Abortion, Christianity, Disability: Western Europe, 1960s–1970s

Abstract

In the 1960s–1970s, the sexual revolution was a major force for secularisation in Western European nations.1 Increasingly, Europeans simply ignored what the churches had to say about sex — even as, at the same time, a growing number of religious spokespeople, both laity and clergy, called for liberalisation of church teachings on sexual matters. And yet when it came to the legal situation surrounding abortion, the conservative forces within the churches still had tremendous influence on politics. The master narratives now generally circulating in scholarship about the 1960s–1970s concerning the sexual revolution and the ascent of feminism often neglect just how many powerful resistances, both conscious and unconscious, the activists working to legalise the termination of unwanted pregnancies initially confronted. Comparing debates in five different nations — some predominantly Catholic, others predominantly Protestant or mixed-confessional, some post-fascist, others continuously democratic — and reading the arguments of theologians, parliamentarians, journalists and feminists with and against each other, this chapter reconstructs previously neglected aspects of the debates that took place in those nations in the 1960s–1970s.