Well this is interesting and timely.

[izzybeans]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31048153/

Unwed pregnant teens and 20-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to research in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

"This research suggests that young, unmarried women are confronted with a number of social, financial and health-related factors that can make it difficult for them to act according to religious values when deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy," said the study’s author, sociologist Amy Adamczyk of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

[ananda]

1. brass tacks

It's much easier to get an abortion when
you have money... and people who attend
private schools have money.

[izzybeans]

2. True

they are likely to have more money. But couldn't that make them more likely to keep the baby as well.

[notadmblnd]

7. After all they've been taught in regards to how dirty and nasty

giving into their sexual urges are? I think not. They're going to the abortion Dr. and getting rid of it before their hypocrite parents find out.

[izzybeans]

9. I think this is mostly likely true with teens who have no access to birth control.

I agree.

[Bucky]

8. My guess would be no. More affluent teens will see their futures affected by pregnancy

The kids of affluent parents are brought up with expectations of college, career, and then family and would (and this is strictly the guesswork part) perhaps be more likely to seek a pro-active solution to avoiding the consequences of teenaged sex. More affluent kids can also find out where the clinics are, get to them more easily, and pay for the services.

Illegitimate birthrates are higher in lower income groups. I doubt that means they're having more sex.

[izzybeans]

10. Makes sense to me.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. That was my first thought, also.

[yellowcanine]

3. And suddenly their anti abortion daddies are willing to pay for the abortion.

Funny how that works.

[izzybeans]

4. to be fair

the most conservative protestants were the least likely to get one of the "religiously schooled".

[Lyric]

6. If I had to guess, I'd say that it has something to do with the fact

that religious/parochial schools tend to spend more time talking about things like abortion, premarital sex, etc. For example, when *I* was in high school, we never really heard or thought much about abortion. I hardly knew what it was until I was a grown adult, and I had no idea where abortion services might be found. Many of my classmates and neighbors were poor people. Girls who got pregnant weren't ostracized or criticized--the community accepted that it happens sometimes, and moved on. Birth control was something that every poor girl learned about pretty early, though, and nobody gave them a hard time about using it. I never knew a girl who'd had an abortion until we moved to Virginia when I was almost 16.

On the other hand, my better half Rhythm went to a private, parochial, fundie Baptist high school. Sex, abortion, sin, sin, sin--those kids heard about that stuff Every. Single. Day. The school showed them where all of the local abortion clinics were, because they sent kids out to protest and hold signs. They knew the administrative/bureaucratic procedures for getting an abortion without parental knowledge or consent, because the school taught them in order to help them write detailed letters of protest. Most of all, the school expelled ANY student who got pregnant outside of marriage, or who was caught using birth control pills without a doctor's note saying that it was only for medical reasons. Those kids had all of the knowledge for getting an abortion, and had a LOT of motivation to do so based on fear of expulsion/ostracization/etc. if they had a premarital pregnancy. A clandestine abortion solves the problem and frees the kid to go back to being a little fundie angel of "purity," promise ring and all.

Basically, the uber-hyper focus on "sexual sin" has a tendency to backfire--badly. Constant exposure to, information about, and focus on things like sex, opposition to birth control, and abortion would make it easier (and therefore more likely) for a religious school student to have an abortion than a "normal" student. For the vast majority of young people, social acceptance is a LOT more important than strict religious piety, and abortion keeps the social acceptance that they need intact. I suppose they tell themselves that God will forgive them if they pray and repent, and that makes it all better.

[Hepburn]

11. Quelle amazement...

...not.

These fundies promote abstenance...not safe sex. One would expect that their are more abortions at religious schools exactly because of this.

JMHO