World News – AU – Anti-Abortion Laws and Radicalization

‘ Take your rosaries off our ovaries, ‘sang the women who marched for the referendum that made abortion legal in Ireland in 2018. Two years later, the 2020 elections broke the centuries-old stranglehold of the two center-right parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Together they even received less than half of the votes.

Did the 2018 mass mobilization against the anti-abortion law radicalize Irish politics and trigger this shift? Probably.

Another country where the Catholic Church has traditionally dominated politics, Poland, is now also seeing mass mobilization. On-demand abortion was legal in Poland under communist rule, but since democracy in 1989 the Catholic Church has steadily pushed back the right to abortion.

Shortly after the Catholic-backed Law and Justice Party (PiS) won the 2015 elections, it attempted to get a law through parliament banning abortion in cases of fetal abnormality, but politicians backed off in the face of it Mass protests back, especially by women.

So the government tried a different approach. (Americans will recognize this strategy. ) The PiS filled the Constitutional Court with party loyalists, and last October the court effectively banned almost all abortions. But the country exploded in protest.

Suddenly many Poles are openly angry with the Catholic Church, even though it is as closely linked to the identity and nationality of Poland as it is to Ireland.

The late Pope (and saint) John Paul II. is venerated as the only Polish Pope and great national hero, but a statue of him near Warsaw recently had her hands smeared with red paint. Only 35% of Poles now see the Catholic Church positively, and among young people it is only 9%. . Will this change Polish politics? Probably yes.

In Argentina, the House of Commons of Congress has just passed a government-sponsored law to legalize abortion, which is currently considered a crime in almost all circumstances. Even women who had spontaneous miscarriages have been charged with abortion and jailed for murder.

But tens of thousands of women came out in Buenos Aires last Friday to welcome the passage of abortion legalization: a local news website called it a « tsunami of joy ». . They will regain strength later this month to ensure that the Senate passes the new law (which it likely will) – and this will spark a wave of calls for similar reforms across Latin America.

Most countries in Central and South America, thanks to the traditional power of the Catholic Church, only allow abortions in cases of rape or risk to the mother’s life.

So far, only Cuba and Uruguay have allowed abortion on request. But for the majority of Latin American countries, where most of the people are no longer farmers, the writing is now on the wall.

That, of course, brings us to the US, where very few people consider themselves farmers. The landscape is pretty similar, and evangelical Christians are even more anti-abortion militants than Catholics. However, the abortion rate among Catholic women is in line with the national average, and even among Protestant women it is about half that high.

Abortions in the United States are now the lowest since the major Supreme Court decision legalizing Roe v Wade abortion in 1973. However, this is mainly due to better contraception. Even so, almost a quarter of American women (23. 7%) will have an abortion at some point in their life, most when they are in their 20s.

Many of these women have abortions because of their living conditions: three fifths of them already have at least one child and half of them live below the poverty line.

All that would happen if abortion were made illegal would be the abortionists reappearing on the back street and many women dying or mutilated in some way.

Donald Trump is gone (somehow), but he filled the US Supreme Court 6-3 with conservatives who are considered « pro-life ». . If they decide to ban abortion again, they are sure to spark mass protests on a scale the US has never seen before, just like Ireland and Poland.

The « pro-life » movement is loud, but 80% of Americans support abortion rights. A ban in the US could even trigger a general strike by women. The law is already radicalized in the US, but the rest of the country is ripe for it too.

Abortion is an issue now, mainly in countries with Christian heritage, and in almost every one of them there is a majority in favor of the younger population.

What message does this have for right-wing governments that hold on to power by waging « cultural wars » to cobble together narrow majorities?

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. His new book is « Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work) ». .

The opposition is due to put a motion of censure against the government next month – the second such motion of censure against the current government.

Holders Port will face Buriram United in the last 16 rounds of Tuesday’s FA Cup draw.

Catholic Church, Joe Biden, President of the United States, Abortion Law