The New Pro-Choice: Many Young People Are Choosing to Reject Abortion Rights

Jan 19, 09:14 PM

Jan. 19--Scan the crowd at most political, religious and civic events here, and graying hair is visible everywhere, especially on the leaders.

It's not unusual to hear groups fret about the future and the apathy of the young.

An exception would be the anti-abortion crowd.

The two women in charge at a Pro-Life Memorial Day observance in October were in their 20s.

The annual local Right to Life banquet three days later included several young couples in the audience, some with newborns in tow.

Many people active in their movement here weren't alive when the U.S. Supreme Court, 35 years ago this month, established a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion.

"We shouldn't characterize young people as being slackers or not wanting to be involved or being selfish with their activities," said Amanda Reffitt, 29, a local Right to Life board member. "I know a lot of young people who are very active right now and passionate about it."

Social scientists say opinion among the younger, "post-abortion" generation is shifting against abortion rights, which could have far-reaching consequences.

Public opinion surveys show that "the most pro-life segments of the population are persons under 30," said Paul Sullins, professor of sociology at Catholic University of America.

I think we're making headway. It's little by little," said Ed Hoskins, president of Right to Life of Owensboro.

"In my parents' generation, people were more pro-choice," said Sara Herndon of Hopkinsville, an abortion rights supporter and student at Western Kentucky University.

Many young people today do care about maintaining abortion rights, she said, but they also have a "whole to-do list" of other causes, including environmentalism, competing for their time.

"I don't know that we sense an imminent threat" to abortion rights, which would galvanize young supporters into action, Herndon said. "We're not trying to change anything. We're trying to maintain the status quo."

Nobody takes to the streets to demonstrate for a law that's already in effect, she said.

Statistics are changing

Since the early 1970s, about one pregnancy has been aborted for every three births in this country, Sullins said. By some estimates, more than 47 million abortions have been performed since 1973.

"If you were born after 1972, you are a survivor of the abortion holocaust," said Reffitt, who was born in 1978.

The peak in abortions performed was 1.6 million in 1990, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national think tank on sexual and reproductive health. In 2005, 1.2 million abortions were performed, and the abortion rate -- 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 -- was the lowest it had been since 1974, Guttmacher said Thursday.

"The number (per year) has been declining for about 10 years now, but the decline has been slowing the last few years," said Rebecca Wind, a spokeswoman for Guttmacher.

In past decades, older adults were more likely to be conservative on the abortion issue, while young adults were more likely to support abortion rights, said Michael Emerson, professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston and director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life there. That's changing, Emerson said.

In 1994, nearly 40 percent of adults under age 30 said there should be no restrictions on abortion. In 2004, 21.7 percent felt that way, according to the General Social Surveys of the National Opinion Research Center.

Who gets involved and why

On many other issues, young people these days are "predictably libertarian and don't really accept traditional norms" on issues like gay marriage, premarital sex or the death penalty, Sullins said.

"It's fascinating," Emerson said, "when young people are involved in social causes or movements because since the '60s it hasn't been as in vogue." For those who are involved, "it's an intensely felt issue."

Many of the national pro-choice groups have been beefing up their recruitment efforts in the last five years or so because of the perception they're losing ground to pro-life groups "or just indifference," said Kevin den Dulk, associate professor of political science at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., where he concentrates on religion and politics.

Choice USA, a national group that trains future pro-choice leaders in campus chapters across the country, has noticed more young people are "conflicted" about abortion, said Maria Moreno, the group's development director. The organization also finds that many of them feel strongly that their peers need access to birth control and reproductive health care, she added.

About a fourth of the 100 to 120 members of Life Choices Inc., a local pro-choice group, are under age 40, said Jeanne' Owers, the group's president.

"In this part of the country," Owers said, "I think you'll see young people are more pro-life than pro-choice" because they were raised that way. "If you went to other parts of the country, you would not see the same trend."

Nearly half of Right to Life's local officers and board members are under age 25, Hoskins said. A few years ago the board included a member who was still in high school.

The group wasn't making a concerted effort to recruit the young, he said. The young people stepped forward and wanted to get involved.

Five colleges and universities around Cincinnati now have pro-life groups, said Katie Walker, head of the student pro-life group at Northern Kentucky University. She's also vice president of Kentucky Students for Life.

"Young people are really starting to lead the movement," Walker said.

At her school, the pro-life and pro-choice groups are about the same size, she said. Students on campus are intensely interested in the abortion issue, Walker said.

Western doesn't have any student groups focusing just on abortion, pro or con, said Jane Olmstead, director of women's studies there. But she does know several pro-choice students who have attended marches or who try to raise awareness among their peers about emergency contraception and where it can be obtained, Olmstead said.

Why this generation?

Observers have several theories on why attitudes are changing among the young, including the rise of the religious right, the Reagan administration's support of opposition to abortion, debate in recent years over the so-called partial-birth abortion procedure, and a baby bust in the 1980s that diffused worries about a population boom.

Contraception is much more widely available today than it was in the 1970s, and young people expect their peers to use it, Sullins said.

Also, single parenthood carries little stigma now. "Today, pop media figures don't let on if they have had an abortion, but they are very open and celebrate being mothers," he said.

Science is helping the pro-life cause, said Maggie Knoop, 24, who is on the boards of Right to Life and Birthright here. Ultrasounds, surgery performed in utero, and preemies surviving at younger and younger ages continue to sway public opinion, she and others say.

Abortion rights supporters say the young don't understand the reality of life before Roe v. Wade. "They've never lived in a society where it wasn't safe, where there were backstreet abortions," said Forrest Roberts of Owensboro, who has been active in local women's and pro-choice groups.

"The younger generation," Owers said, "has absolutely no idea what women my age and younger went through to establish legal abortion. They have no idea of the battles fought so they have the right to say, 'I don't want to do this.' "

"Just because we've never seen what it was like before abortion," said Walker, the NKU student, "doesn't mean we can't put two and two together."

Young adults say they have friends, relatives and classmates who have had abortions.

"Killing the baby is wrong, whether it's done by a coat hanger or by an abortion by a so-called doctor," Knoop said. Women have died from legal abortions too, she said.

Abortion supporters aren't replacing themselves at the same rate as abortion opponents, Sullins asserts. As younger generations become a larger proportion of the general population, he says the pro-life movement will have the numbers it needs to change public policy by 2020.

"Nobody has to convince anybody else to change their mind," he said.

Pro-choice advocates disagree.

"Most people in this country do not think abortion needs to be totally banned," Roberts said. "No one likes it, but it's necessary at times."

"I think that most people say they're pro-life and don't think you should kill a baby," said Herndon, the Western student. "Then something happens to somebody they know or it happens to them. When it becomes personal, attitudes change."

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Osaka:8851, The New Pro-Choice: Many Young People Are Choosing to Reject Abortion Rights
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