Researching Women's Reproductive Rights in Three Countries

 Barbara Leciej, Verrazzano Class of 2020, completed major in International Studies

When I was first accepted into the College of Staten Island and the Verrazzano Honors Program, I had no idea what I wanted to major in, let alone what I wanted to do my capstone on. After many conversations with Cheryl, I realized that I wanted to major in International Studies. I just had to decide what I wanted to research and do my Capstone on.

During this time there were many discussions about change in the legislation about women’s reproductive rights, specifically about making abortions completely illegal. If these changes were actually put into place, all the work, the protests and the movements that women have fought for years would have been for nothing. Instead of moving forward, we would be
moving backwards.

As a woman who could be affected by this, it completely terrified me, and I could not understand how this was something that our government was even considering. I decided to research if the United States was the only country that was going through these changes and decided to look at Poland because I knew that Poland has had a very complicated history with abortion and women’s reproductive rights.

After a lot of research, I knew that this was something that I wanted to learn more about and what I wanted to do my Capstone on. I wanted to research the abortion rights in Poland, the United States and Sweden. I wanted to look at one country that is conservative (Poland), one that is more in the middle (United States), and one that is considered liberal (Sweden), looking at what could be causing changes in the laws that have to do with abortion rights.

My research looked at the relationships between religious and political organizations in
each society. It asserted that abortion rights are mostly limited in countries where anti-abortion
institutions and individuals have a high degree of influence in government policymaking. This
appears to be more prevalent in the contemporary U.S. and Polish governments, and less so in
Sweden.