Like Americans overall, Catholics vary in their abortion views, with regular Mass attenders most opposed

The Catholic Church in the United States has long been one of the foremost opponents of legal abortion, teaching that human life is sacred “from conception to natural death” and that unborn children have a “right to life.” But for U.S. Catholics, the abortion issue isn’t so clear-cut. Like the American public as a whole, most Catholics think abortion should be illegal in some cases but legal in others, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

And just as U.S. adults overall are divided along religious and political lines in their attitudes about abortion, so are Catholic adults. Catholics who attend Mass regularly are among the country’s strongest opponents of legal abortion, and they are also more likely than those who attend less frequently to believe that life begins at conception and that a fetus has rights. Meanwhile, Catholic Republicans are far more conservative on a range of abortion questions than are Catholic Democrats.