What Shapes Belief?                  Generational Study of Dominican Women and Abortion

Abortion. A term difficult to bring up in casual conversation without sparking a huge debate. And why is that? In the Dominican Republic, this is even more evident, as it is one of the countries where abortion is 100% illegal (World Population Review, 2023). Even though it has been a long-standing debate in this country, the D.R. has not come close to determining any sort of shift from this perspective, not even in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. The vast factors that influence this are mostly religion and family values; however, it goes beyond that. Age differences and generational gaps, alongside these other factors, are the key to how Dominican women choose to express their points of view relating to our country’s reproductive laws.

By surveying Dominican women of all ages, from 12 to 78, I identified patterns in their beliefs regarding this topic. As mentioned before, for people (especially Dominicans), religion and family appear everywhere. In fact, 72% of Dominicans showcase substantial “closeness and support” within their families (Dominican Today, n.d.). This indicates that family is a guiding force for the larger Dominican population, determining not only the way of life but also personal convictions. 

To better understand what shapes women’s views on abortion, participants were asked to identify the factors they believed most influenced their opinions.

However, shared influences did not result in shared opinions. In fact, despite the Dominican Republic being predominantly Catholic, responses did not strictly follow a specific pattern involving religion, indicating that religious identity on its own does not determine an individual’s personal beliefs. Thus, there was not a direct correlation between the women's religious involvement and their position on reproductive rights, as there were women who responded highly involved in religious matters while being pro ‘3 Causes’ and others pro-life.

Participants were also asked to describe their overall view on the reproductive laws in the Dominican Republic. 

In addition to this, it was evident that women believed their ideas were distinct simply due to media awareness. For instance, keywords like “exposure” and “information” were found in most responses, indicating that how data is received influences a person’s views on a topic.  Whether it was older women pinning younger women’s beliefs, which were leaning towards pro-choice,  up to the newly high levels of media exposure that nowadays youth are brought upon, or if these women explored the exposure to information as a tool to make an informed decision, the media was definitely a common factor that kept being brought up and showcased these women’s opinions to go beyond age differences. 

While religion, media influences, and family values are key in how women think, age has a significant influence on how these opinions are expressed. Older women tended to answer with more confidence in their responses. Their perspectives were based on lived memories and long-term consequences; each woman showed a deep connection with their narrative. Think of it this way: “as we get older, we have the full view of things”. This is a perspective that catches one's attention, especially after being repeated multiple times throughout the various elderly women surveyed. It indicates that living leads to learning. This means the experiences these women lived through shaped not only who they are but also their beliefs. It is not that younger women answer with less confidence, or simply do not know what they're talking about due to their age, but that the place they spoke from was not directly related to personal experiences, instead, more to external factors. In fact, teenage girls answered primarily out of “stories shared”, “social media”, and overall data such as “teenage pregnancy” and sexual assault rates. Based on their lived experiences, older women were able to sustain their individual beliefs with facts other than how media and maturity have impacted them, while younger women sustained them based on external information.

Now, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to this. Lived experiences and data may not be the same, but each of these makes the other no less important. Perhaps the findings of the study do not point to a specific conclusion, but they analyze the complexity that goes along with personal beliefs. This distinction also helps explain why so much disagreement is persistent among women of different generations. In fact, the frequency of the topic being brought up varies among families and communities, as in the survey, the relation of the topic being discussed in categories, always and rarely, was shocking, as such opposite ends of the spectrum were evidenced as shown here:

Not only that but also also, the reasoning behind the belief can change regardless of background. Of course, older women lean more towards lived experiences while younger women lean more towards information gathered, but these simply represent different ways of understanding the same issues.

One cannot change how somebody else thinks; no matter how much you force them to think differently, their own convictions are theirs, and even if environmental factors influence how we think, our age determines the different approaches we may take to information and what we do or think about it.

References

Dominican Today. (n.d.). StudyFinds that Dominicans have the Strongest Family Ties Worldwide. Dominican Today. https://dominicantoday.com/dr/health/2026/03/16/study-finds-dominicans-have-the-strongest-family-ties-worldwide/

World Population Review. (2023). Countries where abortion is illegal 2020. Worldpopulationreview.com. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-where-abortion-is-illegal