Prevalence of Abortion Among Christians
In 2011, the Guttmacher Institute reported that two out of three women having abortions in the U.S. identified as Christian. The same report said that of all U.S. abortions, 37% were undertaken by women who identified as Protestant, and 28% were Catholic. The number of abortions performed on U.S. Catholic women is about the same per capita as the average in the general U.S. population; in the 2000s, Catholic women were 29% more likely to have an abortion than Protestant women. A 1996 study found that one out of five U.S. abortions was performed on a woman who was born-again or evangelical Christian. The likelihood of a woman having an abortion is called the abortion index, with the value of 1.0 assigned to a probability equal to a population's average. Using this metric in America, U.S. Catholics were assessed by Guttmacher Institute in the 2000s, showing an index of 1.00–1.04. Similarly, Protestants were given an abortion index of 0.75–0.84, other religions 1.23–1.41, and non-religious women 1.38–1.59. An earlier study by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research determined U.S. Protestants to have an abortion index of 0.69, Catholics 1.01, Jews 1.08, and non-Judeo-Christian religions 0.78. Women following no organized religion were indexed at 4.02.
In countries where the dominant religion is Catholicism, abortions are higher per capita than the worldwide average, says the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The estimated number of abortions per year in Brazil is roughtly 1 million to 2 million. Peru, another Catholic country, each year sees abortions initiated by 5% of women in their childbearing years, whereas 3% of such women have abortions in the U.S. Catholics for Choice reports that Italy—97% Catholic—is 74% in favor of using Mifepristone, an abortifacient. A majority of Catholics in Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico say that abortion should be allowed in at least some circumstances.
In Nigeria, a 1999 study of 1,516 women having abortions determined that 69% were Protestant, 25% were Muslim, and the remainder were Catholic and other religions.
Read more about this topic: Christianity And Abortion
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