Gender, Religion, and Pro-Life Activism

Abstract

Political mobilizations for and against legal abortions are cyclical entities. Studies on people who joined pro-life movements in the peak of abortion protests (1980s) are relatively common but recent critical studies of right-to-life activists are almost non-existent. To address this lack of recent research, this work combines “political resource” theories and feminist scholarship to explain why certain people are involved in anti-abortion social movements. After analyzing data from the 2010–12 version of the American National Election Surveys (n = 3,860), this study concludes that pro-life activism was primarily driven by absolutist stances on abortion, the minimization of perceived sexism in society, being exposed to religious conversations about politics, and membership in explicitly political groups. The study also found that people's gender, social class, and educational levels failed to predict their pro-life political behaviors.

Racial Attitudes and Political Preferences Among Black and White Evangelicals

“…The dominant paradigm in the literature suggests white evangelicals are drawn toward conservatism and the Republican Party for their stances on traditional moral issues such as abortion and legal recognition of marriage equality (Olson et al 2006; Lewis 2018; Swank 2020). The Republican Party was able to mobilize evangelical Christians by bringing traditional moral issues to the forefront of the political arena (Wilcox 1992).…”