Comparative Abortion Policy Analysis

1. Comparative Abortion Policy Analysis ( Case Study on Poland and Ireland )
In the research field of comparative social and public policy, the most important feature is that the paper examines the specific institutional, historical and political features of the countries covered, instead of offering a “standardized” approach and framework where only carefully selected data are accepted for incorporation into the analysis. The object of looking abroad is not to copy but to learn under what circumstances and to what extent programmes effective elsewhere may also work domestically .Moreover, the failures of other governments offer lessons about what not to do at far less political cost and expenditure than making the same mistakes yourself.

,however these types of generalizations do not answer which of the cultural features are the reason lesson drawing and comparative policies either fail or succeed.

Traditional catholic countries such as Poland (approximately 92% catholic) and Ireland (approximately 88% catholic) do not seek to challenge the already given anti-abortion norms in their societies and still, election results and protests in the streets are a hard reminder that their plea must be heard because national conflicts usually involve value conflicts. Over the long view of history, abortion has given rise to gender conflict, but it has come to the status of a public gender issue only rarely: in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when many countries criminalized or recriminalized the procedure and again in the late twentieth century when most countries reformed and liberalized their abortion laws.3 When the issue is before the public, despite the fact that abortions are performed only on women and never on men, policy-makers have often framed it in other terms—doctors' rights, fetal rights, law enforcement,

From a historical perspective ,the first debate took place between 1929-1932 and during the elaboration of the Codification Commission to reform the Criminal Code , which also prepared a matrimonial draft law providing for both divorce and separation. According to the Criminal Code of 1932, abortion was legal if a pregnancy resulted from a crime and where a woman’s health and life was at risk. The more liberal draft provision of abortion on socio-economic grounds failed. The law of 1932 remained in force until 1956 . Under the communist regime , in 1956 despite the protests of the Poland’s strong Catholic Church , a liberal abortion law was adopted. Main arguments for the defenders of such a law were that it would reduce the high maternal mortality rates due to unsafe abortions. The law decriminalized abortion for social reasons but did not actually recognize a woman’s right to abortion. Women who wished to obtain an abortion had to consult with two doctors, which constituted a significant barrier to the service (a similar bill was proposed in Romania by the Liberal Democrats Party deputies Marius Dugulescu and Sulfina Barbu in 2012 (BP58/13.03.2012) through which it would have established mandatory pre-abortion consultations in specialized pregnancy crisis centres and a period of reflection of five days. ).