Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

This dissertation evaluates the space between policy and implementation, where politics, social values, and economic concerns all affect abortion access. In Europe, abortion laws are broadly similar on paper, but abortion is not equally easy to access. The dissertation develops a framework for evaluating the institutional influences on abortion policies, dives into one case of implementation in depth, maps one component of abortion access across several countries, and tests several potential explanatory variables for differences in levels of access.
Chapter 2 explores the competing policy influences of European norms and the Catholic Church as a political institution, arguing that Italy is more European than Catholic in its approach to abortion policy.
Chapter 3 analyzes interviews with healthcare personnel and administrators in southern Italy. These street-level bureaucrats implement abortion policy, operating within a system that does not have enough abortion providers. I find that in many cases, doctors are not morally opposed to abortion but make the choice not to provide it for reasons related to their quality of life and prospects of career advancement.
Chapter 4 introduces a new dataset of abortion provider locations in ten European countries and explores the possible social, political, and economic explanations for the unevenness of this distribution.
These chapters address the overarching research question of why is there a gap between abortion access de facto and what abortion policies say de jure. I argue that it is because of the state’s implementation choices of its de jure policy. The choices of the state and its agents are political, and they reflect individuals’ religious, political, and financial values.