Brake rather than Barrier: The Impact of the Catholic Church on Morality Policies in Western Europe

Abstract

Previous research on morality does not present a clear picture regarding religious effects on abortion and same-sex partnership policies. An examination of the level of permissiveness in the two policy fields across Western European countries reveals that Catholic states do not significantly differ from their Protestant counterparts in terms of policy outputs. Our descriptive analysis of the reform processes in the two fields from 1960 to 2010 shows that Catholicism has no direct impact on morality policy outputs, but may slow down the pace of reforms. The delaying effect, however, is contingent upon the presence of additional conditions. In order to inductively develop theoretical insights into this relationship, particular emphasis is placed on the case of Austria, which was quick to liberalise abortion but a laggard in introducing legal recognition of same-sex couples. The Austrian case reveals that the influence of the Catholic Church may impede reforms so long as institutional and cultural opportunity structures do not promote secular efforts to politicise the issue and build consensus for policy change.

Acknowledgements

We thank our two anonymous referees and the journal editors for their valuable comments on this paper. This research is based on funding from the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant). The project MORAPOL analyses patterns in morality policy across nine different policy subfields in 26 countries over a period of 50 years (1960–2010).

Notes

1. A recent exception is Spain, which introduced an upon-request model in 2010.

2. We concentrate on European Protestantism in this paper. We are aware of the fact that the US case shows a contradiction as some key Protestant churches are leading opposition to any abortion liberalisation or the recognition of SSP. Nevertheless, even in the US, the diversity within Protestantism on these issues is quite high.

3. This means that we do not consider High Court decisions as long as they have not been approved by the legislator. We also exclude the analysis of policy outcomes and impacts as they emerge during the implementation stage. This has a minor impact especially with regard to the classification of the abortion regimes in Ireland and the UK. In Ireland, according to the High Court’s decision in 1992 (Attorney General v. X and Others, 1992 No. 846P 1 IR 1), medical indication can be interpreted in such a way that abortion is legal under narrow medical circumstances. As this is not approved by legislation we still classify Ireland as a state that does not allow abortion. In the UK, by contrast, only the social indication model is legally endorsed, while the more permissive upon-request model is applied in practice.

4. We combine these two indications into one group, since there is no good argument as to why one should indicate a more permissive abortion regime than the other.