Offentligt religiös: en studie om religiösa i svensk abortdebatt 2005-2014.

The topic of this thesis is public religion, and it is a study of the public debate on abortion and to what extent religious actors participate in it. The study is researched by analyzing debate articles that are debating abortion in four large Swedish newspapers. The theories of Habermas and Casanova concerning ideal models of religious participation in the public sphere is the foundation for the analysis of the articles, as is Axner’s and Lövheim’s earlier studies and models for studying public religion in Sweden. 228 articles were found through the database retriever during the time period of late 2005 to 2014, and these were singled down to 89 relevant articles, which were then analyzed and examined. 10 of the 89 articles were found to be authored by openly religious individuals, and 4 of these used religious language in their arguments. The major findings of this research are the unexpected lack of presence of representatives of the Church of Sweden and non-Christian religions. The contribution of this research is the mapping of religious actors participating in the public debate on induced abortion, and the introduction of the study public religion in media to political science