Religious pressures on women's rights in Southeast Asia: Examining the right to an abortion in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam

Abstract

This article aims to interrogate the “cultural wars” in Asia brought upon by rapid changes in gender roles in the world and the reactionary “return” to heteronormative families in Asia. For this article, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam were chosen for their diverse religious, cultural, and political definitions of the family and openness to global human rights discourses. As the article will show, despite the diversity of these three countries, one prevalent theme in access to abortions is the influence of religion. As one of the fastest growing regions in the world, Southeast Asia experienced a resurgence in religiosity in response to a change in economic and social relations over the past two decades. This growth took place thanks to active efforts by the state to manage population growth, often times through family planning efforts—including through providing access to abortions in some countries. But in a region where deeply entrenched stigmas are attached to abortions, nations treated abortions as a health imperative on the personal level, or a population control tool at the national level, but never as a personal right. Thus, as the role of religion in the region changes, becomes deeper and more personal, this article argues that pressures on safe abortion access becomes threatened. Through a socio-legal lens, this article will examine the legal right to an abortion in three Southeast Asian countries and argues that because abortions were primarily used as a tool for population control, and was not treated as fundamental right, the rise of religiosity in the region threatens precarious access to abortions in Southeast Asia.