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Prior research has suggested that opposition to abortion is primarily driven by religion and politics.

Recently, researchers posited that a deeper reason for pro-life beliefs may be a person's own sexual strategy.

A preprint study suggests that people more in favor of long-term relationships tend to be more anti-abortion.

The effect appears to be mediated by a belief in unwanted pregnancy as a deterrent for promiscuity.

The issue of abortion is one of the most contentious in U.S. politics, split into camps that label themselves "pro-choice" vs. "pro-life." The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion has led to restrictions or total bans on abortion on nearly half of US states. It is clearly more important than ever that we attempt to understand why many adhere so strongly to a belief that abortion is wrong.

Elias Acevedo, a Ph.D. candidate in the laboratory of evolutionary scientist Martie Haselton at UCLA, recently posted to the preprint platform Research Square an article about how a person’s concerns over sexual promiscuity relate to their attitudes to abortion. (Preprints are articles that have yet to be accepted for publication in an academic journal or subjected to peer review, and so their results should not be considered conclusive.)

The psychology that underpins abortion attitudes is poorly understood, despite decades of research. The consensus is that the strongest predictors of opposition to abortion are religiosity and conservatism; people who are more religious and conservative tend to identify as pro-life.

Acevedo, building upon previous work by his colleagues in Haselton’s lab, notes that another, non-mutually exclusive explanation for pro-life attitudes is plausible. He........

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