To view the Abstract of The Dilemma of Choosing Life, Click Here
Overview:
- Title: “The Dilemma of Choosing Life”
- Conducted by: Right Brain People
- October 2000
- 93 adolescents (ages 13-17) were interviewed in Chicago, IL
- Keywords: (1) Teens, (2) Sexual activity, (3) Adolescent identification with the unborn child
Study:
Background
Objectives:
- To gain an understanding of the psychological dynamics that drive teen attitudes and feelings about abortion and secondarily about sexual activity.
- To develop and implement communication strategies that will increase the percentage of teens who reject abortion and ultimately reduce the incidence of abortion among teens.
Findings
This study demonstrated the large role that live ultrasounds make on abortion decisions. When a women sees the movement of the life within her, it is emotionally powerful. This is a critical moment for a woman who might have been considering what an unexpected pregnancy meant for her as the child had previously been unseen, unfelt and unknown.
Perhaps even more of a revelation than this powerful finding and subsequent marketing campaigns was the idea that, unlike most adults, adolescents actually identify more closely with the developing baby rather than the pregnant mother. They can relate to the lack of freedom of the fetus and see this tiny human being as their little brother or sister, or the person to cure cancer in the future. They connect with the potential of the preborn child. They identify strongly with the developing autonomy of a child in the womb because they themselves are passing through a stage of development centered around gaining autonomy.
The one exception to this finding was related to adolescents who were already sexually active. Their emotional responses were more like that of the adults studied in the first two Right Brain Research studies. This is true especially when unexpected pregnancy or abortion impacts teens personally. Just like with the adults studied, upon learning of her pregnancy, a teen most often shifts into a crisis mentality, becoming very egocentric. Her focus is on the present moment and how the pregnancy is impacting her personally. All her ideals about the preborn child are forgotten (even though she knows that it’s ending the life of a baby) and she is unable to empathize with the baby in the womb.
Overall, adolescents are more or less pro-life depending on how they identify with the unlimited potential of the preborn baby, or with their need to realize their own potential in an idealized future. The key is that once teens become sexually active, they start thinking about this issue drastically differently. They start thinking in the present moment only and egocentrically. This is why it is so important to focus on baby-focused messaging primarily before teens become sexually active because once they do, that messaging is less appealing.
A follow-up finding revealed that teens who are sexually active value the ideal of freedom, even freedom to do the wrong thing, and they seek to protect the right of others to make free choices. They are not as open to hearing legally-based pro-life arguments.
Findings from this study also suggest that public marketing campaigns focused on the issue of life should not be directly tied to messaging related to chastity and abstinence. This is true because messages that tell adolescents that they are not ready for sex often warn against the dangers of pregnancy and therefore implicitly suggest that adolescents are not ready to become parents. Because adolescents feel that abortion is the best way to escape the “impending doom” of premature parenthood, abstinence messages aimed at adolescent audiences can be easily misinterpreted and therefore strengthen the appeal of abortion.
Also, adolescents who have not had sexual intercourse have a very difficult time emotionally relating to anything which, like abortion, comes after having sex. These adolescents are emotionally focused on the question of whether or not to have sex. Because this decision necessarily comes before decisions about abortion, it presents more of an immediate challenge to these adolescents.
This, then, is the ideal time for parents to speak to kids about the benefits of saving sex for marriage while simultaneously making sure they understand that they are supported and loved no matter what and that abortion is not the solution to an unexpected pregnancy. This kind of clear communication can diminish the pressure adolescents feel toward making a decision about whether to be sexually active. It can also, further down the road, diminish the pressure they feel to choose abortion if they face an unexpected pregnancy. Pregnancy centers can help both parents and adolescents understand the value of this kind of clear, direct and loving communication.
Recommendations: Repositioning Prenatal Life
- Instead of focusing teenage sympathies on the teenage mother, focus attention on the needs of the preborn child. Adolescents naturally identify with the child rather than the mother as they consider how similar they are to the child and advocate his or her rights to freedom and hope from the whims of the parents.
- When showing representations of the preborn child, make sure that the representations always include, or at least suggest, movement. Pro-life materials that include still photographs of lifeless features do not tap into the connection that adolescents have toward preborn children. They also reinforce the idea that life truly begins only at birth because they suggest that children in the womb are unable to move. Adolescents equate movement with life, and are therefore less likely to support abortion if they understand that the child is able to move before it is born.
- Help adolescents connect with the humanity of the child by encouraging them to engage in role playing activities about the him or her. For example, have them engage in conversations with an unborn child about what life is before birth. Make sure that the he or she talks, either through a role-playing partner or through a child-like voice used by the teenager to represent the child in the womb.
- Show how the child perceives the world, hearing sounds such as music and the mother’s voice. One source of ideas is the symbolic method of prenatal music training based on evidence that the unborn can hear music and that the music resonates and has an impact.
- Educate adolescents about the facts of prenatal life, providing detailed information about the development from blastocyst to embryo to fetus. Adolescents are ignorant about prenatal life, yet often believe that they are well-informed on the matter. Be sure to mention that the child moves long before the mother is able to feel him or her. In such communications it will be unnecessary to bring up the issue of abortion. Since they already naturally identify with the preborn child, and can visibly see that the fetus is alive and human, adolescents, even more than adults, are generally resistant to the idea of abortion.
- Before engaging adolescents in a political or philosophical debate, encourage them to reminisce about their own childhoods and imagine how it was for their parents when they were expecting and when they were new parents. Help adolescents to reflect upon what it felt like for them to be babies and very young children. Focus on the joy that young children have in being alive and the love that they receive from their parents.
- In communications for adolescents, describe the preborn child as like a younger brother or sister, a child who will soon grow up into adolescence itself. Such language will lead adolescents to compare the life of the unborn to their own lives.
- Instead of using the words “fetus” and “embryo” to describe prenatal life, refer to the “preborn child.” Many adolescents do not consider embryos and fetuses to be completely human. The term “baby” suggests the need for the kind of constant care and attention that adolescents fear will destroy their personal freedom. Talking to a pregnant teenager about “your baby” is like talking to a bridegroom about “your ball and chain.” A child, on the other hand, is relatively autonomous, and closer to the idealized future identity that adolescents desire for themselves.
This last point has an important overlap when dealing with all ages of people and has been used effectively by Vitae in a variety of ways, circumstances, and media.