https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1168-1393
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ABSTRACT
Many independent states liberalized induced abortion statutes between 1950 and 2011, while many others retained repressive ones. This project attributes these reforms to the legal recognition of civil rights for women – i.e. freedom of mobility, their rights to paid employment, property ownership and justice. By broadening available life choices, civil rights recognition increases the opportunity cost of unwanted maternity thereby expanding women’s resources for mobilizing support for abortion reform. Using a database of 195 independent states and event-history models, the study shows that countries where women enjoy more civil rights are significantly more likely to pass socioeconomic and on demand liberalizations.
Acknowledgments
The text has been edited by Richard Frederick.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Case studies provide prima facie evidence that women’s civil rights contribute to abortion reform even in the absence of full democratization. Asman (Citation2004) states that in Tunisia a series of gender-equality, civil rights reforms in the fifties contributed decisively to the enactment of the 1973 abortion on demand law. In Nepal women’s civil rights expanded significantly in the 1990s, legitimating civil society participation in general and pro-choice activism in particular. Nepalese pro-choice organization then launched a public awareness campaign about unsafe abortion with arguments that persuaded key MP before the 2002 on demand liberalization (Shakya, Kishore, Bird, and Barak Citation2004).
2. Most statues discussing the socio-economic grounds for pregnancy termination do not indicate what social programs could allow women to keep unplanned but wanted pregnancies.
3. Given this definition of abortion on demand, reforms eliminating the need of a physicians’ committee approval but establishing the need of spousal consent of the pregnancy termination – like Turkey’s 1983 reform – are not coded as on demand liberalizations.
4. in the Appendix describes the data coverage by country. In addition, following Coppedge et al. (Citation2019), I treat the reunified Germany as a new country. Yet since the process of reunification occurred formally through the legal accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic, I code the abortion policy of 1990 Germany as continuing the policy of the Federal Republic.
5. Data on women INGOs was kindly provided by David John Frank. The author expanded this series by using Union of International Associations (several years). Raw data on health INGOs was kindly provided by Noland E. Phillips and Kristen Shorette. The author calculated the number of health INGO memberships.
6. To ensure that Iceland and New Zealand are included in the analysis, they were defined as neighboring countries of Denmark (its former metropole) and Australia, respectively.
7. The models were estimated with Stata’s “stcox” command with the “cluster” and “efron” options.
8. Despite the non-significant average effect of total population, case-studies indicate that the cornerstone liberalizations of 1948 (Japan), 1957 (China) and 1972 (India) were passed as part of ambitious governmental plans to reduce the birth rate and population growth (Connelly Citation2008; Hemminki, Wu, Cao, and Viisainen Citation2005; Muramatsu Citation1988). Concerning another highly populated Asian country – China –, it has been proven that the unrestrictive abortion law was used to enforce the one-child policy by forcing large numbers of women to terminate their pregnancies (Connelly Citation2008). The use of forced abortions has also been documented in North Korea (United Nations Human Rights Council Citation2014).
9. To reduce table size, the Models only provide the estimates for the four indicators in the women’s civil liberties index.
10. These models were estimated using Stata’s “xtlogit” command. t represents the number of years the country has been at risk of a reform since 1950, the country became independent or the previous decriminalization.
11. Due to the large percentage of missing values of the raw Gini index variable (Solt Citation2019), missing values of this variable were estimated using multiple imputation techniques (Honaker, King, and Blackwell Citation2018).
12. The women’s civil liberties index and a general civil liberties index (using the same four rights) are highly correlated (r=.898, p<.05). This suggests that the women’s civil liberties index reveals the general civil rights in that country-year and that it is not appropriate to differentiate the effects of women and men’s civil liberties on abortion reform. Yet, as noted by gender theory, since only women bear children and shoulder most costs of unwanted child raising, a country’s civil liberties affect abortion politics mainly by shaping the incentives and capabilities of women themselves.
13. For an exception, see Wang et al. (Citation2017).
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Juan J. Fernández
Juan J. Fernández is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University Carlos III of Madrid. His research focuses on global policy diffusion, horizontal Europeanization, welfare policy attitudes and political behavior. Regarding policy diffusion, he has published articles on the diffusion of public pension retrenchments and the legalization of same-sex marriage. His most recent work has concerned cross-national variations in the relationship between individual level of education and European identity. He is currently working on a project regarding the global diffusion of women's ministries.
