Individuals’ values, in particular their stance on abortion morality, are more influential in the decision of how to help than demographic characteristics. Here, we see marked rates of discordant benevolence among Americans who are morally opposed to abortion and are willing to help someone with whom they are close seek an abortion. This holds true even for instrumental forms of support: logistical and pecuniary support. To understand how people make sense of their choices, we turn to the interview data, with a focus on Americans who engage (or imagine they would engage) in discordant benevolence.

The differences between people’s willingness to extend these three forms of instrumental help are not consistently associated with differences in demographic characteristics such as age, race, religion, or religious attendance, among others (see table S3). Rather, their willingness is undergirded by their views: their political ideology, their opinion on abortion legality and insurance coverage, and, most importantly, their opinion on abortion’s morality. Opinions on abortion morality are highly predictive of willingness to offer help. At the same time, a substantial number of respondents who are morally opposed or morally equivocal, net of other differences, would nonetheless offer help.

Opinion on abortion morality matters greatly, however, for the more instrumental forms of support. Those who are morally opposed to abortion are much less likely than those who say abortion’s morality depends or who are unopposed to be willing to help with logistical support, with associated costs, or with paying for the abortion itself.

With the exception of emotional support, individuals’ abortion attitudes are highly predictive of their willingness to offer different types of help. Once we know individuals’ attitudes on this set of abortion questions, information on important personal characteristics like age, race, education, religion, and family income do little to improve our ability to predict the forms of help they would offer to a close friend or family member who had decided to have an abortion.

Do Americans with different stances toward abortion’s morality still differ on their willingness to offer help when accounting for their ideology, their other abortion opinions (the Rossi scale and insurance coverage), as well as personal characteristics? To answer this, we analyze four logistic regressions predicting whether an individual would offer each type of help. Our strategy takes the same form for each item: We model the relationship between help offered and demographics, ideology, and the full range of abortion attitudes. The full results from the four models are presented in table S2, while Fig. 3 focuses on our predictor of interest: beliefs about the morality of abortion.

The help that Americans are willing to extend is patterned by their stance on abortion morality, as seen in Fig. 2 ; yet, across attitudes on abortion morality, Americans extend support. Those who deem abortion immoral are willing to offer the fewest forms of support and at the lowest levels. Nonetheless, almost half of those who are morally opposed would help a friend or family member with arrangements, and over a third would help with associated costs. A majority of Americans who think the morality of abortion “depends” would offer logistical help and help with associated costs of abortion; just under a quarter would help pay for the abortion itself. These bivariate results are similar when we assess abortion attitudes measured by attitudes toward legality. The results also hold when we instead use a general measure of political ideology (see figs. S1 and S2).

An overwhelming majority of U.S. resident adults are willing to extend help to a close friend or family member who is seeking an abortion. Figure 1 presents the weighted responses to each of the abortion helping questions, as well as the percentage of respondents who would offer at least one form of help. Most Americans would help in a nonpecuniary manner: 88% would provide emotional support and 72% would help with arrangements like a ride or childcare. Over half would help pay for ancillary costs, and around a quarter would help pay for the abortion itself.

Interview results

How do people willing to extend help despite their moral opposition understand that behavior? What enables discordant benevolence toward a friend or family member who has decided to have an abortion?

Here, we explore interviews with Americans who express moral opposition to abortion to understand how they make sense of their discordant benevolence. Rationales for helping (the why) correlate with types of help offered (the how), whether through assistance with arrangements, financial support, emotional support, or otherwise.

Our analyses of qualitative data suggest that interviewees engage in discordant benevolence in one of three ways: as commiseration, as exemption, or as discretion. These three logics illuminate how people make sense of why, despite espousing moral opposition to abortion, they would be willing to help a friend or family member who decides to have an abortion. We anticipate that these logics would not be as prominent in a laboratory setting or interactional settings involving a stranger; they are specific to interactions within established relationships. We also anticipate that they extend beyond the case of abortion.

Commiseration The first rationale underlying morally opposed interviewees’ willingness to help a friend or family member who has decided to have an abortion is commiseration. Commiseration invokes a view of others—especially friends and family—as humans worthy of care despite imperfections. They, like all of us, live in a troubled world and are vulnerable to hardship, adversity, bad luck, and oppression. Casting the woman seeking an abortion within this context of misfortune, commiseration enables morally opposed interviewees to help someone whose choice they disagree with, perhaps adamantly. Commiseration explains why Maxine (conservative Republican) once drove a friend she met through her addiction recovery group to an abortion clinic. Although adamantly against abortion (“I do believe it is taking life. It is murder.”), her friend’s experience gave Maxine “a more human view.” She describes how “[j]ust seeing how [her friend] was raised and all the things that had happened to her, I guess it gave me more of a viewpoint where, I would still say it’s wrong, but I would never tell anyone ‘You did wrong,’ or condemn them in my mind.” Maxine retains her strong “pro-life” identification and wishes that all who are opposed to abortion would “spend their time helping people, you know?” Lived experience through relationships can enable discordant benevolence via commiseration. Maria (moderate Independent) describes how this happened for her through a teenage friendship: I had a friend in high school … and she had a very verbally abusive stepfather. And she told me, she was like, “He’s going to kill me if he finds out I’m pregnant.” She’s like, “I’m going to have an abortion,” and I told her, I said, “No, don’t have an abortion, you know, give the baby to me, I’ll raise it.” She’s like, “That’s not the point.” She said, “If he finds out I’m pregnant, I’m dead.” Maria points to this experience and the commiseration it engendered as the reason why she would be willing to extend help, because “being ‘pro-life’ is also being pro-women.” Personal experience with an unplanned pregnancy leads other morally opposed interviewees toward helping via commiseration. Roxanne (conservative Republican) recalls how her own abortion experience left her “by myself. I didn’t have any support—the boyfriend, friends, anybody.” Although she thinks of abortion as “killing,” Roxanne says that she would support a woman “who might be in a similar situation,” because “we make bad choices, but we’re still good people.” When Cindy (liberal Democrat) got pregnant “out of wedlock,” she recalls being “scared” because “I didn’t have anybody.” She explains that she is morally opposed to abortion, yet when it comes to others considering an abortion decision, “You can always say, ‘I’m here for you’…‘I’m here no matter what,’” because “everybody needs somebody to help them through it.” For other interviewees, their willingness to help via a logic of commiseration stemmed from imagining oneself in the situation. This kind of empathy led Alexis (conservative Independent), who labels her own stance on abortion as “pro-support,” to say she would help a friend or family member: If I were ever in that situation, I’d be mortified, and terrified. I’d probably, in my mind, want to get an abortion, but I probably wouldn’t, just because—I mean, it was my decision to have sex, unless it was, in whatever case—rape. … And even with some of my friends, too, I would be with them if they chose to get an abortion. Or they chose—were debating about it. I’d let them know I’m there to support them, and be with them, and pray with them, and just love on them. Because that’s just such a hard decision to make. And hard situation to be in, in the first place. So, I can only imagine what some people are going through and thinking about. Alexis concludes that, too often, “the person that’s actually going through [it is] just kind of left there in the middle, with no one helping them.” The perception that women who decide to have an abortion lack help facilitates help-as-commiseration among morally opposed interviewees. Correspondingly, help-givers engaging a logic of commiseration may limit what forms of help they offer due to perceptions that their friend or family member will endure pain and emotional difficulty post-abortion [countering this perception, a National Academy of Sciences report summarizes the long-term health effects of abortion as follows: “Based on research that meets scientific standards for rigor and lack of bias, the committee concludes that having an abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of secondary infertility, pregnancy-related hypertensive disorders, abnormal placentation (after a D&E abortion), preterm birth (<37 weeks), or breast cancer. Having an abortion also does not increase a woman’s risk of depression, anxiety, and/or posttraumatic stress disorder” ( 73 ). Nevertheless, many Americans, including abortion patients, believe that abortion is harmful to women ( 73 75 )]. Johnathan (conservative Republican), for example, explains that “if somebody came and told me [they were seeking an abortion], there’s always an element of sympathy and empathy and understanding that needs to be given, because the woman who has the abortion suffers.” Johnathan does not know of any friends or family members who have experienced an abortion, but roots his willingness to be supportive as commiseration for people who are in “broken” relationships, in poverty, “embarrassed,” or who “don’t want to deal with pregnancy.” Moral opposition to abortion may deem particular forms of help off-limits. Rick (conservative Republican), for example, says “If you’re in need of help, I will do my best to help you,” but “don’t use my money to pay for [an abortion].” Still other interviewees expressed a commiseration rationale using phrases like “needing mercy,” “a spirit of compassion,” or “You’re still a human being. You’re still one of God’s children, so I can love you.” Such expressions of help were often rooted in hypothetical rather than lived examples of interactions with friends and family members seeking an abortion. In sum, the logic behind commiseration help is that abortion conflicts with my personal values, but people are imperfect living in an imperfect world, and, therefore, it is okay for me to help. The occasion of a friend or family member making an abortion decision activates empathy within people otherwise unwilling to help at all. Morally opposed interviewees exercising the logic of commiseration hedge that their extension of benevolence (lived or hypothetical) does not mean that they support abortion, nor their friend or family member’s decision to abort. A commiseration rationale often prioritizes emotional support (as defined by the help-giver) for the person seeking an abortion and makes allowance for logistical support, but rarely includes financial support.

Exemption A second logic underlying interviewees’ willingness to help a friend or family member despite moral opposition to abortion is exemption. An extension of help through this rationale acknowledges and retains one’s personal opposition to abortion, but carves out a condition of exceptionality to help reserved exclusively for their friend(s) or family member(s). Abortion is a moral “wrong,” categorically, but interviewees will (or did) help a specific person in their network (and “only” them) obtain an abortion. This rationale incorporates a view of abortion as morally unacceptable, but enacted alongside the potentially overriding value of helping close others in need. Ryan (liberal Democrat), for example, describes a moral opposition to abortion that stems from his assessment that a person should “step up to the plate and say, ‘You know what, it was my choice, I have to deal with this, and I created this life inside of me and now I have to deal with it.’” But when contemplating the hypothetical scenario of his own sister deciding to have an abortion, Ryan raises an exemption in his willingness to help: If it were my sister…I would want to talk to her to make sure she’s thinking about every possible thing. But if, ultimately, she’s like “No, [Ryan], I can handle this,” then, “Ok, do what you gotta’ do,” you know? But it’s just because you love someone. Ryan delimits his sister’s hypothetical abortion decision as a special circumstance in which he would be willing to provide help, countering that of a stranger, when “you don’t really care.” But he draws the line at paying for anyone’s abortion: “If we’re gonna say that it’s the woman’s choice, then her choices are gonna come with her own financial assets, as well.” Similarly, Ken (conservative Republican) recounts his willingness to help a girlfriend get an abortion despite moral opposition when “there was an instance when she thought she was pregnant.” Ken says they did “a lot of praying for the wrong thing,” wishing for a miscarriage to avoid an abortion decision. A close relationship is what makes helping behavior permissible, via exemption, when help runs counter to another value. Ellie (conservative Republican) says that if it were her own daughter, “I would do everything in my power to say ‘I think you’re making a bad decision’,” but at the same time, “I would still love her as my daughter and support her and do whatever I would need to do.” Anne (conservative Republican) hedges on her otherwise staunch moral opposition when contemplating a hypothetical situation in which her granddaughter is pregnant with a baby determined to have a severe health issue. Anne says it would be “very hard” to tell her granddaughter to continue a pregnancy, because she’d want to support her. Both Anne and Ellie rationalize discordant benevolence as a way to value family foremost. Unlike those who help through the logic of commiseration, the logic of exemption does not require empathy to enable help-giving. The relationship itself (and unique allowance for help, accordingly) is enough. Interviewees frame their “support” through the promise of continued inclusion. An exemption to “help” kin maintains one’s moral disapproval while attempting to offset the potential loss of a relationship. A promise not to end a relationship may or may not be perceived as helpful by the friend or family member, but morally opposed interviewees commonly narrate their support in this way. The logic behind exemption help, in sum, is that abortion is morally wrong, but this is my friend or family member and so, in this situation, for my friend or family member, I will help. The closeness of the social relationship—namely, that the request for help comes from a friend or family member—explains why they would help at all. An exemption rationale does not compel a change to one’s moral positioning on abortion; neither does it imply acceptance of a friend or family member’s personal abortion decision. Rather than tying morality to specific abortion circumstances, as in the cases of those who enact discordant benevolence as commiseration, an exemption rationale for help-giving limits benevolence to a specific group of people. An exemption rationale underscores the importance of role relations in moral decision-making, wherein interviewees emphasize their response to a moral quandary as predicated upon the social relationship. This logic justifies offers of emotional and logistical support, if not financial support, to the friend or family member in question. Close relationships enable discordant benevolence.

Discretion The final reason why interviewees with moral opposition to abortion express a willingness to help their friend or family member is that they grant them discretion, or the latitude to make an autonomous personal decision with which the interviewee him or herself disagrees. Discretion differs from both commiseration and exemption in that it makes room for moral individualism ( 76 ), or the idea that right and wrong is a matter of personal opinion. A discretion rationale rests not upon empathy for someone making a “bad” choice, or on treating family and friends as exemptions, but on the perception of a boundary between oneself and a loved one’s decision. Abortion can be morally wrong “for me” (the help-giver), but the decision belongs to you (the help-recipient), a distinction that enables helping behaviors. We heard the logic of help-as-discretion from Lydia (liberal Democrat) who narrates her opposition to abortion by saying, “I’m a mother. I’m a grandmother. I’m a teacher. Children are everything to me. I know so many adoptive parents. What a gift.” Lydia believes that “nobody should get an abortion, other than the ‘obvious,’” referring to situations of incest, rape, or health. But when Lydia’s unmarried son’s partner got pregnant unexpectedly, she immediately reached out to help. As Lydia describes: I said, “Okay, well, I need to go see her, and let’s have lunch,” and I said, you know, I said, “I’m Grandma. Like it or not. I’m Grandma. I’m here. I’m in.” I said, “I will help you with whatever you need with this baby. I will pay for an abortion. I will help you through adoption. It’s not about me. Just please know that I’m here to help you with whatever you decide to do.” Lydia admits being “relieved” when her son’s partner instead continued the pregnancy, but affirmed her unqualified assistance when she said, “But would I have paid for an abortion? Yep!” Lydia “would have done whatever [her son’s partner] wanted,” including traveling to a place with fewer legal restrictions: “We’ll just go on over to Germany for a month. I can take you somewhere.” Lydia explained her discordant benevolence through the logic of discretion when she said, “I don’t think you get to ask all these questions. I think you just say, ‘Are you sure?’ And, ‘Can I give you some brochures? Do you want some counseling?’” Similarly, Melanie (conservative Democrat) describes how her willingness to help a loved one comes from juxtaposed personal values that emphasize an individual’s “right to make their own decision” alongside her moral opposition to abortion. Helping college women through abortion experiences reified this for Melanie: I have seen it. When you experience it with someone, it’s eye opening. It’s a whole different experience. Again, I’m not there to judge. I’m there to provide guidance and support for whatever the decision is. …My heart goes out to someone who is experiencing or questioning an abortion. …My first inclination is that it is wrong. And then I have this other thing sitting out here that says is it a women’s prerogative. Discretion motivates help in the face of personal moral opposition to abortion. In another example, Veronica (liberal Independent) recalls a time when she drove a best friend to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion. At the time, the friend told her she was getting a cyst removed. Veronica “knew that they didn’t do that there, but I didn’t question. I just, like, drove out, took her, like, okay, whatever.” Months later, Veronica confronted her friend about it, saying, “They don’t do that there. I know what they do there,” and the friend disclosed her abortion. Veronica says she understands that her friend hid it because she knew Veronica opposed abortion. Discretion motivated Veronica to help, anyway: “For anybody in my life, I’ll encourage them to keep [the baby] and I’ll break down every way possible for them to make it work. But if they make that choice, there’s nothing I can do about it.” As with all logics of discordant benevolence, discretion works as a strategy to maintain a close relationship while also maintaining one’s own moral stance against abortion. The logic of discretion is, in sum, that I find abortion morally objectionable for myself, but this is my friend or family member’s own independent moral decision to make. My role as a member of their support network is to help them, whatever they decide. To grant discretion is to distance oneself from moral culpability, resonant with libertarianism. Discretion allows for more expansive forms of help including emotional support, paying for the abortion, paying for ancillary costs, helping with arrangements pertaining directly to the abortion procedure, and more. Help-as-discretion enables help-givers to morally oppose abortion, whether in whole or part, while still supporting their friend or family member who has decided to have an abortion.