To view the Abstract of Ready for Responsibility?, Click Here
Overview:
- Study title: Ready for Responsibility? Abortion and Emerging Adults”
- July 2003
- 80 interviews with young adults (age 20-23) were conducted in Oak Park, IL
- Keywords: (1) Young adults, (2) Emerging adults, (3) Responsibility, (4) Parenthood as default
Study:
Background
Objectives:
- To gain an understanding of the psychological dynamics that drive young people to change or retain their attitudes and feelings about abortion as they emerge into adulthood.
- To develop and implement communication strategies that will help to change the culture and reduce the incidence of abortion among adults by increasing the percentage of young people who recognize the “sanctity of life” as they emerge into adulthood.
Findings
The most effective way to promote the rejection of abortion is to promote readiness for the developmental step necessary for people to feel confident enough to become parents. Promote pregnancy and parenthood as a vital way to become responsible and independent. Parenthood should be depicted as a sign of self-confidence, not a challenge to self-confidence. The central communications message should be that responsibility is achieved by acting responsibly when challenges arrive, not by denying responsibilities until the perfect time arrives. After all, an absolutely perfect time never arrives on its own, so well before an unexpected pregnancy occurs, people need to be encouraged to consider such surprises as opportunities to initiate the kind of personal growth they’ve been waiting for. Such an attitude is not compatible with a decision to abort. Focus messages on the idea that it is the challenges of life that turn us into the people we want to be. Responsibility does not come from waiting, from saying not yet to life. Responsibility is earned by taking on responsibility, by saying yes to life and then summoning the strength to make it work.
Be positive, make parenthood the default. Don’t use messages that unintentionally accept the idea that pregnancy is an awful mess that people will certainly be afraid of and want to escape. With the handicap of such a negative association of pregnancy, it is very difficult to convince anyone that abortion is not a valid option. Instead of communicating an assumption that people will start out with a desire to abort, start all communications with the assumption that people merely need help to find ways to accept the responsibility of parenthood.
The complicated process of emergence from childhood to adulthood is illustrated in the following diagram.
This diagram is helpful in the later presentation of how emerging adults can be challenged and motivated to take RESPONSIBILITY and that the threshold crisis can be an OPPORTUNITY to become more RESPONSIBLE and thus, move into “Independent Adulthood.”
For emerging adults, just as much as for adolescents and adult women, choice is a powerfully positive word because it suggests the ability to control sexual desire retroactively.
When respondents encounter messages that suggest that abortion is morally wrong, they will subconsciously interpret these messages as personal accusations of an inability to resist sexual desire, even when the messages are broadcast through mass media.
Because of emergent adults’ extreme sensitivity to moral judgments, Pro-Life messages that appeal to the need for character risk the unintended creation of an automatic emotional equation between the Pro-Life position and irrevocable moral condemnation.
To be sure, emerging adults do have concerns about whether abortion is immoral. However, much more agonizing for them is the contemplation of the abortion of their own future selves. Emerging adults are conflicted about the decision to end a pregnancy, but the conflict that they feel is not about whether an abortion will take place, but rather, who will be aborted: will it be an unborn, unseen, unknown child that still is perceived as a part of its mother, or will it be the emerging adult identity that is aborted? For most emerging adults, the way out of this conflict is disconcertingly clear.
Non-accusatory messages that deal with general character issues of responsibility and maturity are more likely to influence attitudes about abortion than messages that explicitly state that abortion is morally wrong.
Recommendations:
1) Reposition pregnancy as an opportunity for growth
2) Avoid direct appeals to character
3) Create contexts that showcase relative readiness
4) Be positive: Make parenthood the default
5) Developmentally appropriate media placement
6) Responsibility development website
7) Naming the kind of pregnancy that can result in abortion. It is with much awkwardness that people devise terms to describe the character of pregnancies that often lead to abortion. The term “unexpected pregnancy” does not adequately describe the deep emotional conflict, including feelings of rejection, that result from such pregnancies. The phrase “unwanted pregnancy” on the other hand, implies that the default reaction to such a pregnancy is rejection, placing too much emphasis on the negative aspects of the emotional conflict that results. The term “unplanned pregnancy” re-evokes emerging adults’ guilty feelings about having impulsive sex, and so many actually provoke abortion as a compensatory reaction. Describing these pregnancies as “unsought pregnancies” allows for the presence of emotional conflict, but does not presume that the pregnancies will end in abortion or adoption. An “unsought pregnancy” also does not carry an implicit accusation of wanton sexual behavior, and so will avoid triggering emerging adults’ psychological defenses.
8) Consider separate communications targeted to emerging adult males. Carefully targeted communications campaigns can show emerging adult males how to become responsible through the way that they deal with the crisis of an unsought pregnancy. By showing as an alternative to the easy path, the path to what emerging adult makes really want, helps them make the right decisions as they plan their new lives as men who are ready to make responsible decisions. Vitae’s 12th study devoted solely to studying the emotional responses of men toward abortion is the extension of this important finding.