>>/Not enough to make it legal when they were in office, and they didn't cite the Church as the reason, they cited population pressure /
Wendy Lyon wrote:
>Which doesn't really support your contention that the Polish population is "pro-choice".
Sorry, by 'population pressure' I didn't mean pressure from the public, I meant a low birth-rate. So you think the Polish population is majority anti-abortion? I'd like to see some evidence, since I cited one poll and the Polish feminist movement saying the opposite.
>>/ In Italy the controversy is not around /
>>/ Catholic doctrine but around fear of being engulfed by immigrants. /
>I don't think that's entirely accurate either. The language that has been used by mainstream politicians against abortion has been very much the language of the "right to life". Look at the stuff that Giuliano Ferrara was coming out with.
OK, but I think you'll want to look at what's changed. There's been a backround drumbeat of 'personhood-from- conception,' (although this is a liberalizing of earlier life-from-before-conception, birth-control-is-murder position of the Church) but my reading is that it's only gaining what little political traction it's gaining now because of birth rate and immigration fears. Again, I'm not talking about the Church's official position, I'm talking about how people see it and take it in.
>Xenophobia has always been a factor in opposition to abortion and at a time when there's a general wave of it sweeping through Europe, of course they're going to make the most of it, but they've hardly abandoned the personhood-from-conception strategy.
Always starting when? I'd be interested to know--really, I'm not saying this rhetorically--in what other periods in Europe fear of immigrant hordes has been a factor in opposition to abortion. Imperial ambition, sure. Breeding a master-race, check. Perhaps you mean anti-Jewish fears? I'm pretty familiar with the U.S. history, not so much the European history of the debate.
Jenny Brown