The Abortion activists.(profiles of typical members of the National Abortion Rights Action League and the National Right to Life Committee)

Summary

There are a number of distinctive differences in the characteristics and attitudes of the members of the two major organizations supporting and opposing legal abortion--the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). NRLC members are far more likely than NARAL members to have been reared in large families, to prefer large families and to have large families. These differences remain significant and substantial when marital status, age and religion are controlled for. About 70 percent of NRLC members are Roman Catholic--two and one-half times the proportion in the general population; only four percent of NARAL members are Catholic. Almost none of the NRLC members are Jewish, compared to 17 percent of the membership of NARAL-about eight times the proportion in the general population. Participation by Protestants and by blacks is relatively low in both organizations. Whatever their religious affiliation, NRLC members are much more likely than NARAL members to r eport that religion plays an important part in their lives: Nine in 10 NRLC members report that religion is very important to them and that they attend religious services at least once a week, compared to about one in five NARAL members.

NRLC members are more likely than NARAL members to have experienced difficulties becoming pregnant, to have had a miscarriage and to have had an unplanned pregnancy. NARAL members are much more likely to have used birth control pills or to have been surgically sterilized. Of those women surveyed who had had an abortion, 94 percent became members of the NARAL and only six percent joined the NRLC; in other words, guilt or psychological distress over having had an abortion apparently did not motivate many women to join an antiabortion organization. The high levels of fertility and fertility aspirations and of religiosity among NRLC members appear to reflect a generally conservative or traditional approach to matters of personal morality. NRLC members are far more likely than members of the NARAL to oppose sex education in the schools, to oppose making birth control information available to teenagers and to favor a more restrictive public policy on divorce. NRLC members are also relatively more likely to believe that premarital, extramarital and homosexual relations are wrong, and to oppose contraceptive sterilization among married couples. Most NRLC members oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, while most NARAL members support it. The majority of members of both organizations support political, social and economic equality of women in other respects; but NRLC members are more likely than NARAL members to take the more conservative position.

It is notable that while NRLC and NARAL members express approval and disapproval of legal abortion for various reasons in the expected directions, there is not complete consensus within the groups. Seven in 10 NRLC members favor legal abortion if the pregnant woman's life would otherwise be endangered; four in 10 NARAL members disapprove of legal abortion to prevent the birth of a child who is not of the desired sex.

The shift in balance in Congress toward an antiabortion position appears to be the result of a swing toward more conservative candidates rather than a vote against abortion per se. NRLC members are much more likely than NARAL members to be Republicans and to describe themselves as conservatives on economic and social issues generally. However, more than eight in 10 NRLC members say they would vote against a candidate they agreed with on other issues but disagreed with on abortion, whereas fewer than half of the NABAL members say they are one-issue voters. In a close election, there would seem to be some strategic advantage to the organization which has the highest percentage of single-issue voters.

Introduction

The abortion controversy continues to boil in Congress, state legislatures and the courts, and the pot is stirred with ever greater vigor by activist organizations that seek to reverse, dilute, maintain or strengthen the legal protections granted by the Supreme Court to women who want abortions. Despite considerable speculation about the characteristics and motivations of those people who join organizations that support or oppose legal abortion, little is known about them except what can be inferred from surveys of representative samples of adults and from casual observation.