Abortion in Europe and US

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ps.In trying to understand the differences between popular attitudes
toward abortion here and in Europe, i think one can't stress enough the
Puritanism and religious mania that has been a persistent feature of
American culture since the seventeenth century. It isn't just on
abortion that this shows up -- think of creationism.  As Stephen jay
gould pointed out in TIME, there is no other Western country where
teaching evolution is controversial.
  If a French politician demanded that every school post the Ten
commandments, he'd be laughed out of office.  And if a Scandinavian
school board member demanded that Darwin be banned from biology class,
they'd put him in a mental hospital.
  most Americans aren't anti-choice -- depending on how the question is
phrased, they either want abortion to be  freely available or available
under "moderate" restrictions (parental notification and consent is very
popular). Mostly americans want the whole controversy to go away. the
anti-choicers really are a minority -- but they're fanatics, and they're
connected to politically powerful institutions like RC church and
Christian right. The average American and the average European may not
even be so far apart in how they think about abortion -- regrettable,
but necessary, etc. But we've got the fanatics, and they don't.  and
that changes everything.