things. But there are some acts that aren’t just and shouldn’t be permitted by law because they harm innocent people. The question at hand is whether abortion is one of those harmful acts. There are good reasons (see above) to think it is. ( Read more about this argument.)

Bodily autonomy

Women have a right to control their own bodies, many defenders of abortion argue. Bodily autonomy is very important, but it must respect the bodies and rights of others . Most people agree, for example, that pregnant women shouldn’t ingest drugs that cause birth defects. And if harming unborn children is wrong, then dismembering and killing them (through abortion) is even worse. Moreover, parents should provide basic care for their children (including during pregnancy) because they are responsible for the existence of those children. ( Read more about this argument.)

Tough circumstances

Pregnant women often face very difficult circumstances. But if unborn children are valuable human beings, like born children, then killing them is no more justified in tough situations (e.g., financial hardship) than killing born children in those same situations. Our response to the difficulties women face should be to provide support, resources, and ethical alternatives —so no woman feels like abortion is her only option. ( Read more about this argument.)

Although rape and incest account for less than one percent of Minnesota abortions, these cases are very real. Rape is a truly horrific crime, and the crime is made even worse when the woman then becomes a pregnant mother against her will. Abortion, however, compounds the violence of rape by taking the life of a vulnerable human being who has done nothing wrong. Both the mother and child deserve support and care in the midst of this very painful and unfair situation.

Adverse diagnoses

An adverse prenatal diagnosis is heartbreaking. But just as disease and disability don't justify killing born children, they aren't good reasons to kill unborn children either. Moreover, support and alternatives to abortion are available, including adoption for children with special needs and perinatal hospice in the event of a terminal diagnosis. ( Read more about this argument.)

Saving the mother

In rare and tragic cases, saving a pregnant woman's life requires ending her pregnancy (such as through premature delivery or C-section)—even though the child may not be able to survive outside the womb. This is uncontroversial, though, because it's better to save the mother's life than to let both mother and child die. It is not the same as intentionally killing the child, which is never medically necessary .

Imposing a view

Some people express personal opposition to abortion, yet don't want to impose that view on others by making abortion illegal. But the reason to personally oppose abortion is that it unjustly takes the life of an innocent human being. And surely the law ought to protect basic human rights and prevent violence against the defenseless. No one would say, "I'm personally opposed to sex trafficking, but I don't want to impose that view on everyone else." ( Read more about this argument.)

Forcing religion

People often say that pro-lifers are trying to force their religious beliefs on the rest of society. But the pro-life position is supported by science and reason and is held by many non-religious people . Opposition to killing unborn children is no more inherently "religious" than opposition to killing teenagers (or anyone else). Moreover, the fact that a person's position on an issue may be influenced by religion should not exclude it from public consideration. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s work in the civil rights movement, for example, was heavily influenced by his religious convictions. ( Read more about this argument.)

Danger of illegal abortion

Before abortion was legalized, some say, many women died from illegal abortions—and this will happen again when abortion is banned. The truth is that antibiotics and other medical advances produced a dramatic decline in maternal deaths through the middle of the 20th century. This drop occurred before the 1973 nationwide legalization of abortion, which had no apparent effect on mortality rates. Indeed, a wealth of evidence shows that we can protect the rights of unborn children and have a high standard of maternal health at the same time. ( Read more about this argument.)

Punishing women

Some abortion supporters warn that when abortion is illegal, women who have abortions will be put in prison. That's not true. Before the legalization of abortion in the United States, women who underwent abortion were virtually never prosecuted (practitioners of abortion were targeted instead). Post-abortive women deserve compassion , not condemnation.

Gender equality

Some feminists argue that gender equality requires legalized abortion. The challenges of pregnancy and childbirth do fall uniquely on women and not men (though men are equally responsible for their children). But the burdens of caring for five-year-old children fall on the parents of five-year-old children and not on everyone else—and laws against killing or abandoning five-year-olds are not unjust for that reason. Despite differing circumstances, everyone should be equally prohibited from taking innocent human life. More can and should be done, however, to hold men to their responsibilities as fathers and to accommodate the essential role mothers play in our society. ( Read more about this argument.)

Men and abortion

Some people say that men shouldn't express an opinion about abortion. It's true that men can't fully understand the experience of pregnancy, but it's also true that abortion is either right or wrong irrespective of the experience of any particular person . The pro-life view is held by millions of women. That view cannot just be dismissed because of a trait of a person who happens to be advocating it. If abortion really is the unjust taking of innocent human life, then both women and men ought to speak up on behalf of the unborn girls and boys who have no voice. ( Read more about this argument.)

Additional arguments

Do laws work to stop abortion?

No, abortion is not health care

Are pro-lifers misogynists and hypocrites?

Is abortion actually good for unborn children?

The frozen embryo rescue argument doesn't show that some humans are expendable

Abortion is the opposite of love

Is there a moral right to abortion?

The values of pro-choice people actually support the pro-life position

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‘The Pro-Life Generation’: Young Women Fight Against Abortion Rights

Many American women mourned the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe, but for others it is a moment of triumph and a matter of human rights.

Kristin Turner, the communications director for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. Some relative newcomers to the anti-abortion movement include young women whose activism is not connected to religious belief. Credit... Rachel Bujalski for The New York Times

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By Ruth Graham

• July 3, 2022

DALLAS — The rollback of abortion rights has been received by many American women with a sense of shock and fear , and warnings about an ominous decline in women’s status as full citizens.

But for some women, the decision meant something different: a triumph of human rights, not an impediment to women’s rights.

“I just reject the idea that as a woman I need abortion to be successful or to be as thriving as a man in my career,” said Phoebe Purvey, a 26-year-old Texan. “I don’t think I need to sacrifice a life in order to do that.”

The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was a political victory, accomplished by lobbyists, strategists and campaign professionals over the course of decades. But it was also a cultural battle, fought by activists across the country including those in the exact demographic that abortion-rights advocates warn have the most to lose in the new American landscape: young women.

Often pointed to by anti-abortion leaders as the face of the movement, a new generation of activists say they are poised to continue the fight in a post-Roe nation.

Many, but not all of them, are Christian conservatives, the demographic that has long formed the core of the anti-abortion movement. Others are secular and view their efforts against abortion as part of a progressive quest for human rights. All have grown up with once unthinkable access to images from inside the womb, which has helped convince them that a fetus is a full human being long before it is viable.

Many believe the procedure should be banned at conception — that even the earliest abortion is effectively murder. But they embrace the mainstream anti-abortion view that women are victims of the abortion “industry” and should not be prosecuted, putting them at odds with the rising “abolitionist” wing of the movement calling for women to be held legally responsible for their abortions.

And overwhelmingly, these young women reject the notion that access to abortion is necessary to their own — or any woman’s — success.

Ms. Purvey said she supported a legal ban on abortion from conception. But she is increasingly uncomfortable with using the term “pro-life” to describe herself, because it evokes an emphasis on preventing abortions at any cost, rather than on helping women. She prefers “life-affirming,” and she works at a pregnancy-resource clinic in Dallas that uses the same term to describe the free and low-cost prenatal care, postpartum doula services, lactation consulting and other services offered to its primarily Black, low-income clientele.

Ms. Purvey was born in a Mexican community in South Texas. Her mother was poor and in an unstable marriage, she said, and received prenatal care from Planned Parenthood. The family later received financial and emotional support from their church, which inspired Ms. Purvey to provide help to women like her mother.“At this point in my life, I hold the rights of pre-born children and women equally, but I consider myself a little more women-forward and women-centered,” she said. “That’s where a lot of the change happens.”

A clear majority of Americans say abortion should be legal with few or no exceptions, according to a Pew survey taken in March. Women ages 18 to 29 are significantly likelier than older women to say abortion should be generally legal, and that it is morally acceptable. Just 21 percent of young women say that abortion should be broadly illegal, Pew found.

The movement’s minority status is part of its appeal, said the historian Daniel K. Williams, who has written about the history of anti-abortion advocacy.

“The pro-life movement up until now has had the best of both worlds in terms of attracting young people,” Mr. Williams said. It positions itself as a countercultural alternative to mainstream conventional wisdom but also champions broadly popular beliefs about the importance of justice and equality for the vulnerable. Historical touchstones — commonplace within the movement and much-disputed outside it — include the Civil Rights movement and 19th and early 20th century suffragists.

For the majority of American women who support abortion rights, other women’s enthusiasm for stripping away their own constitutional rights can be baffling and enraging, a profound betrayal. But overwhelmingly, young anti-abortion women view themselves as human rights activists — happy warriors on the right side of history.

“It’s always been a movement of youth,” said Kristan Hawkins, who became the president of Students for Life of America in 2006, when she was 21. She recalled a line she heard from the conservative activist Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr. who is a frequent presence at anti-abortion events: “When young people join your movement, you know victory is on its way.”

Ms. Hawkins’s organization — which supports a near-total ban on abortion starting at conception and opposes oral contraceptives — now claims 1,250 groups on campuses across the country, from middle schools to graduate schools. Its signs reading “I Am the Pro-Life Generation” are ubiquitous at anti-abortion demonstrations.

Ms. Hawkins says the contemporary anti-abortion movement offers a more empowering vision to young women than abortion-rights feminism does.

“This is 2022, not 1962,” she said, observing that women’s legal rights to do things like secure loans have advanced dramatically since the pre-Roe era.

If feminism tells young women they need to be able to end their pregnancies in order to achieve their educational and career goals, she said, the anti-abortion movement tells them they can have it all.

Young people have been part of the anti-abortion movement since the 1970s. The annual March for Life in Washington, held around the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, now draws buses of students from around the country to what has transformed over the years into a festive youth-driven rally.

Clare Fletcher, 26, a teacher at a Catholic school in Illinois, has attended the March for Life at least 10 times. She grew up in a strongly anti-abortion home, influenced by the understanding that her adopted younger sister’s birth mother had pursued an abortion before giving birth.

The event, and the movement it represents, have always been “a source of joy and celebration of life and fun and community,” Ms. Fletcher said.

When she was a teenager, her father led a caravan of buses from Louisiana that she described as raucous road trips involving matching hats, flash mobs, tourist stops and silly songs. She can still sing from memory an anti-abortion parody of the Taio Cruz hit “Dynamite”: “Just wanna celebrate and be pro-life saying ayo, gotta pray-o!”

As a teenager active online, Lauren Marlowe had a hazy understanding that supporting abortion rights was what “nice” people did. But she was drawn to think differently in part because of advancements in ultrasound images. “Back then, when they looked at ultrasounds and thought it was a clump of cells, that was all they could see,” she said, referring to a phrase used by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson in a famous 1971 defense of abortion.

Ms. Marlowe, 22 and the social media coordinator for Students for Life of America, launched a small line of “trendy pro-life clothes” as an undergraduate at Liberty University. The line touts a T-shirt with the word “pro-life” spelled out in the “Friends” font, and a hoodie with the cheeky slogan “Just a clump of cells.”

In Tennessee, Kailey Cornett, 28, said she anticipated that her work as chief executive of Hope Clinic for Women, a “life-affirming” center that provides services and support to pregnant women, would grow busier in a post-Roe landscape. Tennessee has a trigger law that is expected to go into effect by mid-August and will ban abortion in nearly all cases, including rape and incest.

Ms. Cornett received what she experienced as a life calling from God while attending a Christian youth convention as a teenager: to “love on” young women facing unplanned pregnancies. She volunteered at a pregnancy resource center in Arizona in high school, and pursued a degree in nonprofit management with the goal of leading one.

Reading the progressive Christian writer Sarah Bessey’s book “Jesus Feminist” showed her that her faith and her care for women did not have to be in tension. “Oh my gosh, I can be both,” she recalled. “It turns out I was a feminist the whole time, but I had this wrong definition of it.”

Hers is one of the rare pregnancy resource centers that provides some forms of birth control to clients. Though the clinic does not engage in politics, she is cautiously in favor of the state’s coming abortion ban, including its lack of exceptions for rape and incest.

“I’m a firm believer that trauma leads to trauma,” she said. A woman “ending the life of that child will not make her pain go away.”

On Thursday, Nashville police said they were investigating an arson attempt at Hope Clinic, part of a rash of vandalism incidents at pregnancy resource centers across the country. The police said the building was spray-painted with the words “Janes Revenge,” the name of an abortion rights group that has claimed responsibility for some incidents.

Young women whose activism is not connected to religious belief are relative newcomers to the movement, where they make up a small but boisterous niche.

Kristin Turner started a chapter of a youth climate group in her hometown, Redding, Calif. Her Instagram bio includes her pronouns (she/they) and support for Black Lives Matter. She describes herself as a feminist, an atheist and a leftist.

At 20, she is also the communications director for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, whose goals include educating the public about “the exploitative influence of the Abortion Industrial Complex through an anti-capitalist lens.”

Recently, she started a punk band called the EmbryHoez with a friend in San Francisco. One of their songs is called “The Hotties Will Dismantle Roe”:

They say it’s empowerment / They say it’s women’s rights / But all I see’s oppression / And might makes right .

Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, founded last year, emphasizes “direct action,” including “pink-rose rescues,” in which activists enter abortion clinics to distribute roses attached to anti-abortion information.

“If someone is committing violence against another human being,” Ms. Turner said, “then property lines should not be respected.” She said she has been arrested three times in activist settings, include twice performing “rescues.”

“The reality is, people are dying,” she said. “I think that whatever privilege I have, I need to use that and leverage it.”

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a philosopher who defended abortion. She was Judith Jarvis Thomson, not Thompson.

How we handle corrections

Ruth Graham is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values. She previously reported on religion for Slate. More about Ruth Graham

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The Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice Debate

What does each side believe?

ThoughtCo/ThoughtCo

• Reproductive Rights
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• Ph.D., Religion and Society, Edith Cowan University
• M.A., Humanities, California State University - Dominguez Hills
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The terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" refer to the dominant ideologies concerning abortion rights. Those who are pro-life, a term that some argue is biased because it suggests that the opposition does not value human life, believe that abortion should be banned. Those who are pro-choice support keeping abortion legal and accessible.

In reality, the controversies related to reproductive rights are much more complex. Some people back abortions in certain circumstances and not in others or believe such procedures should be " safe, rare, and lega l." Complicating matters is that there's no consensus on when exactly life begins . The shades of gray in the abortion debate are why the reproductive rights discussion is far from simple.

The Pro-Life Perspective

Someone who is "pro-life" believes that the government has an obligation to preserve all human life, regardless of intent, viability, or quality-of-life concerns. A comprehensive pro-life ethic, such as that proposed by the Roman Catholic Church, prohibits:

• Euthanasia and assisted suicide 
• The death penalty
• War, with very few exceptions

In cases where the pro-life ethic conflicts with personal autonomy, as in abortion and assisted suicide, it's considered conservative. In cases where the pro-life ethic conflicts with government policy, as in the death penalty and war, it's said to be liberal.

Pro-Choice Perspective

People who are " pro-choice " believe that individuals have unlimited autonomy with respect to their own reproductive systems, as long as they don't breach the autonomy of others. A comprehensive pro-choice position asserts that the following must remain legal:

• Celibacy and abstinence
• Contraception use
• Emergency contraception use

Under the Partial Birth Abortion Ban passed by Congress and signed into law in 2003, abortion became illegal under most circumstances in the second trimester of pregnancy, even if the mother's health is in danger. Individual states have their own laws, some banning abortion after 20 weeks and most restricting late-term abortions . 

The pro-choice position is perceived as "pro-abortion" to some in the U.S., but this is inaccurate. The purpose of the pro-choice movement is to ensure that all choices remain legal.

Point of Conflict

The pro-life and pro-choice movements primarily come into conflict on the issue of abortion . The pro-life movement argues that even a nonviable, undeveloped human life is sacred and must be protected by the government. Abortion should be prohibited, according to this model, and not practiced on an illegal basis either.

The pro-choice movement argues that the government should not prevent an individual from terminating a pregnancy before the point of viability (when the fetus can't live outside the womb). The pro-life and pro-choice movements overlap to an extent in that they share the goal of reducing the number of abortions. However, they differ with respect to degree and methodology.

Religion and the Sanctity of Life

Politicians on both sides of the abortion debate only sometimes reference the religious nature of the conflict. If one believes that an immortal soul is created at the moment of conception and that "personhood" is determined by the presence of that soul, then there is effectively no difference between terminating a week-old pregnancy or killing a living, breathing person. Some members of the anti-abortion movement have acknowledged (while maintaining that all life is sacred) that a difference exists between a fetus and a fully-formed human being.

Religious Pluralism and the Obligation of Government

The U.S. government can't acknowledge the existence of an immortal soul that begins at conception without taking on a specific, theological definition of human life . Some theological traditions teach that the soul is implanted at quickening (when the fetus begins to move) rather than at conception. Other theological traditions teach that the soul is born at birth, while some assert that the soul doesn't exist until well after birth. Still, other theological traditions teach that there is no immortal soul whatsoever.

Can Science Tell Us Anything?

Although there is no scientific basis for the existence of a soul, there is no such basis for the existence of subjectivity, either. This can make it difficult to ascertain concepts such as "sanctity." Science alone can't tell us whether a human life is worth more or less than a rock. We value each other for social and emotional reasons. Science doesn't tell us to do it.

To the extent that we have anything approaching a scientific definition of personhood, it would most likely rest in our understanding of the brain . Scientists believe that neocortical development makes emotion and cognition possible and that it doesn't begin until the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy.

Alternative Standards for Personhood

Some pro-life advocates argue that the presence of life alone, or of unique DNA, defines personhood. Many things that we don't consider to be living persons might meet this criterion. Our tonsils and appendices are certainly both human and alive, but we don't consider their removal as anything close to the killing of a person.

The unique DNA argument is more compelling. Sperm and egg cells contain genetic material that will later form the zygote. The question of whether certain forms of gene therapy also create new persons could be raised by this definition of personhood.

Not a Choice

The pro-life vs. pro-choice debate tends to overlook the fact that the vast majority of women who have abortions don't do so by choice, at least not entirely. Circumstances put them in a position where abortion is the least self-destructive option available. According to a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 73 percent of women who had abortions in the  United States  in 2004 said that they couldn't afford to have children.

The Future of Abortion

The most effective forms of birth control —even if used correctly—were only 90 percent effective in the late 20th century. Today, contraceptive options have improved and even should they fail for some reason, individuals may take emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy.

Advancements in birth control may help to further reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancies. Someday abortion may grow increasingly rare in the United States. But for this to happen, individuals from all socioeconomic backgrounds and regions would need to have access to cost-effective and reliable forms of contraception.

• DeSanctis, Alexandra. "How Democrats Purged 'Safe, Legal, Rare' From the Party", November, 15, 2019.
•  Finer, Lawrence B. "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives." Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, Ann M. Moore, Volume 37, Issue 3, Guttmacher Institute, September 1, 2005.
• Santorum, Sen. Rick. "S.3 - Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003." 108th Congress, H. Rept. 108-288 (Conference Report), Congress, February 14, 2003.
• "State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy." State Laws and Policies, Guttmacher Institute, April 1, 2019. 
• The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decision
• Key Arguments From Both Sides of the Abortion Debate
• Roe v. Wade
• All About Abortion Rights
• Abortion Facts and Statistics in the 21st Century
• Understanding Why Abortion Is Legal in the United States
• Pro-Choice Quotes
• Abortion on Demand: A Second Wave Feminist Demand
• Is Abortion Legal in Every State?
• Supreme Court Decisions and Women's Reproductive Rights
• Pros & Cons of Embryonic Stem Cell Research
• Coretta Scott King Quotations
• Biography of Norma McCorvey, 'Roe' in the Roe v. Wade Case
• Feminist Organizations of the 1970s
• The Slave Boy Experiment in Plato's 'Meno'
• Population Decline in Russia

Essay Competition

The 202 3 Patrick Webb Essay Competition

Patrick Webb was a Social Studies secondary school teacher in West Vancouver.  He began the essay competition many years ago so as to bring B.C. secondary students to think clearly about bio-medical issues and their moral dimensions.  The essay competition is open to secondary school students, and is designed to encourage students to recognize the dignity of every human life.

JUNIOR CATEGORY TOPICS (Grades 8-10 – Choose One) Two prizes: 1st Place – $400.00        2nd Place – $200.00

1) As MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) is increasingly accepted and offered as a means of suicide, there arises a serious question: who should receive suicide prevention and who should be offered MAID?  Can both solutions co-exist?  What are the implications of MAID on existing suicide prevention services?

2) How do the use of euphemism and word choice convince young people in North America that Abortion and MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) are not only justifiable, but necessary?  How can pro-lifers counter these tactics? 

SENIOR CATEGORY TOPICS (Grades 11-12 – Choose One) Two prizes: 1st Place – $800.00        2nd Place – $400.00

1) One argument that advocates of abortion and euthanasia make is that the person killed (For example, a pre-born child with a probable severe disability or a senior with a painful terminal illness) is better off dead than enduring pain or hardship.  What elements of our culture lead people to this type of thinking and what is a better way to approach suffering?

2) In 2020 there was a series of advertisements in Vancouver stating, "The most loving gift you can give your first child is to not have another."  As some Canadians advocate for a one child policy, China provides a useful case study of the long term effects of such a policy.  Research the effects of China's one child policy, discuss its underlying values, and consider a thoughtful rebuttal.

DEADLINE : Entries must be postmarked or emailed by Monday, May 15th, 2023.

The essays will be marked by experienced educators.  The e ntry / information form can be downloaded below and submitted with completed essays (preferably) via email or in print via post to the addresses below:

Email to :  [email protected] - Subject Line:   Patrick Webb Pro Life Essay Competition 2023

Mail by post to : North Shore Pro-Life Society Attention: Patrick Webb Pro Life Essay Competition P.O. Box 37026 North Vancouver BC  V7M 4M4

Four pro-life philosophers make the case against abortion

To put it mildly, the American Philosophical Association is not a bastion of pro-life sentiment. Hence, I was surprised to discover that the A.P.A. had organized a pro-life symposium, “New Pro-Life Bioethics,” at our annual conference this month in Philadelphia. Hosted by Jorge Garcia (Boston College), the panel featured the philosophers Celia Wolf-Devine (Stonehill College), Anthony McCarthy (Bios Centre in London) and Francis Beckwith (Baylor University), all of whom presented the case against abortion in terms of current political and academic values.

Recognizing the omnipresent call for a “welcoming” society, Ms. Wolf-Devine explored contemporary society’s emphasis on the virtue of inclusion and the vice of exclusion. The call for inclusion emphasizes the need to pay special attention to the more vulnerable members of society, who can easily be treated as non-persons in society’s commerce. She argued that our national practice of abortion, comparatively one of the most extreme in terms of legal permissiveness, contradicts the good of inclusion by condemning an entire category of human beings to death, often on the slightest of grounds. There is something contradictory in a society that claims to be welcoming and protective of the vulnerable but that shows a callous indifference to the fate of human beings before the moment of birth.

There is something contradictory in a society that claims to be protective of the vulnerable but shows a callous indifference to the fate of human beings before the moment of birth.

Mr. McCarthy’s paper tackled the question of abortion from the perspective of equality. A common egalitarian argument in favor of abortion and the funding thereof goes something like this: If a woman has an unwanted pregnancy and is denied access to abortion, she might be required to sacrifice educational and work opportunities. Since men do not become pregnant, they face no such obstacles to pursuing their professional goals. Restrictions to abortion access thus places women in a position of inequality with men.

Mr. McCarthy counter-argued that, in fact, the practice of abortion creates a certain inequality between men and women since it does not respect the experiences, such as pregnancy, which are unique to women. Some proponents of abortion deride pregnancy as a malign condition. A disgruntled audience member referred to pregnant women as “incubators.” Mr. McCarthy argued that authentic gender equality involves respect for what makes women different, including support for the well-being of both women and children through pregnancy, childbirth and beyond. He pointed out that in his native England, pregnant women acting as surrogates are given a certain amount of time after birth to decide whether to keep the child they bore and not fulfill the conditions of the surrogacy contract. This is done out of acknowledgment of the gender-specific biological and emotional changes undergone by a woman who has nurtured a child in the womb.

The most compelling argument against abortion remains what it has been for decades: Directly killing innocent human beings is gravely unjust.

Mr. Beckwith explored the question of abortion in light of the longstanding philosophical dispute concerning the “criteria of personhood.” The question of which human beings count as persons is closely yoked to the political question of which human beings will receive civil protection and which can be killed without legal penalty. The personhood criteria range from the most inclusive (genetic identity as a member of the species Homo sapiens ) to the more restrictive (evidence of consciousness) to the most exclusionary (evidence of rationality and self-motivating behavior).

Mr. Beckwith has long used the argument from personal identity (the continuity between my mature, conscious self and my embryonic, fetal and childhood self and my future older, possibly demented self) to make the case against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. To draw the line between personhood and non-personhood after conception or before natural death is to make an arbitrary distinction—and a lethal one at that. Mr. Beckwith noted, however, that none of the usual candidates for a criterion of personhood is completely satisfying. Even the common pro-life argument from species membership could, unamended, smack of a certain materialism.

The most compelling argument against abortion remains what it has been for decades: Directly killing innocent human beings is gravely unjust. Abortion is the direct killing of innocent human beings. But political debate rarely proceeds by such crystalline syllogisms. The aim of the A.P.A.’s pro-life symposium was to amplify the argument by showing how our practice of abortion brutally violates the values of inclusion, equality and personhood that contemporary society claims to cherish. In the very month we grimly commemorate Roe v. Wade, such new philosophical directions are welcome winter light.

John J. Conley, S.J., is a Jesuit of the Maryland Province and a regular columnist for America . He is the current Francis J. Knott Chair of Philosophy and Theology at Loyola University, Maryland.

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Moral foundations of pro-choice and pro-life women

Mariola paruzel-czachura.

1 Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia in Katowice, Grazynskiego 53, 40-126 Katowice, Poland

2 Penn Center of Neuroaesthetics, Goddard Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, 3710 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA

Artur Domurat

Marta nowak.

3 Healio Institute of Psychotherapy in Katowice, Bazantow 35, 40-668 Katowice, Poland

Associated Data

The materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/793cr/?view_only=None . The study was preregistered at https://aspredicted.org/i9fa8.pdf .

Opinions on abortion are more polarized than opinions on most other moral issues. Why are some people pro-choice and some pro-life? Religious and political preferences play a role here, but pro-choice and pro-life people may also differ in other aspects. In the current preregistered study ( N  = 479), we investigated how pro-choice women differ in their moral foundations from pro-life women. When the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) was applied (i.e., when declared moral principles were measured), pro-life women scored higher than pro-choice women in loyalty, authority, and purity. However, when women were asked about moral judgments indirectly via more real-life problems from the Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFV), pro-choice women scored higher than pro-life women in emotional and physical care and liberty but lower in loyalty. When we additionally controlled for religious practice and political views, we found no differences between groups in declaring moral foundations (MFQ). However, in the case of real-life moral judgments (MFV), we observed higher care, fairness, and liberty among pro-choice and higher authority and purity among pro-life. Our results show intriguing nuances between women pro-choice and pro-life as we found a different pattern of moral foundations in those groups depending on whether we measured their declared abstract moral principles or moral judgment about real-life situations. We also showed how religious practice and political views might play a role in such differences. We conclude that attitudes to abortion “go beyond” abstract moral principles, and the real-life context matters in moral judgments.

Graphical abstract

Supplementary information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04800-0.

Banning the termination of pregnancy due to severe and irreversible damage to the fetus was approved in October 2020 in Polish legislation, which turned out to be one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Similarly, some American states have enacted new abortion restrictions in 2021 and 2022. Those changes provoked protests and showed how one moral issue, i.e., “the abortion problem”, may polarize societies. We already know that opinions on abortion were “always” polarized (Foot, 1967 ; Singer, 2011 ; Thomson, 1971 ; Watt, 2017 ), and they are also very stable (Kiley & Vaisey, 2020 ). Moreover, they are more polarized than opinions on most other moral issues (Baldassarri & Park, 2020 ; DiMaggio et al., 1996 ; Jones, 2018 ). Nevertheless, why are some individuals pro-life or pro-choice, and what characterizes those two groups?

Past research tried to answer these questions showing mainly how religiosity and political preferences shape the attitude to abortion. More religious and conservative people are usually more willing to declare pro-life (Barkan, 2014 ; Fiorina, 2017 ; Jędryczka et al., 2022 ). The abortion problem is indeed strongly related to religion, and religion is strongly related to politics (Jelen & Wilcox, 2003 ; Malka et al., 2012 ). When the religion is against abortion, for example, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, the followers are usually pro-life (Jonason et al., 2022 ).

But moral judgments related to abortion are based mainly on the strength or salience of personal values (Rilling & Sanfey, 2011 ; Schwartz, 2007 ; Spicer, 1994 ), and religious or political preferences are just the indicators of those values (Koleva et al., 2012 ). That is probably why religious and political preferences were commonly studied as predictors of attitudes to abortion. However, one can approach the abortion problem from another perspective, i.e., look at it through the lens of moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2018 ; Graham & Haidt, 2012 ). This theory, in its latest version, postulates six moral foundations, i.e., care, fairness, liberty (so-called three individualizing foundations), loyalty, authority, and purity (so-called three binding foundations) (Clifford et al., 2015 ).

The moral foundations theory and the abortion problem

Moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2009 , 2013 , 2018 ; Haidt, 2001 ) was proposed to explain why moral beliefs vary so widely across cultures yet still show many similarities and recurrent themes (Haidt & Graham, 2007 ). The first version of the theory posited that people differ in evaluating the importance of five moral foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Graham et al., 2018 ). The care foundation (the opposite of harm ) relates to feeling empathy for the pain of others. Fairness (the opposite of cheating ) concerns sensitivity to justice, rights, and equality. Loyalty (the opposite of betrayal ) refers to the tendency to form coalitions and feel proud of being a group member. Authority (the opposite of subversion ) relates to a preference for hierarchical social interactions and feeling respect for, or fear of, people in a higher social position. Finally, the purity (previously termed sanctity ) foundation (the opposite of degradation ) refers to a propensity to exhibit disgust in response to incorrect behavior and reflects individual differences in concerns for the sacredness of values (Koleva et al., 2012 ). Care and fairness are individualizing foundations. They are person-centered and focus on protecting individuals, whereas loyalty, authority, and purity are conceptualized as binding foundations because they focus on preserving one’s group as a whole (Graham et al., 2009 , 2013 , 2018 ). In the last modification of the theory, the sixth moral foundation of liberty was added (Graham et al., 2018 ). A higher level of liberty means a higher need to be free in our choices and behaviors. Liberty is also an individualizing moral foundation.

Only two studies tested how moral foundations might be related to attitudes to abortion. In the first study, Koleva and colleagues (Koleva et al., 2012 ) found that purity (measured by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire – MFQ of Graham and colleagues) predicted being pro-life. Specifically, they conducted two studies involving thousands of participants and a variety of moral issues (among them: the abortion problem), and they tested if the endorsement of five moral foundations may predict judgments about these issues, also testing the role of political ideology (measured by self-assessment on a scale from very liberal to very conservative ), age, gender, religious attendance (i.e., frequent church attendance), and interest in politics. Regarding the abortion problem, only purity predicted attitude to abortion, next to conservative ideology and frequent church attendance. Despite the relevance of this result, this study focused only on declared preferences for moral foundations (i.e., used MFQ). We already know that those abstract preferences or principles do not always predict real-life decisions (Bostyn et al., 2018 ; Schein, 2020 ). For example, regarding the abortion problem, it was already found that some people, despite declaring they are against abortion, decided to help a close friend or family member seeking an abortion (Cowan et al., 2022 ). That is why we also need to study moral foundations more indirectly, for example, by asking about moral decisions close to real life. Additionally, Koleva and colleagues did not test the relevance of the liberty foundation, which was later added to the MFT (Clifford et al., 2015 ; Graham et al., 2018 ). Moreover, they tested only general attitudes to abortion (for example, not measuring the possible impact of the abortion law on the participants or their close others). Lastly, they conducted the study before the latest law changes in 2020–2022, which could also impact attitudes toward such an important social issue.

In the second study, Jonason and colleagues ( 2022 ) asked 255 women and men from Poland about their attitudes toward Poland’s ban on abortion. They showed that Catholics were higher on binding moral foundations (measured via MFQ) than non-Catholics and that Catholics perceived the new situation in Poland with less negativity, which led them to support the ban more than non-Catholics. These results are consistent with past findings, as generally, being religious and conservative is related to being pro-life, and religiosity and conservatism turn out to be linked to binding moral foundations (Kivikangas et al., 2021 ; Saroglou & Craninx, 2020 ). Despite the relevance of this study, it also focused only on declared moral foundations (i.e., MFQ) and did not measure liberty as a new moral foundation (Clifford et al., 2015 ; Graham et al., 2018 ). Moreover, it focused mainly on attitudes toward Poland’s recent ban on abortion. Finally, the two studies mentioned above analyzed the general population, so it is hard to make general conclusions about the differences between pro-choice and pro-life. One possible way to study this issue deeply could be by studying two samples of individuals who clearly define themselves as pro-choice or pro-life. We aimed to do this in the current research.

The current research

We aimed to provide deeper insights into the moral foundations among pro-choice and pro-life individuals. We wished to build on past work (Jonason et al., 2022 ; Koleva et al., 2012 ) in six ways:

• we used two measures of moral foundations that could allow more general conclusions about the differences between being pro-life and pro-choice as they measure moral foundations directly (MFQ) and indirectly (MFV). Specifically, we measured moral foundations not only by asking about the declaration of moral preferences (declared the importance of and attitude to abstract moral principles) using MFQ (Graham et al., 2009 ) but also by measuring participants’ assessment of immoral actors in concrete, real-life scenarios using MFV (Clifford et al., 2015 ). Measuring declarative abstract moral principles with MFQ makes sense; nevertheless, abortion is a common real-life problem involving concrete actions and choices to be made (Cowan et al., 2022 ; Maddow-Zimet et al., 2021 ). Because MFQ relies on respondents’ rating of abstract principles, it is tough to say anything about respondents’ moral judgment of concrete scenarios (Clifford et al., 2015 ). Moreover, those abstract principles do not always predict real-life decisions (Bostyn et al., 2018 ; Schein, 2020 ), e.g., some people, despite being against abortion (declaration of abstract principle), decide to help a close friend or family member who is seeking an abortion (Cowan et al., 2022 ). That is why we used MFV, an indirect measure of moral foundations based on real-life situations;
• by using MFV, we measured the new moral foundations of liberty, and to our best knowledge, we are the first to test the role of this foundation in the abortion problem;
• by using MFV, we were able to measure two types of care foundation, i.e., emotional and physical care, so this way, we could test the sensitivity to emotional or physical harm in our sample;
• we narrowed the sample to women. We did it for obvious biological reasons, i.e., women are more directly affected by the abortion rule than men. Past studies also show that our attitudes may be stronger if an object or issue may impact our lives more directly (Albarracín, 2021 );
• we decided to test two groups of women (i.e., pro-life and pro-choice). Past research (Jonason et al., 2022 ; Koleva et al., 2012 ) did not study such opposite groups; by this design, we could look for the clear differences between them;
• we measured attitudes to abortion in more detail than in past studies (Jonason et al., 2022 ; Koleva et al., 2012 ). Specifically, we asked women about their attitude to abortion in three ways: by direct question whether they are pro-choice or pro-life, by asking about their views on four detailed issues concerning the new abortion law in Poland, and by using a scale that helped us to measure Full and Conditional Abortion Support (see Measures section).

Following past research (Jonason et al., 2022 ), we hypothesized that pro-life women would have higher levels of binding moral foundations than pro-choice women. Because moral foundations measured by MFQ and MFV correlated positively in past research (Clifford et al., 2015 ), we expected to observe the same pattern of results for both of them.

The Research Ethics Committee of the University of Silesia in Katowice accepted the current study. The materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/793cr/?view_only=None . The study was preregistered at https://aspredicted.org/i9fa8.pdf . We report all measured variables in this study.

Participants and procedure

We preregistered a survey with a sample of at least N  = 300 respondents, n  = 150 women pro-choice, and n  = 150 women pro-life. Using G*Power 3.1.9.7 software suggested that we need to recruit two independent groups of ca. 150 participants, assuming alpha error probability of 0.05, power of 0.8, and low-to-medium effect size of 0.33 (of differences between groups on a dependent variable in two independent group comparisons). Because participants’ membership to one of two groups would be defined post hoc – based on the dichotomous question about support for abortion – and the allocation ratio to the groups was hard to predict a priori, we preregistered that if we collect more data in any of the two expected subsamples, we will include them in the analyses. We stopped the data collection when the smaller group had n  = 150.

Our online study was conducted during a specific time in Poland in 2021, just after the Polish government introduced the new abortion law. We want to highlight that it was a stormy time when many people went on the streets to express their support for women’s rights, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, so despite that, their lives were directly in danger. Like the study by Jonason and colleagues ( 2022 ), contrary to Koleva and colleagues’ ( 2012 ) study, we asked about a real-life problem, as abortion was the main topic in media, hospitals, homes, etc.

Women were invited to an anonymous online survey in Qualtrics using the snowball method via the University of Silesia’s website and social media platforms. Five hundred sixteen participants took part in the study. All participants had Polish nationality and spoke the Polish language. We excluded participants who did not agree to participate in the study after reading the instruction ( n  = 6), did not answer attention check questions ( n  = 3), and one man from the sample. We also excluded participants ( n  = 27) with too short (less than 3:30 min.) or too long (more than 28 min.) survey completion times, defined by logarithms outside the interquartile range of [ Q 1–1.5 IQR , Q 3 + 1.5 IQR ] 1 .

The analyzed sample consisted of 479 women, split into two groups: pro-choice women ( n  = 332, M age 26.34, SD  = 7.53) and pro-life women ( n  = 147, M age 27.84, SD  = 7.20). Among pro-life women, n  = 123 (83.7%) declared being Catholics, n  = 11 (7.5%) reported being atheists, and n  = 13 (8.8%) declared being other than Catholics (i.e., Buddhists, Protestants, other and not specified). Among pro-choice women, n  = 158 (47.6%) reported being Catholics, n  = 155 (46.7%) declared being atheists, and n  = 19 (8.8%) declared being other than Catholics (Buddhists, Judaists, Orthodox Catholics, Protestants, other and not specified). However, it is worth noting that 177 (53.3%) pro-choice women practiced religion, and 11 (7.5%) pro-life women were not religious.

Group check

Our two groups were distinguished by asking women if they were pro-choice or pro-life. However, to ensure that women correctly divided themselves as pro-choice or pro-life, we asked them about more detailed attitudes to abortion (see section Measures ).

Attitude to abortion

Women were asked about their attitudes to abortion in three ways. First, respondents answered a single question about whether they were pro-choice or pro-life (“If you had to define your own attitude towards abortion clearly, you are: pro-choice/pro-life”). This question was used to identify the two subsamples. Second, the participants expressed their views on four detailed issues concerning the new abortion law in Poland. The first question, “What is your attitude to the verdict issued by the Constitutional Court?” was answered on a scale from 1 ( I definitely do not support ) to 7 ( I definitely do support ) (variable: Attitude to New Rule in Table  1 ). The other three questions were about the potential impact of a new law on them personally (variable: Personal Influence in Table  1 ), on their close others (variable: Influence on Close Others in Table  1 ), and generally on other women (variable: General Influence in Table  1 ) and they were answered on a scale from 1 ( definitely negative ) to 7 ( definitely positive ). Third, participants read six statements about attitudes to abortion and evaluated to what extent they agreed with the statements using a scale from 1 ( I disagree ) to 5 ( I agree ). The first three statements were: “I support the full right to abortion, which is the inalienable right of every woman”, and “Abortion is a woman’s personal matter, and no one else can decide for her whether she should have an abortion or not”, “Abortion should be allowed regardless of the reason”. Averaged answers for these three statements created the index of Full Abortion Support (Cronbach α  = 0.92). Similarly, the following three statements: “Abortion should be allowed only if the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the mother ”, “I support the introduction of the full right to abortion, but only up to the 12th week of pregnancy”, and “Abortion is allowed only when we are sure that the child will be born with a genetic defect” were to create the Conditional Abortion Support index, however, due to its low consistency ( α  = 0.11), we decided to analyze them separately.

Descriptive statistics and differences between pro-choice and pro-life women in religious practice, political views, and attitudes to abortion

The numbers in brackets are the variable’s scales

Moral Foundations Questionnaire

We used a Polish adaptation (Jarmakowski-Kostrzanowski & Jarmakowska-Kostrzanowska, 2016 ) of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Graham et al., 2009 ) to measure the degree to which the participants endorsed five sets of moral intuitions (i.e., care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) in moral decision-making. The scale consists of 30 items that measure the moral foundations in two ways: a relevance subscale (15 items) showing how important each one of the moral foundations is for a person, and a judgments subscale (15 items), which measures the extent to which people agree with various moral opinions connected with the different moral foundations. An example item for care is “It can never be right to kill a human being”; for fairness: “When the government makes laws, the number one principle should be ensuring that everyone is treated fairly”; for loyalty: “People should be loyal to their family members, even when they have done something wrong”; for authority: “Men and women each have different roles to play in society”; and for purity: “People should not do things that are disgusting, even if no one is harmed”. A 1 to 6 response scale was used for all items, where 1 was not at all relevant or strongly disagree , and 6 was extremely relevant or strongly agree . Responses were averaged to give an overall score for each foundation. Cronbach alphas were found to be moderate for care ( α  = 0.61) and fairness ( α  = 0.56) and high for loyalty ( α  = 0.77), authority ( α  = 0.76), and purity ( α  = 0.82).

Moral Foundations Vignettes

It measures moral foundations based on evaluating other people’s behavior violating them (MFV; Clifford et al., 2015 ). The randomized set of 21 vignettes was used in our study, three vignettes per moral foundation. Apart from using five classic moral foundations, it includes a liberty foundation and two types of care, i.e., sensitivity to emotional harm to humans or non-human animals (care emotional) and sensitivity to physical harm to humans or non-human animals (care physical). An example item for care emotional is “You see a woman commenting out loud about how fat another woman looks in her jeans”; for care physical: “You see a zoo trainer jabbing a dolphin to get it to entertain his customers”; for fairness: “You see a boy skipping to the front of the line because his friend is an employee”, for liberty: “You see a man forbidding his wife to wear clothing that he has not first approved”; for loyalty: “You see the US Ambassador joking in Great Britain about the stupidity of Americans” [changed into Polish Ambassador in Germany]; for authority: “You see an employee trying to undermine all of her boss’ ideas in front of others”; for purity: “You see an employee at a morgue eating his pepperoni pizza off of a dead body”. The 5-point scale was used from 1 ( not at all wrong ) to 5 ( extremely wrong ). We did translation-back-translation of MFV (see Materials at OSF). Cronbach alphas were satisfactorily high for care emotional ( α  = 0.88), fairness ( α  = 0.71), liberty ( α  = 0.72), authority ( α  = 0.71), and loyalty ( α  = 0.76), and moderate for care physical ( α  = 0.68) and purity ( α  = 0.56).

Religious practice

Participants were asked to evaluate their level of practicing religion on a scale from 1 ( I don’t practice at all ) to 8 ( I am a very practicing person ). Additionally, we asked about which type of religion they practiced (if they practiced any).

Political views

We asked participants two questions about their political views, one related to economic issues (“Please indicate on the following scale your political views relating to economic issues”) on a scale from 0 ( State participation should be very small ) to 7 ( State participation should be very high ), and the other one related to social issues (“Please indicate on the following scale your political views relating to social, cultural issues”) on a scale from 0 ( very conservative ) to 7 ( very liberal ).

Descriptive statistics and differences between pro-choice and pro-life women in religious practice, political views, and attitudes to abortion are shown in Table  1 . The two groups differed (Welch t-tests) significantly in practicing religion (lower among pro-choice) and political views on social issues (higher liberal views among pro-choice), but there was no difference between the groups in views on economic issues. Pro-choice and pro-life women differed in full support for abortion, meaning the two groups differed in their extreme views on abortion. Moreover, pro-life women had stronger beliefs that the new abortion rule in Poland would positively impact themselves personally, their close others, and women in general. In contrast, pro-choice women believed more that the new law would harm all women, themselves, and their close others.

Regarding conditional support, women pro-life agreed more with two statements allowing abortion conditionally when the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health and when one is sure that the child will be born with a genetic defect. Women pro-choice agreed more with the third statement allowing the right to abortion until the 12th week of pregnancy (Table  1 ).

Summing up, the observed differences, especially in full support of abortion, show that women accurately classified themselves into one of the two groups, and we can be sure that the groups indeed evaluate abortion from different standpoints (however, see the limitation section for elaboration on improving such classification).

Next, we run analyses to see if moral foundations measured in two ways (i.e., MFQ and MFV) correlated. As shown in Table  2 , we received positive correlations among analogous dimensions of moral foundations, replicating past results (Clifford et al., 2015 ).

Pearson correlations between moral foundations measured by MFQ and MFV

* p  < .05, ** p  < .01, *** p  < .001 two-sided.

Finally, we run analyses to see if the groups differ in moral foundations (ANOVA) and when controlling for political views and religious practice simultaneously (ANCOVA).

Preregistered analyses

Do pro-choice and pro-life women differ in moral foundations.

Yes. As shown in Table  3 , when we analyzed differences between groups (ANOVA) using the classical measure of moral foundations (i.e., MFQ), we found that pro-life women had significantly higher binding foundations than pro-choice women, i.e., loyalty (medium effect size), authority (medium effect size), and purity (large effect size). We observed a different pattern of results when using the MFV (with small effect sizes for all results), a more indirect measure of moral foundations. For binding moral foundations, only loyalty seemed to play a role here, i.e., pro-life women had a higher level of loyalty than pro-choice women. However, pro-choice women had higher levels of both types of care (i.e., emotional and physical) and liberty than pro-life women. Fairness, authority, and purity did not differentiate those groups using MFV.

Tests of effects in ANOVA and ANCOVA

* p  < .05; ** p  < .01; *** p  < .001. The rows contain tests of one ANOVA with moral foundation as a dependent variable and attitude toward abortion as a factor, and one ANCOVA, extending the ANOVA with the set of covariates: religious practice, political views on economic issues, and political views on social issues

Exploratory analyses

Do pro-choice and pro-life women differ in moral foundations when we control religious practice and political views.

Yes. When we controlled for political views and religious practice simultaneously (ANCOVA), we found no differences between groups regarding declared moral foundations (MFQ). However, in the case of real-life assessments (MFV), we observed the same pattern of results for care and liberty as when using ANOVA, but now loyalty did not differentiate these two groups. Additionally, we observed differences in fairness, authority, and purity in such a way that women pro-life had higher levels of those foundations than women pro-choice. All found effects were small.

Past research tried to explain attitudes to abortion mainly by looking into religious and political differences between pro-choice and pro-life people. However, attitudes to abortion may also be related to an individual’s moral views (Jędryczka et al., 2022 ; Jonason et al., 2022 ), and sometimes moral foundations may even be an as good predictor of attitudes to abortion as a religious practice or political conservatism (Koleva et al., 2012 ). In the current research, we looked into the problem of attitudes to abortion more deeply by studying, directly and indirectly, moral foundations among pro-choice and women pro-life women.

When we asked about moral foundations directly (using MFQ of Graham and colleagues, 2009 ), we confirmed our preregistered hypothesis that pro-life women have higher binding foundations than pro-choice women. This result is consistent with past findings (Jonason et al., 2022 ). However, we found a different pattern of results when measuring moral foundations indirectly, i.e., by MFV (Clifford et al., 2015 ). For binding foundations, only loyalty seemed to play a role here, i.e., pro-life women had a higher level of loyalty than pro-choice women. Regarding individualizing foundations, pro-choice women had higher care (physical and emotional) and liberty levels than pro-life women. Fairness, authority, and purity did not differentiate those groups when applying MFV.

Moreover, when we additionally controlled for religious practice and political views (ANCOVA), we found no differences in moral foundations between groups regarding declared moral foundations (MFQ). However, in the case of real-life assessments (MFV), we observed higher care and liberty among pro-choice (just like in ANOVA) and higher fairness, authority, and purity among pro-life. We conclude that religious practice and political views may explain differences between pro-choice and pro-life, but only in the case of declared moral foundations (MFQ) and not in MFV (when individuals make moral judgments about real-life behaviors). Because we found differences between pro-choice and pro-life women (whether we controlled religious practice or political views or not), we conclude that studying indirect moral judgments (i.e., using MFV) may reveal hitherto unknown “hidden” differences between pro-choice and pro-life women.

Specifically, our results show intriguing nuances in the problem of abortion as we found that pro-choice and pro-life women differ in declared abstract moral principles (MFQ) and sensitivity to violating those principles in real-life situations (MFV). On the one hand (i.e., when using the MFQ), women who were pro-life were the women who intensely cared about binding foundations, which was also related to their more vital religious practices and higher conservatism on social issues. It simply means that women who were pro-life cared more about binding foundations than pro-choice women, so they declared that they cared about being loyal, listening to authorities, and not violating the purity foundation, which is strictly related to religious sanctity (and indeed, this foundation’s one of the first names was even sanctity ) (Graham et al., 2018 ). Indeed, past studies showed strong correlations between religion and binding moral foundations worldwide (Saroglou & Craninx, 2020 ) and conservative political preferences and binding foundations (Kivikangas et al., 2021 ). Similar associations were found between five moral foundations, religiosity, political preferences, and acceptance of the new abortion rule in Poland (Jonason et al., 2022 ) or between preference for group-based hierarchy and pro-life (Osborne & Davies, 2009 ). When we controlled for religious practice and political views, the differences between pro-choice and pro-life women disappeared, so we can conclude that – at least for declared abstract moral foundations – being religious and conservative plays a central role in the abortion problem.

On the other hand (i.e., when using the MFV), we showed that this is only one part of the story. We know it because when indirectly measuring preferences for moral foundations, the same women (i.e., pro-life) had higher levels of only loyalty foundation when compared to pro-choice women. The importance of loyalty to the abortion problem is consistent with theory and past findings (Jonason et al., 2022 ). Higher levels of loyalty are related to being more religious and conservative (Saroglou & Craninx, 2020 ). The more surprising result is that authority and purity foundations did not play an essential role in the abortion problem when measured indirectly. This result contradicted past findings when moral foundations were measured directly (Jonason et al., 2022 ). It may be related to a different approach to measuring moral foundations by MFQ and MFV. For example, purity is more directly connected to religiosity in MFQ than in MFV, and their operationalization is slightly different (Crone, 2022 ). We suspect it is the most reasonable explanation for finding no differences here. However, when we additionally controlled for religious practice and political views, we replicated the higher level of care and liberty among pro-choice, but we also found a higher level of fairness, authority, and purity among pro-life. Future researchers could try to explain those nuances more deeply, e.g., by conducting longitudinal studies or using more complex measurements of religiosity and political preferences. We observe inconsistent patterns of results for binding moral foundations measured via MFV, so we should be more tentative about the interpretation and conclusions from our study. We need more studies on this issue to understand why we observed such inconsistency.

Regarding the individualizing moral foundations (MFV), pro-life women scored lower in physical and emotional care and liberty foundations than pro-choice women (also when controlling for religious practice and political views). Regarding care, it simply means that pro-choice and pro-life women gave similar declarations about how important it is for them to care about others (MFQ). However, they differed in indirect measures of care in such a way that pro-choice women had higher levels of care than pro-life women (MFV). These results are the most intriguing for us. Women being pro-life sometimes argue that they care about all life, so abortion should be banned. Nevertheless, we did not find confirmation of this in empirical results. Surprisingly, those women who were pro-choice had higher levels of emotional and physical care than pro-life women. It means that when making moral decisions about other people, pro-choice women were more sensitive to violations of care foundation or, in other words: they disliked the suffering of others more than pro-life women. According to some approaches in moral psychology, the foundation of care is the most critical, and people make their moral judgments mainly based on a simple question: Is anyone hurt? (Gray et al., 2012 ; Schein & Gray, 2018 ). Future studies are needed to explain those differences in care, looking for possible sources of them, maybe in the levels of empathy (Zaki, 2018 ), moral identity (Aquino & Reed, 2002 ; Paruzel-Czachura & Blukacz 2021 ), moral absolutism (Vecina et al., 2016 ), or more general attitudes to violence (Vecina et al., 2015 ).

As MFQ does not allow measuring the liberty foundation, we only studied its level using the MFV, and we found that pro-choice women had a higher level of liberty than pro-life women. The importance of liberty is consistent with theoretical assumptions of being pro-choice (Foot, 1967 ; Singer, 2011 ; Thomson, 1971 ; Watt, 2017 ), and it is the first result confirming empirically that, indeed, being pro-choice is related to highlighting liberty when making moral decisions about what behavior is right or wrong.

Some individuals may say they are pro-life or pro-choice because of their religious or political preferences. Indeed, we found significant relations between stronger practicing of religion, conservative views on social issues, and being against abortion. However, we also found this may be too straightforward to describe this problem because there are atheists and believers in both groups of women, i.e., pro-choice and pro-life. We need more studies to understand the complex attitudes to abortion, for example, by studying only a sample of atheists. It is also worth highlighting again that past studies showed that moral foundations might be as good a predictor of attitudes to abortion as religious or political views (Koleva et al., 2012 ). Because of the importance of the abortion problem in our everyday lives, we need more studies to understand possible differences between pro-choice and pro-life people beyond simple explanations that abortion is just a matter of religion or politics.

Our study is not free from limitations. First, we tested only one sample. There is a possibility that different samples (e.g., from other cultural or religious backgrounds) would bring different results. We cannot know to what extent the results are dependent on the Polish context and the abortion protests, and this is a limitation that needs to be addressed in future research. We need replications of our study, especially in diverse samples, including countries where the abortion law changed, similar to Poland. Attitudes to abortion may be sensitive to changes in law, which made thousands of women protest for their rights on the streets in the case of Poland. Second, we did not study whether being pro-choice or pro-life is moderated by individual differences. For instance, attitudes or moral judgments may depend on personality (Pratto et al., 1994 ). Does personality matter for the abortion problem, and if yes, how? (Jonason et al., 2022 ). Third, we also did not study how situational factors may impact attitudes toward abortion, and some research shows that this issue is worth future investigations (Bago et al., 2022 ; Bilewicz et al., 2017 ). Fourth, two compared groups were identified based on a direct question about their position on pro-life or pro-choice. To cope with false self-identification, we asked additional questions about attitudes toward the abortion problem and the new law in Poland. Admittedly, we confirmed that women correctly assigned themselves to the group for or against abortion (see results: group check). However, we did not avoid the problem related to the situation that some participants who claimed to be pro-life or pro-choice had more mixed feelings about the rest of the questions. We conducted additional analyses to understand this issue more deeply ( Supplementary Materials ). Specifically, we presented the percentages of participants’ answers within the two groups on the six statements expressing full or conditional support for abortion (Table S1 ). This table shows that most participants correctly assigned themselves to the group. However, there were participants whose feelings were mixed. Moreover, we conducted the hierarchical cluster analysis on the three statements expressing full support for abortion and observed that some participants do not belong to the two obtained clusters (Table S2 ). Because we did not preregister to drop such participants out, we did not do it. However, we recommend implementing better control of this issue in future studies to ensure that such groups are created properly. Fifth, we measured religious practice and political views by only single items. In future studies, researchers could use more complex measures of those variables, e.g., the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (Huber & Huber, 2012 ) or the Resistance to Change-Beliefs Scale (White et al., 2020 ). Sixth, it is worth noticing that the correlations between the factors estimated through the MFQ and the MFV are mediocre, or some correlate not exactly as the theory would expect. For instance, MFV authority correlates with MFQ fairness. Perhaps different results with MFQ and MFV might be caused by the imprecision of the instruments in measuring moral foundations. Lastly, there is also a possibility that different results would be obtained in non-WEIRD samples (that are White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) (Henrich et al., 2010 ), as some research has suggested different patterns of moral judgments in non-WEIRD samples (e.g., Smith & Apicella 2022 ; Sorokowski et al., 2020 ; Turpin et al., 2021 ; Workman et al., 2022 ). Despite all the above limitations, we believe that because of our topic’s theoretical and practical relevance, our study brings an important puzzle to understanding polarization regarding the abortion problem.

Conclusions

We conclude that to understand the attitudes to abortion more fully, we must go beyond abstract moral declarations. Our research demonstrates that pro-choice and pro-life women differed in moral foundations when (a) they revealed abstract moral foundations (pro-life women cared more about loyalty, authority, and purity than pro-choice women) and (b) when they made moral judgments closed to real-life problems (e.g., pro-choice women were more concerned than pro-life women when the foundations of emotional and physical care and liberty were violated). Concerning the latest restrictions on abortion in many places worldwide, discussions about the abortion problem have become more common in our everyday lives. This issue touched many people so much that it sparked massive protests. Hence, it is essential that people are aware of these differences between pro-choice and pro-life women, and we definitely need more studies on this topic.

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

(DOCX 24.2 KB)

Author contributions

MPC and MN contributed to the study conceptualization. MPC and AD wrote the draft. MPC and MN contributed to data collection and data preparation. AD analyzed the data. All authors accepted the final version.

Data availability

Declarations.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

1 We did not pre-register dropping those participants out. However, when we repeated the analyses for the full sample, we observed the very similar values of Cronbach alphas, the same pattern of correlations and differences between groups, and similar p-values in the performed statistical tests.

Publisher’s note

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