Give Birth for Greece! Abortion and Nation in Letters to the Editor of the Mainstream Greek Press

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Abstract
At a time when Greece is seen as having a vulnerable position in the European Union, a heated debate is taking place within the Greek public sphere about the best path to modernization. In the shadow of this discussion, the perceived low birth rate is often represented as the number 1 or number 2 national problem, called to [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i" /]. Abortion is an issue of great concern within this press coverage and acts as a lightning rod for deeply rooted cultural anxieties that are increasingly disallowed in other sectors of the public sphere. Thus this public consternation about abortion offers important clues that reveal a largely unacknowledged common ground shared by the disparate narratives of Greek national identity. Specifically, the nationalist narratives occurring in the right and centrist sectors of the Greek press harbor a common image of Greece as a religious state. It is suggested that open acknowledgment of this shared conception, and perhaps even its strategic redeployment, might do much to help move Greece out of its current foreign and domestic impasse.

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