In the US it’s Christians, in Bangladesh it’s Muslims, in Thailand it’s Buddhists. When completely different religions around the world agree on an issue, that suggests something more fundamental than arbitrary religious doctrine—like not mixing different kinds of threads. It’s rooted in a broadly shared view about reproduction being a (and possibly “the”) central purpose of a person’s life.

It’s more illuminating to ask where the “my body my choice” view comes from. Who are the loudest voices advocating that view? It’s post-Christian white people in Anglo countries. Even in other societies that permit abortion, like Confucian China, it’s not based on this idea of an inherent “right to bodily autonomy.” It’s based on family planning or population control rationales. Even in Europe, the ECHR has repeatedly declined to recognize a general “right” to an abortion. (In European countries outside the Anglosphere, abortion is an exercise of legislative prerogative.)

Abortion-as-a-right is a fusion of Anglo ideas about “rights” of individuals against the government with Christian ideas about individualized morality. It’s rooted in a distinctive and quasi-religious view of humans as having some higher and more noble purpose beyond reproducing themselves.