Within the sphere of the nation-state we focus on national government as the place where policy is made. We examine dimensions of representation and their implications for abortion policy. That women can offer substantive representation in a democratic environment is well established. However, can women representatives do so under compromised forms of democracy? Extant literature suggests that representation has little meaning in non-democracies. Yet, as less than half of the nearly 3.8 billion women in the world live in democracies, analyzing the connection between women’s descriptive and substantive representation outside of the context of democracy is crucial. We hypothesize that even in nondemocracies and developing democracies, women exercise substantive representation in the sense that their presence in government will positively influence the likelihood of permissive abortion policy. We develop three theoretical frameworks to explain why there might appear to be a connection between descriptive and substantive representation: pandering to international norms; a generally favorable stance toward gender equality; and a focus on regime sustainability, which leads to lenience regarding policy areas where women most commonly exercise influence. We find correlations suggesting substantive representation in nondemocracies, as well as in developing and established democracies. We discuss the findings within the broader scope of dimensions of representation and the influences on abortion policy in the national sphere.Building on the findings in the previous chapter, this chapter uses the case studies of Rwanda and New Zealand to more deeply delve into the influences of representation at the nation-state level.

Functioning as an introduction, in Chapter 1, we first highlight the timeliness of the topic of our book. In the era of the #metoo movement, sustainable development goals, and radical policy changes, such as those in Ireland and Chile, issues of reproductive rights and women’s bodily autonomy continue to be front-page news. The importance of this topic is compounded by the health, moral, and economic implications of abortions (legal and illegal) performed around the world today. We distinguish our book from extant literature and highlight how its cutting edge large-N comparative framework, in combination with case study analyses, provides a first-of-its-kind perspective on questions of abortion around the world. We introduce the three spheres that the book will focus on: civil society, state government, and the international sphere. We then move on to the different theoretical perspectives used in the project and briefly discuss the empirical components as well. We introduce women’s reproductive rights law – – and, specifically, law on access to abortion as a quantifiable and testable variable – – that will lend itself throughout the book to quantitative analyses and hypotheses testing as a part of the discussion on the creation of women’s welfare policy. In closing, we provide a brief overview of the chapters of the book.

Rwanda is far from a democracy, yet proponents of gender equality may applaud the progress it has made in two specific areas. First, the Rwandan Parliament has the highest rate of female legislators in the world. Rwanda’s female majority in the legislature is a result of the political history of this country and the implementation of gender quotas. Second, in 2012, correlating with its increased rate of female representation, Rwanda liberalized its restrictive abortion policy. In New Zealand, women have had suffrage since 1893. That country has had significantly more female representatives in parliament than the global average for decades. Even with this long-standing history of female representation in a developed democracy, New Zealand has had a restrictive abortion law. Indeed, the country’s reproductive legal code has only undergone a minor change since 1977. These cases present the interplay among regime type, quotas, and female representation as determinants of abortion policy.

This chapter looks at Chile and Bahrain as two countries that demonstrate the surprising effects, interactions, and dependencies of our religious variables. With no official state religion and a fairly secular population, until August 2017 Chile had a total ban on abortion. The ban was so extreme that, in 2015, a pregnant, 11-year-old rape survivor was denied the procedure. Only as recently as August 2017 was legislation passed that permitted women’s access to abortion in the case of risk of death, rape, or fetal non-viability. With an 85% Muslim population and Islam as the official state religion, Bahrain on the other hand allows abortion on request. While suffrage was extended to Bahraini women only in 2002, they have had access to legal abortion on request since 1976. The analyses in this chapter use case study methodology to delve into those cases in an attempt to deepen our understanding of the effects of faith in the civil society sphere on the production of reproductive rights.

Within the sphere of the nation-state we focus on national government as the place where policy is made. We examine dimensions of representation and their implications for abortion policy. That women can offer substantive representation in a democratic environment is well established. However, can women representatives do so under compromised forms of democracy? Extant literature suggests that representation has little meaning in non-democracies. Yet, as less than half of the nearly 3.8 billion women in the world live in democracies, analyzing the connection between women’s descriptive and substantive representation outside of the context of democracy is crucial. We hypothesize that even in nondemocracies and developing democracies, women exercise substantive representation in the sense that their presence in government will positively influence the likelihood of permissive abortion policy. We develop three theoretical frameworks to explain why there might appear to be a connection between descriptive and substantive representation: pandering to international norms; a generally favorable stance toward gender equality; and a focus on regime sustainability, which leads to lenience regarding policy areas where women most commonly exercise influence. We find correlations suggesting substantive representation in nondemocracies, as well as in developing and established democracies. We discuss the findings within the broader scope of dimensions of representation and the influences on abortion policy in the national sphere.Building on the findings in the previous chapter, this chapter uses the case studies of Rwanda and New Zealand to more deeply delve into the influences of representation at the nation-state level.

The CEDAW, the SDGs, and the ICPD PoA are all but a few salient examples of how the international sphere attempts to influence abortion policymaking. In the international sphere, we focus on intergovernmental organizations and examine how they impact reproductive policy. Our theory distinguishes regional from international intergovernmental bodies and goes into detail about the rationale for this distinction. The first significant finding here is a heretofore-overlooked relationship between international entities and reproductive health. Additionally, we compare the influence of international organizations with domestic government measures meant to increase women’s substantive representation, such as quotas. This chapter, thus, also incorporates discussions from Chapters 4 and 5. Our findings reveal the influence of intergovernmental organizations in determining international norms of women’s rights and gender equality. That said, not all types of action are equal, and who attempts to influence national reproductive policies from within the international sphere and how they do so is of great importance.

We start with the civil society sphere. Within civil society, we engage with religion as a defining feature that has long been assumed to have a fractious relationship with women’s rights and gender equality. The effects of religion in the area of gender equality have been considered substantial in academic work as well as in popular and political discourse. A common understanding is that religion depresses women’s rights in general and reproductive and abortion rights in particular. The literature on reproductive rights, however, is disproportionately focused on Western cases, and is limited in its definition of religion as a variable. What happens, though, when we switch to a more inclusive framework? To what extent do a variety of religious variables correlate with policy on reproductive rights outside of the Western context? We examine the relevance of the religion-abortion link in a broad comparative framework looking at religious sect, religiosity, religious diversity, and the relationship between religion and the state. The comparative analyses suggest that the connection between religion and women’s reproductive rights is far more nuanced than previously thought.

We start with the civil society sphere. Within civil society, we engage with religion as a defining feature that has long been assumed to have a fractious relationship with women’s rights and gender equality. The effects of religion in the area of gender equality have been considered substantial in academic work as well as in popular and political discourse. A common understanding is that religion depresses women’s rights in general and reproductive and abortion rights in particular. The literature on reproductive rights, however, is disproportionately focused on Western cases, and is limited in its definition of religion as a variable. What happens, though, when we switch to a more inclusive framework? To what extent do a variety of religious variables correlate with policy on reproductive rights outside of the Western context? We examine the relevance of the religion-abortion link in a broad comparative framework looking at religious sect, religiosity, religious diversity, and the relationship between religion and the state. The comparative analyses suggest that the connection between religion and women’s reproductive rights is far more nuanced than previously thought.

The CEDAW, the SDGs, and the ICPD PoA are all but a few salient examples of how the international sphere attempts to influence abortion policymaking. In the international sphere, we focus on intergovernmental organizations and examine how they impact reproductive policy. Our theory distinguishes regional from international intergovernmental bodies and goes into detail about the rationale for this distinction. The first significant finding here is a heretofore-overlooked relationship between international entities and reproductive health. Additionally, we compare the influence of international organizations with domestic government measures meant to increase women’s substantive representation, such as quotas. This chapter, thus, also incorporates discussions from Chapters 4 and 5. Our findings reveal the influence of intergovernmental organizations in determining international norms of women’s rights and gender equality. That said, not all types of action are equal, and who attempts to influence national reproductive policies from within the international sphere and how they do so is of great importance.

To further elucidate the effects of the international sphere, this chapter examines specific international treaties and protocols to see how IGOs attempt to influence reproductive policy, and to illustrate the quantitative findings of the previous chapter. We take the ICPD PoA and the Maputo Protocol. These two documents, while both addressing women’s reproductive health and rights, are dramatically different. The comparison between their writing and ratification process, their text, and their impact provide detailed illustrations of the findings in Chapter 6 and shed new light on the underlying causal mechanisms. The ICPD PoA writers avoided controversy, used restrained language, and generated a document that did not take a firm stance on abortion. In comparison, the AU writers did not shy away from taking a strong stance, benefited from the work of NGOs leading up to the event, and eventually produced the first document of its kind proclaiming abortion as a woman’s right (at least under certain circumstances). Juxtaposition of these two documents helps us decipher the influence of international organizations on the production of reproductive rights.