Report ✑ Politicians Use Religion To Restrict Reproductive Rights

National Secular Society ✒ Politicians around the world are using religion to restrict reproductive rights, a recent report has found.

Welcome to Gilead: pronatalism and the threat to reproductive rights warns "extremist, religious, nationalist currents" leading to clampdowns on reproductive rights in countries like Poland are "spreading across the globe".

The report, published by Population Matters late last year, finds "governments and politicians now want women to have more children, and some are resorting to coercion to achieve that goal".

Nationalist politicians may be motivated by fears that low birth rates will result in a loss of national power, or that minority groups with higher fertility rates will 'erase' the culture of the existing ethnic or religious majority, the report says.

It says a wave of "Christian white nationalism" has swept across the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe, and that politicians in the region have used the uncertainty of demographic change as an opportunity to increase support for their "nationalist, religion-infused politics" including anti-choice policies.

For example, in Poland extremist Catholic organisation Ordo luris has "bolstered" government claims that women are "selfishly choosing careers over their duty to preserve the nation through procreation".

Continue reading @ National Secular Society.