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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American

UN Criticizes Poland's Abortion Laws

Poland's Restrictive Abortion Laws Criticized by UN Committee

Court censures Poland for denying abortion rights

Yeah, you go with that.

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"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:449

Scucca

The failure of the Polish restrictive legislation is not relevant to the thread. Could you try and actually refer to the thread's question? I'm interested in whether the US's competitive religious sector has actually harvested more aggressively anti-abortion attitudes

OKgrannie

Yes, separation of church and state has encouraged religion in this country, and the basis of objection to legal abortion is primarily religious. (Now I expect to see numerous posts stating "but I'm not religious, my objection is moral, ethical, scientific, fill in the blank___.")

Abortion and Religion


'One of the things that sets America apart from many other nations is the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. For example, most European countries have state churches, and citizens must pay taxes to the church whether they attend or not. But in America, the separation of state and church has actually helped religion to grow and diversify. The United States today is one of the most religious countries in the world,...
The key to the origin of patriarchy probably lies in the biological need for people to invest in their own children. Evolutionarily speaking, individuals are compelled to spread their genes by reproducing. Animals do not generally take care of young that are not their own, since this would turn them into evolutionary dead-ends. In the case of humans, women always know that the children they bear are related to them, but men can never know for sure who their genetic offspring are, which can cause huge anxiety for them. This male dilemma matters little to women, since women’s biological priority is to find someone to help provide for their children, and it doesn’t have to be the father. In fact, female duplicity in this regard has always been common—overall, nine percent of children are raised by men who only think they are the fathers (Boster, 1997).

In ancient human societies, the obvious and most practical way to ensure that men invested in their own children was to dictate and restrict women’s sexual behaviour. For example, adultery became a far worse crime for women than for men. Of course, this control of women was never consciously justified on biological grounds—but it had to be justified somehow. The most convenient and effective social explanation was this: Women’s subjugation had to be enforced because women were inferior to men and their sexuality was a source of evil temptation that corrupted men.

How could such beliefs be justified and enforced? In a word, religion. Women’s confinement to the role of faithful wife and mother was God-ordained by default, because religion permeated early societies— it dictated everything about people’s lives. Divine laws and religious mythmaking fulfilled patriarchal needs by providing moral justification, strength, and endurance to beliefs about woman’s proper place. These beliefs became enshrined in the sacred books of organized religion, such as the Judaic Old Testament.

Woman's Place In the Christian Bedroom
Informed pro-choicers have always understood that the anti-abortion movement is not about saving babies—it's about putting women back in their place. And in fact, Biblical and religious attitudes towards women are the real key to anti-abortionism. The role and nature of women and their sexuality according to the anti-choice, explain the immorality of abortion."

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The greatest danger to liberty lurks in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.---Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Scucca

OKgrannie,

Thanks for the url. I do think that to ultimately understand the relationship between religion and abortion we will have to concentrate on feminist analysis. However, rather than consider more general linkages, I'm really considering something much more specific (and therefore perhaps something less interesting). I do find the national differences in catholic perceptions intriguing. On one side, we have an authoritarian church where we could argue that the individual recognises the coercion and therefore is more likely to ignore the message. When we move away from that authoritarianism we then have the worshiper having to justify their core beliefs. Could this have psychological effects? In particular, are they more prone to accepting dogma in order to justify their religious investments (i.e. a form of cognitive dissonance where there is unflinching support for the church in order to avoid any damaging costs from questioning 'faith' decisions)

talloulou

I'm not religious. That said I know lots of fairly religious people who don't seem at all dogmatic. The overwhelming vast majority of them seem to be quite content cherry picking from their chosen faith, accepting what pleases them and rings true and tossing the rest out the window. Now I've only lived on the coasts, both east and west. I've never lived or spent much time down south or in the middle of the country where I'm told it's different. I know very few if any extreme religious people. I know tons of Catholics who've divorced, popped birth control pills, had premarital sex, lived in sin, ect.

I don't think the abortion war is necessarily religious. However I do think it is probably true that it is mostly religious folks who really push politically to fight abortion.

Scucca

I'm not pushing for a backward religious versus enlightened atheist argument. The missus would kill me if I did. Hardcore Anglican for you!

The issue is whether there are differences in the impact of religion on anti-abortion attitudes across country types. Whilst I'm not advocating a state church, competition for flocks across churches may well lead to a reduced willingness to reject church demands

OKgrannie

Of course there are differences in the impact of religion on anti-abortion attitudes, since even different Protestant denominations vary greatly in their views on abortion. Competition for congregation members increases the number of people participating in religious activities, which means an increased number of people are exposed to anti-abortion preaching (the denominations which support choice generally don't mention abortion while anti-abortion denominations preach about it regularly). The vast majority of church members may not even know their particular denomination's teaching on abortion, and as Talloulou said, they will follow their own inclinations even if they do know. Because of competition, churches are not in a position to make "demands" upon their members, except for the few that practice excommunication.

Scucca

This is the standard way of looking at it. We can go all the way back to Adam Smith and suggest that the religious market, just like any other market, is open to the consumer gains made available from competition (and therefore innovation). However, I'm coming from a completely different angle. The religious market is quite distinct from other markets as it is an investment, rather than a simple consumption. This can have drastic effects on the individual as they rationalise their behaviour. The investment has to be protected no matter what and this may impair the individual's ability to question church demands.

prometeus

I am not sure I can see "a market in religion" or competing religious entities. While I agree that it may look that way, I also can not see how "free market" theory can be applied to religion. Any person who IS religious, I believe, is so because he or she believes even if not the entire dogma of a denomination but most of it. Those who "shop around" for religion are not what I call religious. I could be wrong. Picking faith, based on convenience is not faith but convenience and most certainly can not lead to salvation. In the same way, I think that any congregation that alters its position just to attract more members is not really a religious congregation, but a business and we have seen enough of them. It is all good as long as you donate...
So, personally I can not see correlation between "competing" religion and stance on abortion, but only a commonality among religious persons that hold life sacred because their faith tells them it is so.