The pro-choice view on abortion is stronger among non-religious Americans than (almost) every other group in America. At the same time, overall support for a woman's right to choose to have an abortion is on the decline in America in just about every possible group that is looked at.
The legality of abortion in America might therefore depend in part on the long-term increase in the numbers of non-religious Americans. If religion starts to grow in America, then safe, legal abortions might become even less attainable than they already are — a problem which would not be unique to abortion, given how many other civil liberties religious Americans tend to oppose.
Americans' Abortion Views by Religion
Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 3-6, 2012 (margin of error +/- 4%), asked people "With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?"
| Pro-Choice | Pro-Life | |
| National adults | 41% | 50% |
| No Religion | 68% | 19% |
| Catholic | 38% | 54% |
| Protestant / Other Christian | 33% | 57% |
The "No Religion" group is comprised of Americans who identify themselves as atheists, agnostics, or who simply have no religious preference. This means the group includes theists, but I think we can probably conclude that it doesn't include theists who regularly go to religious services, who believe that a god has revealed instructions for humans in a book or to religious leaders, etc.
This means it doesn't just exclude fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christians, but also liberal and moderate Christians. Indeed, it probably excludes anyone who would consider themselves any sort of Christian — it would be tough to call yourself a "Christian" and "non-religious" at the same time.
The anti-choice position is so strong in the two Christian groups above that if America were only Christian, it would be likely that abortion would be illegal in America now. And it's not just being religious that is correlated with being anti-choice — almost every other demographic group in America is anti-choice, with many being opposed to abortion by significant margins.
This makes a pretty good argument that religion — or at least religion in America — is bad for women.
Americans' Abortion Views by Demographic Group
| Pro-Choice | Pro-Life | ||
| Education | |||
| Postgraduate Education | 58% | 37% | |
| College graduate only | 45% | 53% | |
| Some College | 41% | 49% | |
| High School or less | 33% | 53% | |
| Sex | |||
| Men | 38% | 53% | |
| Women | 44% | 46% | |
| Race | |||
| White | 42% | 49% | |
| Non-White | 37% | 51% | |
| Age | |||
| 18-34 | 46% | 44% | |
| 35-54 | 40% | 49% | |
| 55+ | 40% | 54% | |
| Geography | |||
| East | 47% | 44% | |
| Midwest | 45% | 46% | |
| South | 33% | 56% | |
| West | 44% | 50% |
So it's not just high rates of religion that are bad for women's rights and autonomy, but also low rates of education, low income, and living in the South. Is all that coincidental, or are there relationships that link all those groups? I'm inclined to suspect the latter.
The only demographic groups that are definitely pro-choice are young people aged 18-25, people who live in the east, and (not listed here) people making $75,000 per year or more — and the support for abortion rights in all of those groups is within the margin of error, which means these groups could be evenly divided or perhaps slightly anti-choice.
Americans' Abortion Views by Political Identification
Even when we look at political differences, non-religious Americans are still more pro-choice than every other group but one:
| Pro-Choice | Pro-Life | ||
| Liberals | 74% | 19% | |
| Conservatives | ? | ? | |
| Democrats | 58% | 34% | |
| Republicans | 22% | 72% | |
| Independents | 41% | 47% |
Only self-identified "liberals" are more pro-choice than the non-religious — even registered Democrats are weaker when it comes to supporting abortion rights. I couldn't find the numbers from this poll on self-identified "conservatives," but I think we can be confident that they are at least as strongly "pro-life" as registered Republicans and possibly more so.
Pro-Choice & Non-Religious
So non-religious Americans are not merely pro-choice, but overwhelmingly so and, in fact, far more pro-choice than nearly ever other groups for which we have numbers. But what does that mean, exactly? As already noted, this suggests very strongly that religion is bad for women because it correlates so strongly with opposition to women's rights and autonomy.
It also suggests that politicians with a liberal outlook need to look more closely at non-religious voters for support. After all, abortion is not the only issue where non-religious Americans are more liberal than average — we can see similar patterns when it comes to gay rights and gay marriage, for example.
Why are Atheists and the Non-Religious Overwhelmingly Pro-Choice?
There's probably nothing about being nonreligious per se which would cause a person to be pro-choice. There's no inherent connection between the two subjects. Instead, the connection is probably more cultural and historical: the anti-choice position is part of a larger collection of conservative, religious positions associated with opposition to individual autonomy, individual rights, and the preservation of power and privilege for white, Christian males.
Being nonreligious in a society that has been dominated, culturally and politically, by conservative Christianity will typically entail questioning the conservative cultural and political positions that have been traditionally defended by Christianity. When a person abandons Christianity, they also end up abandoning many, if not most, of the Christian justifications for those political positions. This doesn't mean that taking the opposite position will necessarily happen, but it probably makes it more likely.
What other factors do you think might be playing a role in why nonreligious Americans are so much more pro-choice than nearly every other demographic or political group in America?