“Me and God, We're Good”: Abortion Morality and Protestant Women Having Abortions in the South

ABSTRACT This study examines how 84 Protestant women in the South understand the morality of their abortion decisions, offering a nuanced perspective on the complex relationship between religion and abortion and revealing that many women navigate abortion decisions with theological depth, moral reasoning, and a profound sense of responsibility. The in‐depth interviews yield thick descriptions of participants’ abortion decision‐making and insight into how they make meaning of their abortion, particularly in relation to their Christian commitments and their relationship with God. Key contributions include a deepened understanding of how Southern Christian women having abortions think and talk about the category of sin in relation to their abortion; an expanded understanding of religious authority and religious women's moral agency; and a model that demonstrates the value to abortion and religion scholarship of rejecting the reductive constraints of the justification frame of abortion. Given the extent to which religion has been hijacked to tell a narrow, patriarchal, and profoundly polarizing story about abortion and religion in America, documenting the stories of religious people having abortions offers a deep source of moral wisdom and insight that can serve as an important corrective in both public and scholarly narratives about abortion.