Abortion Rights in Muslim Majority States: Does Islam Really Matter?

• In Event: Capturing Causal Complexity: Islam/ism and Democracy

Abstract

There is substantial variation in abortion rights across the population of Muslim majority states, despite conventional wisdom that this population of states is monolithic, bound by religious, conservative norms. The effect of Islam on abortion law is not easily predictable because abortion rights in Islamic teachings are complex and varied, due to the absence of a clear injunction on the matter in the primary sources of the religion, as well as the absence of a centralized institution as is present in Catholicism. This paper undertakes a cross-national examination of the determinants of abortion law across the 51 Muslim majority countries, focusing on the effect of institutionalized Islam.

Author

• Fatima Z. Rahman, Soka University of America