A new study conducted by Amy Adamczyk, assistant professor of Criminal Justice at City University of New York, found that female students at private, religious schools and colleges are more likely to have an abortion than their public school counterparts. According to Life News, women at Catholic institutions had abortion rates similar to students at other religious institutions in the study.

“This dangerous anti-life trend at Catholic educational institutions confirms what Pope Benedict XVI has reiterated many times, that there is an underlying crisis of faith among young people that is not being adequately addressed even by Catholic educators,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS).

“We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom,” Pope Benedict told Catholic educators gathered at The Catholic University of America in April 2008. “…[P]articularly disturbing is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk', bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love,”

Adamczyk’s findings echo a CNS-sponsored study published in November 2008 and titled “Behaviors and Beliefs of Current and Recent Students at U.S. Catholic Colleges.” The CNS study found that most Catholic colleges have little positive impact on the faith and values of students. In particular, CNS reported that nearly 1 in 5 students at Catholic colleges knew another student who had or paid for an abortion.

The new study by Adamczyk, “Understanding the Effects of Personal and School Religiosity on the Decision to Abort a Premarital Pregnancy,” examines how personal religious involvement, schoolmate religious involvement and school type influenced the pregnancy decisions of a sample of 1,504 unmarried and never-divorced women age 26 and younger from 125 different schools and colleges. Twenty-five percent of the women, ranged in age from 14 to 26 at the time they discovered they were pregnant, reported having had an abortion.

"This research suggests that young, unmarried women are confronted with a number of social, financial and health-related factors that can make it difficult for them to act according to religious values when deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy," she said.

The results of the study did not reveal a significant link between a young woman’s reported decision to have an abortion and her personal religiosity, as defined by her religious involvement, frequency of prayer and perception of the importance of religion.