A lot has been written about this, as well as on what exactly should be interpreted as polarisation. Methodologically inclined literature seems to be debating this to some extent, but at least agree that it has to do with an increasingly broad distribution of attitudes or opinions. In less technical terms, this means that the opinions of large number of people in society differ in increasing amounts. so, we’re talking about polarisation of the general public, instead of the polarised activities of either pro-life, or pro-choice organisations.

What, then, has this to do with Women on Waves in Valencia? Women of Waves is a “Dutch non-profit organisation concerned with women’s human rights. Its mission is to prevent unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortions throughout the world.” (Quoted from their web-site.) The use boats to go to countries in which abortion is restricted of prohibited by law, allow women who want to have an abortion aboard, sail to international waters, let the women have an induced abortion, and then sail back to the national waters of the country they started. Since national legislature is not in effect in international waters, the national abortion bans are neither. What the Women on Waves do, it seems, is perfectly legal. But, it also raises controversy.

There is a lot to say about Women on Waves, both in favour in against, but I will remain neutral on this one. However, the news coverage on their recent arrival in Valencia, Spain, made clear to me another effect their actions has. As a sociologist, I’m interested in the unintended consequences of peoples’ actions, and I think that the presence of Women on Waves in a country or city might have a polarising consequence. Both pro-choice organisations (who invited Women on Waves), and pro-life organisations rallied in the Spanish harbour. They both use all the energy they have to bring their views to the attention of the larger public.

Sure, none of these organisations will have changed their positions. However, I think that the presence of both types of organisations, their rallying, and the coverage in the news of these events, might have forced people in Valencia, Spain, and perhaps even abroad, to form their opinions on induced abortion. This can either be in favour, or against, but the increased visibility of the abortion-debate must have decreased the number of people who aren’t really aware of the issue, or have never given much thought about it.

It is not the goal of Women on Waves to change peoples’ attitudes, but to allow women to have an abortion. Nevertheless, I think it might have had an unintented consequence of (slightly) polarising the abortion debate. Again, an interesting phenomenon for sociological study, and again it is just there to be found in the news. I love my job!

Even though it is rather widely known in sociology that individual actions can have unexpected or seemingly contradictory outcomes on the societal level, I always find it highly fascinating to read about such a seemingly paradoxical mechanism. Interestingly, Jelen et al. have found one regarding the attitudes of Catholics on induced abortion.

The Catholic church categorically rejects any practice of induced abortion, and, notwithstanding any issues regarding causality, so do its members. Catholic individuals generally have a negative attitude towards induced abortion, indeed. Jelen et al. were able to replicate this in their study on `abortion attitudes in western Europe’. However, they did not find that the average level of objection against induced abortion in a country correlates with the proportion of catholics in those countries. Furthermore, they even found that when individual level catholicism is taken into account, the higher the number of catholics in the country one lives in, the more positive one is regarding induced abortion.

How is this possible? Can individual and contextual effects of Catholicism on abortion attitudes run in opposite directions? Jelen et al. hypothesize at the start of the article on three possible ways that Catholicism may influence attitudes. The first is that the Catholic church is able to impose pro-life attitudes on its own members. Secondly, it is hypothesized that the presence of Catholics in a country, along with their inculcated pro-life attitudes, influences non-Catholics in such a way, that their opinion also changes towards the pro-life stance. Finally, it is argued that the opposite might also happen: non-Catholics could take the opposite stance to the Catholics in the presence of many Catholics. A counter-mobilization, so to say.

As it was shown by the authors, the first and third hypotheses go: Catholics object against abortion, but when many Catholics are present in a country, it is shown that individuals, net from the effect of Catholicism, generally have a more positive attitude towards induced abortion. Although the authors do not use these words, I think that what they have found can be referred to as a ‘negative spill-over effect’ (spill under?), in contrast with the second hypothesis that is referred to as a ‘spill-over effect’.

On Method

Although I think that the authors elegantly present some interesting findings, and did their analyses on the data from the World Value Surveys in a meticulous fashion on the whole, some aspects of their methodology deserve some closer attention. Sure, nowadays we would use a mixed-effects model instead of the ‘flat’ regression the authors used, but remember that this is a 1993 article.

In general, one might ask why the authors only focused on Catholicism. Clearly, this is perhaps the church that must influentially instills its many members with pro-life attitudes, but nevertheless other denominations do so as well. They do however find that Catholics in a predominant Protestant country object against induced abortion the strongest, so on a contextual level attention is paid to other denominations.

What I missed in this analysis, is an estimation of the impact that legislation has on the attitudes people have. Reason for this is the detailed description of the differences between countries on account of whether or not induced abortion is legalized, and under which conditions women can choose to have an abortion. It would be interesting to see whether this has any effect, and whether it interacts with religious conviction.

To Conclude

The seemingly paradoxical finding has been solved: individual and contextual effects of Catholicism on attitudes toward induced abortion run in the opposite direction, caused by a counter-mobilization amongst non-Catholics. Interestingly, the authors discuss this by arguing that the net effect of Catholicism is difficult to assess. I wonder if the individual Catholic, expressing the pro-life stance he or she wholeheartedly beliefs in, realizes that these efforts may indeed unexpected, and unintended, consequences by instilling pro-choice attitudes amongst non-Catholics.

Reference

Jelen, T.G., O’Donnell, J., Wilcox, C. (1993). A Contextual Analysis of Catholicism and Abortion Attitudes in Western Europe . Sociology of Religion, 54(4), 375-383.