Anti-abortion beliefs could be caused by a fear of promiscuity, according to the authors of a newly published paper in academic journal The Conversation.

In “What really drives anti-abortion beliefs? Research suggests it’s a matter of sexual strategies,” Dr. Martie Haselton, a UCLA social psychology professor who specializes in evolution and human behavior, and Dr. Jaime Arona Krems, an assistant professor of psychology at Oklahoma State University, argue that “sexually-restricted people” are likely to unconsciously oppose abortion in order to make casual sex more costly for those who engage in it.


Based on research from 2016, they found that for the sexually-restricted, abortion represents something other than the loss of a life—it represents a threat to the way they reproduce, or their “mating strategy.” Anti-abortion policies, the authors contend, are about making promiscuity harder and more costly, because when it comes to being cuckolded or losing a partner to another, a sexually unrestricted lifestyle can be threatening to those who adhere to more conservative strategies.


LAMag spoke with Dr. Haselton, who says it comes down to sparking conversations in order to understand the contradictory beliefs that fuel the kind of regressive policies that state after state are imposing following the end of Roe v. Wade.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you think people react when they hear that opinions on same-sex marriage, abortion, and drug use, could be linked to their relationship with sex?

I think this is an ah-ha moment. When we present this perspective and show how it resolves some awkward contradictions such as being anti-abortion and anti-contraception, people are like, “Oh, well, that kind of makes sense.” It explains why some people who are opposed to abortion rights might also be opposed to gay marriage and recreational drug use.


But the rationale behind people’s moral attitudes (or opinions on hot button social issues) is largely non-conscious. For example, we don’t walk around assessing people based on their potential to reproduce, we are simply attracted to them. Likewise, we do not ponder how our moral attitudes about abortion are linked to sexual strategies, we just have a gut sense of right and wrong. Our behaviors have, in the evolutionary past, resulted in us being successful, meaning we’ve reproduced more, so our conscious mind doesn’t need to be aware of the evolutionary rationale behind our sexual strategies.


Isn’t it important for us to be aware of our evolutionary strategies? Especially if they are negatively impacting others?

If we know that these behaviors were forged in the ancestral past and that they might not work well with our current goals, then we can decide what to do with them. In this sense, I hope that the knowledge is freeing. A lot of my work has looked at hormone cycles and how women’s desires change in ways that would have produced a reproductive advantage in the ancestral past. Even now that we have the pill and other ways of controlling reproduction, those desires don’t go away.


If we have insight into why those desires exist then we can make better decisions about whether to follow them or ditch them in the dustbin of evolutionary history. If we slavishly follow all of our desires, we might think that they are serving us in beneficial ways—and we find a reasons to justify them. But if we understand the deep evolutionary logic of why they may have developed, we can better decide whether or not they serve our modern goals and whether or not to follow them.


What do you think your article provides that people can apply to their own lives—whether or not they securely fit in either end of this spectrum?

My hope is that it provides some insight into otherwise confusing patterns. Being anti-abortion can be based on the sanctity of life, and I’m sure there are people whose beliefs do emerge from this basic principle. Nonetheless, the prevailing pattern is that people who oppose abortion access are also often in favor of the death penalty, opposed to access to contraception, and opposed to child welfare policies that would support women after they have been compelled to have a child. Holding all of these attitudes at the same time is contradictory. Opposing contraception and child welfare doesn’t save lives.


I do hope the perspective we offer helps us understand where other people are coming from, and perhaps to have more empathy for their positions when they differ from our own.

But I also think it is important to scrutinize attitudes when they are impacting the rights of women, and we are offering a tool for doing that. For many women, it’s deeply troubling that these policies are enacted on them—that they are asymmetrical to how policies affect men. I hope that this insight is helpful but I also hope it reveals some of the harmful hypocrisy, which could, in turn, help to fuel women’s advocacy for themselves.


For policy makers and politicians, this perspective might help to pinpoint the people who will be in favor or opposed to abortion access—or who are on the fence and could be persuaded in one direction or the other. And it’s not just about being a Democrat or a Republican—there is variation in sexual strategies within each party.

You mention that people want to make sex more costly by banning abortions, and make non-hetero relationships more costly by withholding the benefits of marriage. Does any of this come down to a desire to punish?

There are certain situations where punishment might drive the policy but it’s not just about “I just want the world to be more orderly,” it’s really about guarding your perimeter from the possibility that your mating strategy—your reproductive strategy—will be compromised by the behavior of others or by shifting policies. It’s about the fear that broader social norms such as gay marriage or abortion will erode what people have crafted for themselves in the most traditional arrangements.