Everything you think you know about religion and abortion is wrong. Well, maybe not wrong. But almost certainly incomplete, according to experts on religion and politics. Religious beliefs do influence abortion views, but so do other factors.
Many faith leaders do oppose abortion rights, but their views don't tell you everything about the people in their pews. Conservative lawmakers do often credit God with inspiring new regulations, but they're also pressured by their party to pass such laws.
In general, religion's role in the contemporary abortion debate is more complicated than it may, at first, appear.
"It's not that religion is absent from the debate," said Daniel Williams, a history professor at the University of West Georgia. It's that the debate is also "very much partisan and political."
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