What shapes abortion law? - A global perspective
Dr. Achim Hildebrandt
University of Stuttgart
Institute for Social Sciences
Breitscheidstrasse 2
70174 Stuttgart
Germany
achim.hildebrandt@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de
Paper prepared for presentation at the International Conference for
Public Policy, Milan, 1-4 July 2015
1
Abstract
This paper analyses a correlate of abortion law that has not been addressed in previous research:
the effects of past or present communist rule. As communists reject any moral standards that
were based on religious beliefs, they liberalized abortion law after they gained power. A
quantitative analysis of 170 nations shows that countries with a communist past or present have
more liberal abortion laws. Moreover, abortion law tends to be more liberal, the more modern
and globalized a country is and the more women are represented in the workforce and in
parliament. A larger percentage of Catholics in the population, in contrast, correlates with more
restrictive legislation. Some countries do not fit this general pattern and the paper discusses the
reasons. Based on the empirical results it goes on to present the implications of the findings for
public policy: In many countries strong and persistent socio-economic and cultural forces stand
in the way of further abortion law liberalization. Under these conditions, proponents of
liberalization have greater chances of success if they take a moderate stance and focus on
women’s health instead of women’s rights.
Introduction
Legislation on abortion is frequently the subject of heated political disputes about first
principles, which leave only little room for compromise: Calls for women’s self-determination
clash with religious beliefs and prohibitions. While for decades these controversies were
national issues (McBride Stetson 2001b), abortion law is now discussed on an international and
increasingly on a global level. Reproductive rights have become the subject of international
conferences and international non-governmental groups try to shape national legislation to
reflect their values (Bob 2012).
2
Abortion law has attracted attention among scholars, focusing on comparative case studies
(Blofield 2006, Blofield 2008, Yishai 1993) and comparative analyses of Western industrialized
countries (Minkenberg 2002, Gindulis 2003). During the past forty years, regular overviews of
the development of abortion laws have determined a trend towards liberalization, albeit with
some notable exceptions (Cook/Dickens 1978, Cook/Dickens 1988, Rahman et al. 1998, Cook
et al. 1999, Boland/Katzive 2008); in the last two decades, four large-N quantitative studies
analyzed the correlates of this liberalization or of the factors standing in its way (Asal et al.
2008, Pillai/Wang 1999a, Pillai/Wang 1999b, Ramirez/McEneaney 1997). While Pillai and
Wang analyze 101 developing nations, Asal et al. and Ramirez and McEneaney try to provide
a global perspective, but succeed only partly due to insufficient data for some countries.
Ramirez and McEneaney include 155 nations in their analyses, Asal et al. only 112. These four
studies unanimously identify some correlates of abortion law: Abortion law tends to be more
liberal, the greater the proportion of women in parliament is, the more women participate in the
labour market (Asal et al. 2008, Ramirez/McEneaney 1997), and the more international
organizational linkages a country has (Ramirez/McEneaney 1997). In contrast, the higher the
percentage of Catholics in the population, the more restrictive abortion law usually is (Asal et
al. 2008, Pillai/Wang 1999a). The effect of modernity remains controversial: while Asal et al.
identify a liberalizing effect, Pillai and Wang (1999a, 1999b) and Ramirez and McEneaney do
not. 1
These four previous studies identified relevant correlates of abortion law, but did not address
another important factor: the effects of former or present communist rule. As communists reject
any moral standards that are based on religious beliefs, they liberalized abortion law once they
came to power. Many communist countries developed an “abortion culture” (Bélanger/Flynn
2009), in which abortion is regarded as an alternative to contraception and not as a last resort.
Abortion remained socially acceptable even after some communist countries temporarily
3
tightened their rules to increase the birth rate. This paper analyses the effects of former or
present communist rule on abortion law and uses the correlates identified by the above authors
as controls. 2 Despite the common problem of data availability, it also intends to come as close
as possible to the ideal of a truly global analysis by including 170 of the 193 UN member states.
Finally, the paper discusses the reasons why some countries do not fit this general pattern.
Hypotheses
As with other laws, the content of abortion legislation partly depends on how the issue is framed
in the policy debate. In this debate, policy makers determine “what problems deserve attention,
how those problems should be defined, and what should be done about them” (McBride Stetson
2001a: 3). With regard to abortion, there are four different frames that imply either positive or
negative attitudes to abortion and hence different preferences in terms of rules and regulations.
Whether a country's abortion law is more liberal or more restrictive therefore depends to a
considerable extent on the frames that dominate the policy debate. These four frames are now
presented in the order they entered the policy debates.
The first is the religious frame. Fundamental questions of life and death are part of every
religion, making religion an inevitable presence in the politics of abortion (Maguire 2003: 3).
Religious arguments usually focus on the sanctity of life; their proponents therefore argue for
the protection of the foetus and advocate restrictive abortion laws. Religious arguments have
dominated the debate on abortion for a very long time.
Abortion can also be framed as an instrument of population policy. Abortion has repeatedly
been used to curb population growth, in China, for example, to enforce the one-child policy, or
in Japan after World War II for fear of overpopulation due to the loss of colonies and the ensuing
4
repatriation of millions of people. In the past, abortion was not only used to control the size of
the population but also its composition by targeting people with disabilities. In the early decades
of the 20th century, eugenic policies were widely supported but lost much of their popularity as
a consequence of the Nazi murders and a rising awareness of disability rights. Today, hardly
any government would publicly confirm that they try to control their disabled citizens' fertility.
Many countries do permit abortion in the case of foetal impairment but leave the decision to
the parents. 3 In contrast, concerns about low fertility rates led some countries to restrict access
to abortion, such as several communist states in the 1960s and 1970s (Kulcyzycki 1995: 497498). Thus if abortion serves as a policy instrument, the procedure is not evaluated as such but
only with regard to its capacity to help achieve other goals.
Thirdly, abortion can be framed as a public-health problem. Since the early 20th century,
proponents of abortion law reform have continued to argue that the law cannot force women to
carry a pregnancy to birth if they do not want to. Prohibitions do not reduce the number of
abortions but make them a clandestine affair, forcing millions of women to resort to various
black-market providers or self-help. Clandestine abortions cause complications, disability and
death, mostly due to haemorrhage or severe infections (WHO 2011).
Fourthly, feminists regard access to abortion as a fundamental right of women that grants them
control over their bodies. This argument gained prominence in the 1960s and represents the
most recent of the four ways abortion has been framed. Both the third and the fourth frame
support the liberalization of abortion laws. While advocates of the fourth frame wholeheartedly
approve of abortion, however, proponents of the third frame do not necessarily have a positive
attitude to it. They merely postulate that a ban is ineffective and has more serious consequences
than liberalization.
5
The correlates analyzed in this study increase or reduce the likelihood of each of these frames
dominating the policy debate and via this route affect how liberal the law is. In a number of
countries abortion laws are marked by decades of communist rule. As communists rejected any
moral standards that were based on religious beliefs, sex law reform was on the agenda after
the communists had assumed power. Accordingly, post-revolutionary Russia legalized abortion
along with divorce and same-sex acts between men and granted men and women equal rights
in marriage. These reforms were daringly progressive and served as a model for sexual
reformers in Western democracies (Weeks 1990: 137). The backlash came in 1936, when
abortion was outlawed in an attempt to boost the birth rate and provide the Soviet state with
more workers and soldiers (Kon 1995: 74). In the Soviet Union abortion was legalized again in
1955 due to concerns about maternal morbidity caused by clandestine abortions. Subsequently,
a number of central and Eastern European countries under communist rule also liberalized their
abortion laws. In some of them concerns about fertility rates that were deemed too low later led
to renewed restrictions (Kulcyzycki 1995: 497-498).
Apart from the influence of pro-natalist positions and public health concerns there were also
ideological reasons for the restriction and subsequent liberalization of abortion law in the Soviet
Union. It is no coincidence that the ban on abortion was introduced at the height of the Stalinist
terror in the 1930s and revoked in the mid-1950s during the Khrushchev Thaw, which brought
about limited reforms and liberalization. In the 1930s, totalitarian control of the individual
extended to the most intimate spheres of private existence and included the tight regulation of
sexual conduct. The communist rulers' goal was the “creation of a new socialist personality –
rational, collectivistic, disciplined, and socially oriented […]. Yet one of the obstacles to this
glorious transformation was sexuality – irrational, individualistic, capricious, and spontaneous”
(Kon 1995: 2). In his classic novel of socialist realism, “How the Steel was Tempered” Nicolai
Ostrovsky memorably depicts this self-disciplined and asexual socialist personality with a
6
remark by a young communist to his concerned mother: “Mama, I’ve sworn to myself not to
chase girls until we’ve knocked off the bourgeoisie in the whole world” (cited in Carleton 2005:
222). As a consequence of this repressive sexophobia, sex education was discontinued,
knowledge of modern contraceptives, which had been low before, declined again and
contraceptives were often unavailable and of poor quality, while abortion was easily understood
and accessible on the black market and after legalization also in state-run hospitals (Kulczycki
1995: 477). As a result an “abortion culture” (Bélanger/Flyn 2009) evolved in communist
countries that regarded abortion as an alternative to contraception and not as a last resort or an
emergency act. Even today, abortion rates are very high in post-communist countries despite
the availability of modern contraceptives (Bélanger/Flyn 2009). This abortion culture is fading
only slowly (Agadjanian 2002).
To summarize, countries with a communist tradition are expected to have permissive laws as
communist rule undermined traditional religious opposition to abortion and gave rise to an
abortion culture. Pro-natalist restrictions on access to abortion are unlikely to have remained in
force in those countries once they turned into democracies as this kind of state interference in
individual decisions on family planning cannot be justified in democratic discourse. 4
With regard to the religious frame this analysis focuses on Christianity and Islam as these are
the only two world religions that are sufficiently widespread to influence a large number of
countries. In the Holy Scriptures abortion is not an issue. Although the practice of abortion
dates back to ancient times (Kapparis 2002), it was so dangerous to the life of the mother that
for a very long time it had not been considered a viable measure to control family size; for much
of European history, abandonment and infanticide were practised instead (Gudorf 2003: 5560). Therefore Christianity's stance on abortion has to be inferred from indirect sources. An
important argument is the moment the foetus is understood to receive its soul, which is
7
considered the beginning of human life. While the Catholic Church has always opposed
abortion, it considered it homicide only if performed after the foetus had acquired a soul (Htun
2003: 33). For centuries, various positions on when ensoulment occurs have been advocated
within the Catholic Church, ranging from forty days after conception to quickening, which is
typically at the beginning of the fifth month. Until its ensoulment the foetus was not considered
a person. This position changed dramatically when the human ovum and the process of
fertilization were discovered in the early 19th century. In response to this scientific breakthrough
the Church declared that human life starts with the fertilization of the ovum (Gudorf 2003: 69),
a position the Catholic Church has maintained ever since: “Human life must be respected and
protected absolutely from the moment of conception.” 5 This concept of human life is the reason
why the Catholic Church vehemently opposes abortion. Since the 1970s and the 1980s the
Catholic Church has increasingly mobilized its members to make a stand against the
liberalization of abortion laws after reforms in several Western European countries and
particularly after the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade had been met
with conservative resistance. The Church's line hardened further when Karol Wojytyla became
Pope in 1978 (Htun 2003: 151).
In contrast to the Catholic Church, the various Protestant faiths maintain different moral
positions: Mainline Protestants take a moderate pro-choice position, with some qualifications,
and legitimize their view with a reference to women's freedom of conscience, while
conservative Protestants and the Christian Right are fiercely opposed (Albrecht 2003). Due to
its inconsistent stance the influence of the Protestant faith is not examined in this analysis. 6
In Islam, interpretations vary as well, albeit to a lesser extent. All Muslim schools of law share
the fundamental position that a foetus' ensoulment is completed after 120 days and that it must
not be aborted after this period unless the mother’s life is at risk (Alamri 2011: 39). Whether
8
abortion is legal within this period and under which conditions is controversial, however.
Usually the harm of ending a foetus’s potential life will be “juxtaposed and weighted to the
broader well-being of the mother, the family, and the society” (Shaikh 2003: 122). Under these
considerations, the health of the mother generally outweighs the concern for the foetus; some
religious leaders also recognize rape or foetal impairment as legitimate reasons for abortion
(Hessini 2007: 77). Accordingly, we can expect that in countries with a Muslim majority
regulations are generally fairly restrictive and accept only a limited number of legal grounds
for abortion. 7 In short, the higher the percentage of Muslims or Catholics in the population, the
greater the influence of these religions' moral values on a country's legislation and the more
restrictive its abortion law. This effect is expected to be considerably stronger for Catholics.
The influence of religious traditions is counteracted by deeply individualistic models of society
(Frank et al. 2010). Such individualistic models originated in the American and French twin
revolutions of the 18th century (Winkler 2009) and entered an increasingly globalized stage
after World War II (Frank et al. 2010: 870). They found expression, for example, in the
recognition of universal human rights. According to these individualistic notions, the decision
to terminate a pregnancy is to be placed in the hands of the respective woman, regardless of the
concerns of religious authorities or pro-natalist policy makers. As globalization progresses,
these global standards are increasingly reflected in national legislations; critical for their
implementation in a country's penal code is the co-operation of intergovernmental and
international non-governmental organizations (IGOs and INGOs), which is driven by countless
international conferences and committees. With regard to abortion, the Programme of Action
launched at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo plays
a decisive role. The conference was attended by 20,000 delegates from national governments,
UN agencies and NGOs. Abortion was among the most controversial issues with the Holy See
and some predominantly Muslim countries vehemently opposing any measures to provide
9
easier access to abortion. For Bob this conference was the beginning of the “baptist-burqanetwork” (Bob 2012: 41) of conservative Christians and Muslims. The Programme of Action
represents a compromise. It called attention to the health impact of unsafe abortion and stated
that expanded and improved family services will reduce the recourse to abortion. The delegates
agreed that any proposals to change abortion law have to go through the national legislative
process. If abortion does not violate the law, however, it should be safe (United Nations 1995:
58-59). Thus while the conference did not propagate a right to abortion, it put access to safe
abortion on the international agenda. Several subsequent conferences and regional meetings
further pushed in this direction (Hessini 2005). Case-study evidence indicates that conservative
groups also exert transnational influence in order to align abortion law with their values (Bob
2012, Kane 2008). First of all, however, the analysis tests a hypothesis well-established in the
literature: as political globalization spreads, abortion laws are expected to become more liberal
(Ramirez/McEneaney 1997). To the extent that the opponents of reform globalize their efforts,
this effect is expected to weaken. We will return to this question in the final section.
Modernity is also expected to have a liberalizing effect. In the process of modernization, socioeconomic development is accompanied by rising incomes and increasing levels of education
(Sen 1999). “When growing individual resources widen the scope of possible human activities,
the strive for self-realization, autonomy and emancipation finds greater leverage, strengthening
people’s desire to have free choice and control over their lives” (Welzel et al. 2003: 345). More
objective means of choice and rising emancipative values support the efforts of women’s
movements fighting for more liberal abortion laws.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine the strength of the women’s movement for the
countries in this global analysis. Instead, this study uses standard indicators in quantitative
research for the role women play in the economy and in politics: the percentage in woman in
10
the workforce as an indicator of “economic empowerment” (Asal et al. 2008: 271) and
autonomy and the percentage of female members of parliament (MPs) in the national legislature
as an indicator of political power. 8 The greater the percentage of women in parliament, the
louder the calls for reproductive rights and the more liberal abortion laws are expected to be.
This hypothesis is based on two assumptions: 1. With regard to abortion, members of parliament
represent the interests of their gender rather than an ideological profile independent of their
gender. 2. Female MPs can exercise influence via parliament, irrespective of how much say this
parliament has, i.e. whether they live in a democracy or not. If an effect of the percentage of
female MPs on abortion law can be determined when competing independent variables are
controlled for, the first assumption can be expected to be correct. The second assumption is
tested by comparing the effects in electoral democracies and in other countries.
Constructs and Indicators
The abortion laws are captured by an index based on the legal grounds on which abortion was
permitted in 2011 (United Nations 2013). These are: 9
•
to save a woman’s life,
•
to preserve a woman’s physical health,
•
to preserve a woman’s mental health,
•
in case of rape or incest,
•
because of foetal impairment,
•
for economic or social reasons,
•
on request (but usually within a gestational limit).
11
A country whose law does not provide for any of these legal grounds, i.e. that strictly prohibits
abortion, is assigned a value of 0, a country whose law permits abortion on request is assigned
a value of 7. A note on terminology: The term legalization applies when a country with a total
ban on abortion (value 0) introduces at least one legal ground for the procedure. Making the
law less restrictive by broadening the grounds on which abortion may be legally performed is
called liberalization. Unfortunately, the index cannot cover administrative requirements, such
as third-party authorization by partners, physicians or parents or mandatory counselling and
reflection delays (Cook et al. 1999: 583), which also affect access to abortion.
Modernity is measured with the Human Development Index (UNDP 2014: 164-166); the proxy
for the influence of women in politics is the share of female MPs in the lower or single house
of parliament. 10 Female labour force participation was measured as a percentage of the total
and published by the World Bank. 11 Data on political globalization were drawn from the KOF
Index of Globalization (Dreher 2006, Dreher et al. 2008); 12 all these data also refer to 2011.
Data for the percentage of Catholics and Muslims in the population come from the World
Christian Database; they are available for 2010 (Johnson 2010).
Countries with a communist tradition first of all include those that are still ruled by a communist
party: China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam. 13 North Korea is excluded from this analysis as the
Human Development Index 2011 is not available for that country (UNDP 2014: 164-166).
Some communist traditions also continue in the successor states of the Soviet Union and in the
formerly communist countries of central and Eastern Europe. 14 Thus the total number of
countries with a communist tradition in this study is 31. Due to listwise deletion of cases with
missing data the analysis is based on 170 countries.
12
Results
Table 1 indicates how liberal or restrictive abortion laws are by continent and across all
countries in this study.
Table 1 about here
Five countries totally ban abortion. 37 countries provide for only one legal ground for abortion,
to protect the life of the mother. In contrast, one third of the countries studied (57) permit
abortion on request. A comparison by continent shows that legislation is most liberal in Europe
(with a mean of 6.49) and most restrictive in Oceania (3.00), Africa (3.02) and the Americas
(3.29). However, one of the five countries that strictly prohibit abortion is a European one:
Malta. The other four are the Latin American states of Chile, the Dominican Republic, El
Salvador and Nicaragua. As Table 3 will show, what these five countries have in common is a
strong Catholic tradition. While abortion has always been illegal in Malta, the four Latin
American countries introduced their strict prohibitions only during the past 25 years. 15 This not
only runs against the worldwide trend towards more liberal abortion laws but is also inconsistent
with the legislative history of some Latin American countries, which used to be “vanguards in
the field of abortion law” (Htun 2003: 143) in the 1920s. Further research is needed to explain
how total bans on abortion could be introduced as late as the late 20th century. Existing evidence
suggests that this goes back to the influence of the Catholic Church (Htun 2003: 151) in cooperation with evangelical Protestants (Kane 2008: 364) and international anti-abortion
activists (Bob 2012: 37).
Which consequences these restrictive abortion laws in Latin America have for women depends
on their social class. Middle-class women can afford illegal but safe abortions at private clinics
and therefore rarely speak up for legalization (Htun 2003: 6), while poor women “rely on coat
13
hangers, not doctors” (Blofield 2008: 414). Women who seek medical treatment in public
hospitals after injuries from clandestine abortions may also face prosecution (Rahman et al.
1998: 61). The total ban on abortion is sometimes justified by the argument that live-saving
treatment of pregnant women that incidentally terminates a pregnancy is not considered an
abortion and therefore not subject to prosecution (Htun 2003: 166). This rationale conflicts with
reports of health-care providers having denied pregnant women chemotherapy 16 and treatment
for ectopic pregnancies, ”fearing that these may be construed as an abortion, and subjected to
criminal penalties” (Kane 2008: 364).
Table 2 about here
Table 2 compares countries with and without a communist past or present with respect to their
abortion laws. It shows that a communist tradition has a very strong effect: in 29 out of 31
countries that had been or are currently under communist rule the law allows for abortion on
request. The only exceptions are Laos (value 2) and Poland (value 5). 17 According to the Human
Development Index, Laos is the least developed among the countries with a communist
tradition. Moreover, as the vast majority of the population is still engaged in subsistence
farming, it is not surprising that traditional values play a greater role here than in European
post-communist countries, for example. Among those, Poland is a special case because of the
authority of the Catholic Church there. After the end of communist rule, the Church and its
political allies regarded the abortion issue as “a test case of their strength and influence”
(Kulczycki 1995: 496). The conservative Pope John Paul II, who enjoyed great influence in his
home country, also played a significant role. After fierce debates the current law was passed in
1993. It is a compromise between the positions of those who wanted to keep the liberal
regulations from the communist era and those of their opponents (Kulczycki 1995). Albania,
Bulgaria, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, in contrast, passed laws in the
14
1990 that permitted abortion on request (Rahman et al. 1998: 60). These countries no longer
had strong religious traditions that would have opposed liberalization. And pro-natalist
concerns, which had been the basis for the more restrictive laws under communist rule, are no
longer regarded as legitimate reasons to restrict individual rights.
Table 3 about here
Table 3 presents a comparison of means and Pearson’s r for the control variables. This
preliminary evidence supports all hypotheses. Countries that show a higher degree of modernity
and that are more politically globalized have more liberal abortion laws. A higher rate of female
labour force participation also has a liberalizing effect on abortion law. Section 2 postulated
that the influence of female MPs on abortion law is independent of how much influence the
parliament has in the political system. To test this proposition we compare the effect in electoral
democracies with the effect in all other countries. 18 Across all 170 countries, increasing the
percentage of female MPs by one point is estimated to make abortion law more liberal by
0.065*** points 19; for the 100 electoral democracies the estimated effect is 0.061**. For the
remaining 70 countries it is somewhat weaker at 0.052*. The presence of female MPs thus
seems to have an effect even if the parliament has only a limited influence on policies, such as
in defective democracies or autocracies. Societies which a large Muslim population, in contrast,
tend to have rather restrictive abortion laws, but they do allow it when the mother’s life is at
risk. The higher the percentage of Catholics in the population, the more restrictive abortion law
tends to be. Particularly the countries that strictly ban abortion, as mentioned before, have
populations with an above average percentage of Catholics.
Table 4 about here
15
After controlling for the other explanatory factors, the strong influence of a communist tradition
on abortion legislation remains; in countries with a communist past and/or present, abortion law
is two points more liberal, on average, than in countries without such a tradition (see Table 4).
The effect of modernity (Human Development Index) is even stronger. Three further
hypotheses can be confirmed: The higher the percentage of Catholics in the population, the
more restrictive a country’s abortion law. The larger the share of women in the workforce and
in parliament, the more liberal is a country’s abortion law. In addition, countries that are
politically globalized tend to have more liberal abortion laws, but this effect is only small. After
controlling for the other explanatory factors, the effect of the percentage of Muslims in the
population is practically non-existent. A closer look at the data reveals that the percentage of
Muslims in the population correlates strongly with the share of women in the workforce (r = .65***). In countries with a strong Muslim tradition, women are strongly underrepresented in
the labour market. In Model 1 in Table 4 this relationship is indicated by the rather low level of
tolerance these two variables have. If both variables are taken into account, the effect of the
percentage of Muslims weakens. This does not necessarily mean that the variable is irrelevant.
A Muslim tradition might be a cause for women‘s economic and social discrimination, which
in turn leads to more restrictive abortion laws. This idea cannot be tested with the crosssectional analysis in Table 4, however. If the percentage of Muslims is excluded from the
analysis, the female workforce variable’s level of tolerance increases significantly (Model 2 in
Table 4). With an R2 value of .55 the overall explanatory power of the model is satisfactory.
Lastly, we take a look at the countries that the model does not fit. According to a common rule
of thumb, these regression outliers were defined as standardized residuals with an absolute
value of greater than 2. Table 5 presents the abortion law index values predicted by the
regression model and the empirical values for all seven outliers. The model underestimates the
16
liberality of abortion law for Cape Verde, Bahrain, Mexico and Guyana and overestimates it
for Chile, Ireland and Laos.
Table 5 about here
Cape Verde is one of three African countries that permit abortion on request (see Table 1); the
other two are South Africa and Tunisia. With its predominantly Catholic population, low
inclination to political globalization and below average level of modernity Cape Verde seems
to be an unlikely candidate for a liberal abortion law. The current abortion law was enacted in
1986 under the one-party rule of the leftist African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde
(PAICV). The PAICV invested heavily in health and education and promoted women’s rights
(Baker 2006: 494). The law was a reaction to serious health problems resulting from a high
number of unsafe abortions. 20 This shows that the quality of government may compensate for
adverse structural conditions in a country. Cape Verde introduced multipartyism in 2000 and
has since then turned in a model democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa that has continuously
received the highest rating in the Freedom House surveys since 2004. 21
Bahrain was predicted to have a restrictive abortion law, particularly because of the low
percentage of women in parliament and in the workforce and because of the country’s relatively
low level of globalization; nevertheless, its penal code of 1976 allows for abortion on request.
The country earned a reputation as an island of cultural freedom in Arabia, although politically
it remained strongly authoritarian. Bahrain is a predominantly urban country, hosts a large
artistic community and has a thriving publishing industry (Lawson 1989). This cultural
openness might foster a permissive attitude towards abortion, but this deserves further research.
The predominantly Catholic Mexico is also identified as an outlier with a much more liberal
law than expected. In fact, the high empirical value pertains only to the criminal code of the
17
federal district (i.e. Mexico City), while abortion laws vary from state to state and can be very
restrictive. 22 The predicted value of 3.13 thus describes the mixed situation in Mexico fairly
well.
Guyana reformed its abortion law in 1995 and since then it has been – together with communist
Cuba – the only country in Latin America that allows for abortion on request across the nation.
Nunes and Delph (1995) show how such a reform can be achieved under adverse cultural
conditions: The reform movement focused on women’s health instead of women’s rights,
targeting the complications and deaths caused by clandestine abortions. The movement
“rejected the label ‘pro-abortion’ as nonsensical since they knew of no-one who ‘promoted’
abortion. Instead, they argued that their members were also anti-abortion, that they also wanted
to see fewer abortions and hoped to educate men and women to that end. The group questioned
the notion that a liberal law would encourage more women to have abortions and pointed to the
fact that Guyana, with a very strict law, had an abortion rate 70 times as high as the Netherlands,
with a very liberal law” (Nunes/Delph 1995: 15). The message is simple and clear-cut:
prohibitions of abortions do not work and cause harm. Lifting such prohibitions does not
translate into propagating abortion. With this moderate campaign the reform succeeded against
the opposition of religious groups.
We now turn to three countries for which the model overestimated the liberality of abortion
law. Chile, a highly globalized (ranked 30 out of the 170 countries in this analysis) and very
modern country (ranked 40 out of 170), totally bans abortion. The ban was introduced in 1989
under Pinochet's rule; according to the Military Junta it was a sign of its commitment to human
rights (Htun 2003: 165)! Since the country's return to democracy in 1990, hardly any politician
has advocated a liberalization of abortion law; instead right-wing members of parliament have
tried to extend prison terms for those convicted of abortion (Htun 2003: 167). Chile thus
18
“presents a puzzling combination of economic modernization and social conservatism” (Htun
2003: 3), which deserves further research.
Similar to Chile, Ireland is a highly modernized (ranked 8 out of 170) and globalized (ranked
25 out of 170) country, which permits abortion only when the mother’s life is endangered. The
Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act of 2013 extended this regulation to cases where the
mother is at risk of suicide (Felzmann 2014). Initiatives to further liberalize this Catholic
country’s abortion law have so far not been successful. With its communist tradition, Laos was
predicted to have a liberal abortion law; the other variables point into another direction,
however: Laos ranks comparatively low on both the Human Development Index (125 out of
170) and the KOF Index of Globalization (160 out of 170). Under these conditions older social
mores might survive communist rule. This is only a preliminary assumption, however, which
requires further investigation.
Concluding Remarks and Policy Lessons
The paper demonstrates that a communist tradition considerably shapes the abortion law of a
country. Among the 31 countries studied that had been or still are under communist rule, 29
allow for abortion on request. This relationship remains strong after controlling for other
variables. The other results of this analysis largely confirm previous research findings: Abortion
law tends to be more liberal, the more women are represented in the workforce and in
parliament. A higher percentage of Catholics in a country correlates with a more restrictive
abortion law, while such legislation tends to become more liberal as political globalization
increases. More important than the effect of political globalization is that of modernization;
previous findings with regard to this factor have been inconsistent.
19
What policy implications do the results of this analysis suggest with regard to the further
liberalization of abortion law? The clear effects of the level of modernity and the percentage of
Catholics indicate that there are persistent socio-economic and cultural forces that stand in the
way of fast liberalization. The findings also show that progressing globalization has only a
limited liberalizing effect on abortion laws. Not only the proponents of liberalization exert
transnational influence, but their opponents do so as well. In Nicaragua, for example, the
Catholic Church, evangelical Protestants and national and international conservative groups
joined hands against national and international women’s and human rights groups and
international organizations such as the UN and the European Union in the dispute about the
total ban on abortion (Kane 2008).
If adverse structural conditions and the activities of well-connected transnational conservative
groups coincide, how can restrictive laws become more liberal? Case-Study evidence provides
a clear answer: Proponents of liberalization should take a moderate stance and focus on
women’s health rather than on women’s rights (Shapiro 2014). The objective is, as Kulcyczki
states, to make “abortion safer and less frequent” (Kulczycki 2011: 204). Advocates of
liberalization should not succumb to the common dichotomy of pro-life and pro-choice. Antilegal abortion is not pro-life, prohibitions do not work, they only cause harm. This moderate
line is not only more compatible with attitudes in conservative societies, it also makes it easier
to gain support from international organizations such as the UN or the EU. Calling for a right
to abortion is far too controversial a position to get these actors involved.
20
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26
Table 1: Abortion law by continent
Abortion
Africa
0
1
2
3
4
5
16
33.3
1
2.1
15
31.2
4
8.3
9
18.8
6
7
Total
Percent
Mean
3
6.2
48
100
3.02
America
4
12.9
6
19.4
2
6.5
6
19.4
3
9.7
3
9.7
2
6.5
5
16.1
31
100
3.29
Asia
11
24.4
4
8.9
5
11.1
4
8.9
4
8.9
1
2.2
16
35.6
45
100
4.18
Europe
Oceania
1
2.6
1
2.6
3
42.9
2
28.6
2
5.1
3
7.7
32
82.1
39
100
6.49
1
14.3
1
14.3
7
100
3.00
All
countries
5
2.9
37
21.8
7
4.1
28
16.5
11
6.5
19
11.2
6
3.5
57
33.5
170
100
4.17
27
Table 2: Abortion in countries with and without a communist tradition
Abortion
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Total
Mean
Communist Tradition
N
%
1
3.2
1
3.2
29
31
6.77
93.6
100.0
No Communist Tradition
N
%
5
3.6
37
26.6
6
4.3
28
20.1
11
7.9
18
12.9
6
4.3
28
20.1
139
100.0
3,59
Total
N
5
37
7
28
11
19
6
57
170
4.17
%
2.9
21.8
4.1
16.5
6.5
11.2
3.5
33.5
100.0
28
Table 3: Correlates of abortion law (comparison of means)
Abortion
HDI
Women in
Parliament
0
.72
16.7
1
.59
13.7
2
.67
15.3
3
.59
18.5
4
.67
12.3
5
.66
16.0
6
.79
23.0
7
.78
22.6
Total
.68
18.1
Pearson’s r .47***
.29***
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Female
workforce
38.8
37.2
38.5
38.7
37.9
45.9
41.9
44.0
41.0
.31***
Political
Globalizati
on
67.9
60.0
65.4
64.3
69.6
70.2
64.7
76.5
68.6
.31***
Catholics
(%)
Muslims
(%)
81.5
33.7
24.2
27.6
27.6
21.9
17.2
25.6
28.7
-.17*
.2
34.0
50.7
36.0
27.8
13.1
2.9
18.6
25.0
-.19*
N
5
37
7
28
11
19
6
57
170
-
29
Table 4: Correlates of abortion law (multivariate regression)
(1)
B
Beta
(SE)
Communist tradition
2.061
.33***
(.367)
Human Development
6.107
.39***
Index
(1.055)
Women in Parliament
.032
.15*
(.013)
Female Workforce
.067
.25**
(.022)
Political Globalization
.015
.12
(.008)
Percentage of Catholics
-.021
-.28***
(.005)
Percentage of Muslims
-.001
-.01
(.006)
R2
.55
SEE
1.68 (40.3% of y� )
* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Tolerance
.83
.62
.84
.40
.75
.68
.34
B
(SE)
2.051
(.359)
6.167
(.957)
.033
(.013)
.069
(.016)
.015
(.007)
-.020
(.004)
-
(2)
Beta
Tolerance
.32***
.86
.39***
.75
.15*
.84
.26***
.81
.12*
.79
-.27***
-
.90
-
.55
1.68 (40.3% of y� )
30
Table 5: Regression outliers
Country
Cape Verde
Bahrain
Mexico
Guyana
Chile
Ireland
Laos
Predicted Value
1.54
2.77
3.13
3.44
3.98
4.60
6.04
Empirical Value
7
7
7
7
0
1
2
31
1
The authors use different indicators for modernity: Asal et al. (2008) base their analysis on
urbanization, Pillai and Wang (1999a, 1999b) on the Human Development Index, and Ramirez
and McEneaney (1997) on the level of economic development.
2
With this approach the usual de jure/de facto caveat applies of course, i.e. some countries may
have quite liberal laws but provide only limited access to abortion services, while others may
interpret their restrictive laws more generously (Rahman et al. 1998). Such issues cannot be
avoided in a global quantitative analysis. By and large, however, in a comparison of 170
countries the legal situation should give a fairly accurate picture of the factual situation. In
countries with a high value on the liberality of abortion law index, access to abortion services
should be easier than in countries with a low value.
3
Advances in prenatal diagnosis allow parents to choose not to give birth to disabled children
(Binkert/Mutter/Schinzel 2002). In several Asian countries, prenatal diagnosis and sexselective abortion are used to prevent the birth of unwanted girls (Abrejo/Shaikh/Rizvi 2009).
4
On the other hand, religious arguments against abortion can prevail in democratic discourse
as the example of the US shows. In post-communist countries, however, religious arguments
play only a minor role, with the exception of Poland, as explained in more detail below.
5
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm, retrieved 15 May
2015.
Here, fertilization and conception were used synonymously, which is of course not correct in
case of in vitro fertilization (IVF). After the first recorded IVF child was born in 1978, the
Catholic Church altered their position and vehemently rejected IVF.
6
There is also a technical reason: adding the percentage of Protestants to a regression model
that already contains the percentages of Catholics and Muslims would produce high
multicollinearity.
32
Neither is the influence of the Orthodox Church examined in this study. With the exception of
Cyprus and Greece, all countries with an orthodox majority had for decades been ruled by a
communist regime, under which the influence of the Orthodox Church on abortion policy had
become almost negligible. In post-communist Russia, however, the influence of the Orthodox
Church's moral values in politics is on the rise again. The future will show whether this
influence extends to abortion law.
7
This represents only the mainstream of Muslim positions on abortion. Opinions range from
unconditional permission during the first 120 days of pregnancy to categorical prohibition
(Shaikh 2003: 119-124).
8
These are only rough measures of the influence of women and the women’s movement on
abortion legislation; for detailed case studies see the articles in McBride Stetson 2001b.
9
See Rahman et al. 1998 for information about these legal grounds and their interpretation in
practise.
10
Data provided by the International Parliamentary Union (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-
e/arc/classif310111.htm (retrieved 15 May 2015)
11
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS (retrieved 15 May 2015).
12
2014 raw index data were used (http://globalization.kof.ethz.ch/ (retrieved 15 May 2015).
13
While China, Laos and Vietnam have introduced more or less far-reaching economic reforms
by now, there is no evidence of significant changes in social values, which are more relevant
for abortion laws.
14
Or – in the case of Titoist Yugoslavia – their successor states.
15
Chile in 1989, El Salvador in 1998, Nicaragua in 2006 and the Dominican Republic in 2009
(Boland/Katzive 2008: 112-113, Rahman et al. 1998: 60 and “Dominican Republic delivers
"huge
blow"
to
women's
right
to
life”,
http://web.archive.org/web/20091023222641/http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and33
updates/news/dominican-republic-delivers-quothuge-blowquot-women039s-right-life20090918, retrieved 15 May 2015).
16
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/18/world/americas/dominican-republic-abortion/ retrieved
15 May 2015.
17
In Poland abortion is allowed if the mother’s life or her physical or mental health is
endangered, if the foetus is seriously impaired or if the pregnancy is the result of a criminal act;
confirmation by a physician or a prosecutor is required. Laos permits abortion only when the
pregnancy poses a threat to the woman's life or physical health.
18
Calculations are based on data for 2011 from Freedom House 2012: 16-18.
19
Non-standardized coefficient for the regression of the abortion laws index on percentage of
female MPs.
20
The Population Policy Data Bank maintained by the Population Division of the Department of
Economic
and
Social
Affairs
of
the
United
Nations
Secretariat:
www.un.org/esa/population/publications/abortion/doc/capeve1.doc (retrieved 15 May 2015).
21
This does not mean, however, that democracies have more liberal abortion laws. Democracies
tend to achieve a closer match between citizens’ attitudes and policies than autocracies. If
citizens are socially conservative, abortion law will be so, too. In line with this argument, adding
the Freedom House political rights score to the model in Table 4 produces only an insignificant
effect (with more democratic regimes having slightly more liberal abortion laws).
22
See www.hrw.org/news/2009/03/31/abortion (retrieved 15 May 2015).
34