Scucca

Jelen and Wilcox (1997, Attitudes toward Abortion in Poland and the United States, Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 78, pp 907-921) offers an interesting cross-country comparison of catholic attitudes. Here's the abstract:

The article compares the distribution and correlates of mass attitudes towards legal abortion in Poland and the U.S. A telling comparison involves examining the abortion attitudes of Roman Catholics living in the U.S. It is observed that U.S. Catholics are slightly more likely to take an antiabortion position on the "traumatic" abortion items than are their Polish counterparts and considerably more likely to oppose abortion for "elective" reasons. This finding suggests that there is a slight tendency for the Catholic Church to be a more effective agent of political socialization in settings in which Catholicism is a minority religion. It is also found that Poles have come to be less accepting of the authoritative nature of church pronouncements and to regard issues of sexual morality as private and outside the church's legitimate jurisdiction. Lacking either obvious partners in an anti-abortion ecumenical coalition, or organized opposition in the form of feminist organizations, the Polish Catholic Church may be simply reiterating its authority to a population increasingly disinclined to accept its pronouncements as authoritative.

Can we use competition in religion as a means to explain the more aggressive anti-abortion attitudes typically found in the US?

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