For decades, the debate over abortion rights has been framed as a moral and ethical battle. “Abortion is murder,” pro-life advocates insist, emphasizing their concern for human life. But what if that’s not the whole story? A new study suggests that opposition to abortion might also be driven — perhaps unconsciously — by a desire to curb casual sexual behavior.
The research, conducted by Jordan W. Moon and Jaimie Arona Krems from UCLA, challenges the idea that anti-abortion beliefs are purely about protecting unborn lives. Instead, the findings indicate that many pro-life individuals may be prioritizing policies that make casual sex more costly over policies that simply reduce abortion rates.
What people say is not what they want
Now, perhaps more than ever, the world seems torn between conservative and liberal values. Abortion is one of the clearest examples. But the fight here isn’t just about abortion; it’s also about sex.
Opponents of abortion will argue that life begins at conception. According to a 2022 Pew Research survey, 93% of people who oppose abortion in all cases believe that “a fetus is a person with rights.” This belief is frequently cited as the primary motivation behind anti-abortion views. But Moon and Krems propose an alternative explanation. They suggest that opposition to abortion might also serve a strategic function: discouraging casual sex.
According to the scientists, there are two ways we consider these views. There’s a “face-value account,” which takes people at their word that their opposition to abortion is driven solely by sanctity-of-life concerns. And there’s a “strategic account,” which suggests that pro-life positions are at least partly motivated by other concerns.
“A growing body of research suggests that such desires might be driving attitudes toward an array of behaviors that people perceive as related to casual sex,” the researchers write. “For example, data suggest that people who are likely to support the suppression of casual sex are also likely to oppose recreational drug use and marriage equality — behaviors they see as related to or facilitating casual sexual norms.”
“The strategic account doesn’t imply that pro-life individuals are being disingenuous,” Dr. Moon explained. “When they say that abortion is murder, they aren’t lying about what they believe.”
Testing the hypothesis
To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted two experiments with nearly 2,000 participants in the U.S., evaluating support for different abortion-related policies. The results showed that the strongest abortion opponents were more likely to support policies that restricted access to abortion while simultaneously making casual sex more difficult or costly.
The study compared support for three different policies that could, in theory, reduce abortion rates:
- Punishing women who seek abortions – Criminalizing abortion and imposing penalties on those who seek or perform the procedure.
- Abstinence-only sex education – Promoting sexual restraint and discouraging premarital sex.
- Comprehensive sex education – Providing information about contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
If the primary motivation for opposing abortion was purely to reduce abortion rates, pro-life individuals should support all of these policies in comparable amounts. After all, each one theoretically prevents unwanted pregnancies or helps babies after they are born. But that’s not what the study found.
Instead, the strongest abortion opponents overwhelmingly rejected comprehensive sex education. They were in favor of the other two options, but against sexual education, even though this has been scientifically proven to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions. This suggests that, consciously or not, opposition to abortion may be less about protecting life and more about regulating sexual behavior.
“On balance, the data from our experiments lend greater support to the strategic account,” said Dr Moon. “Indeed, our findings present some challenges to the face-value account. People who say abortion is murder don’t seem to equally support all possible policies that would reduce abortions. Rather, it seems that they prefer policies that prevent abortions specifically in ways that discourage casual sex.”
What does this mean?
Whether or not abortion opponents truly believe they are exclusively focused on the sanctity of life, this does not seem to be the case.
If opposition to abortion is at least partly driven by a desire to suppress casual sex, then policy debates cannot be resolved simply by presenting evidence that access to contraception reduces abortion rates. Those who oppose abortion may not prioritize reducing abortion per se, but rather ensuring that sex outside of marriage remains socially and materially costly.
“It’s possible that the commonly-voiced justifications for pro-life positions, such as sanctity-of-life concerns, are not actually the cause of pro-life attitudes, but are more socially desirable than other possible justifications,” Moon said. “I think this is a common process that happens within all of us. We often don’t know where our attitudes come from, but when we present them to others, we naturally want to present the best arguments we can think of. In this case, saying you oppose abortion because you care about life is probably more convincing than saying you don’t want society to be accepting of casual sex.”
This explains recent observations from the US very well. Many anti-abortion lawmakers in the U.S. continue to push for abstinence-only education and restrictions on birth control, even though research shows that comprehensive sex education is more effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies. It also sheds light on why some of the same politicians who claim to care deeply about unborn children fail to support policies that provide healthcare, financial assistance, and parental leave to struggling mothers and infants.
Strategic morality
Simply put, for many, the argument against abortion is at least partly self-interest: not about protecting the fetus, but about pushing one’s own ideas and values.
This study is part of a growing field of research on “strategic morality,” which suggests that many moral and political beliefs are shaped by underlying social and reproductive goals. Similar patterns have been observed in debates over same-sex marriage, recreational drug use, and even welfare policies — all of which can be seen as connected to societal attitudes toward casual sex.
“Abortion attitudes likely depend on a wide range of influences,” said Dr. Krems, an associate professor of psychology, “and abortion opponents are not unique in making moral arguments that may be, deep down, self-interested. Rather, our findings simply suggest that all people are prone, at least to some extent, to self-interested biases across a wide variety of moral judgments.”
The study was published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science
