An estimated 7 in 10 women who’ve had an abortion identify as Christian. That statistic may surprise you, given the persistent public narrative that to be religious automatically equates to opposing abortion. 

But in fact, many faith traditions support legal abortion, including Christian Americans and the majority of Catholics.

In March 2026, an Indiana Superior Court acknowledged that truth when it ruled in favor of five anonymous women, a court-approved class of potentially-impacted individuals, and Hoosier Jews for Choice, a grassroots group that supports abortion access, by granting them permanent injunction against the state’s restrictive abortion ban. Their 2022 lawsuit claimed that Indiana’s abortion law—which prohibited abortion with extremely narrow exceptions for rape, incest, severe fetal deformity, or maternal health—violated their religious freedom. 

(Read more: Indiana’s Religious Right to Abortion Wins in Court)

I believe those women had strong constitutional grounds to sue. 

For a decade, I led the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, an independent, non-partisan policy institute. Indiana’s abortion ban is based on a narrow theological belief that life begins at conception. The law ignores not only medical science but also the state’s rich diversity of religious beliefs by enshrining into law one religious doctrine and imposing it on everyone, regardless of their faith. 

Judaism allows abortion

About one-third of Indianans identify as evangelical Christians, according to Pew Research. Another 16 percent are Catholic; 14 percent are mainline and/or Black Protestant; and 3 percent practice other faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. One-third of people in Indiana claim no religious affiliation.

Looking at these numbers, it’s not hard to see that Indiana’s abortion ban wrongfully imposed a particular theological belief on a religiously diverse population. 

Jewish law, for example, does not view the fetus as a person. A number of Protestant teachings hold that abortion is a personal decision. And many Islamic teachings suggest abortion in the first 120 days of pregnancy is allowable. 

The Indiana lawsuit emphasized this diversity and successfully argued that it’s unconstitutional for a state to pick one religious doctrine and harden it into law. Doing so denies Americans not just bodily autonomy, but also freedom of faith and........

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