With values as guidance : A study about the christian democratic foundation in political practic

Abstract

The purpose of this study has been to find out if the Christian Democratic Party of Sweden have changed their policy in their fundamental questions of value. In order to do this, I have based my study upon the following two questions: 1. How did the Christian Democracy's view and politics look at the issue of abortion? 2. How did Christian Democracy's family policy and view of family look like? The reason for choosing these two issues – the Christian Democratic Party’s abortion stance and family policy – is because these two issues are the founding core of the ideology that is known as Christian democracy – family and dignity. In order to answer my questions, I have chosen to go through parliamentary bills at the website of the swedish parliament. There I found bills from the Christian Democratic Party in the issues of abortion and family between the years 1985 and 1998. I have chosen a qualitative method and with that method dived into the archives of the swedish parliament. The reason for chosing a qualitative method has been because that method relies on the possibility of reaching results by analyzing words rather than numbers, which is preferable as this study intends to analyze and interpret what Christian Democratic MPs have written in their parliamentary bills. With the qualitative method, I have gone through the motions and focused on writing about abortion legislation and the right to life when it comes to abortion, and staying in daycare versus children in home care when it comes to family policy. The study shows that the Christian Democratic Party of Sweden did infact radically change in some core issues like the abortion stance when, for example, they supported the abortion legislation. They have also increasingly come to focus on the abortion and pregnancy prevention work. The Christian Democratic family policy, however, has proved to be more consistent, although here too, some pragmatism has been shown, for example when it comes to testing the need for child allowance for certain groups