> how are those issues not European?

because they are not contested in europe, only in the US

> privacy is a much greater

It's nowhere near as important as housing or employment i think. Strict privacy was mainly championed by German Greens, not a pan-european issue

Sorry, but that's bullshit. Does US discourse have impact on these topics in Europe: sure. But they are not solved topics that wouldn't be contentious otherwise.

> because they are not contested in europe, only in the US

every single one of those issues gets discussed in Europe. The US does not have a monopoly on social issues, I fear you are just showing the limits of your perspective.

i dont think anyone seriously debates whether abortion should be outlawed in western europe. It's just not a political topic in almost all of europe. Some very conservative parties use the US hype to rally their own supporters but it's just not working as an issue, abortion is to a very large degree culturally acceptable.

Abortion in Poland is legal only in cases when the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act or when the woman's life or health is in danger.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Poland#Legal_sta...

Abortion ebbs and flows. As someone else mentioned, currently Poland has placed severe restrictions on it and Ireland only legalised it something like 20 years ago, N.Ireland only decriminalised it about 5 years ago.

I would also suggest that considering the miserable failure of the mid-terms that the US has a similar strong average relatively set against limiting access to abortion too. Although I do appreciate that some areas of the US are more traditionally religious areas and more similar to the conservatives in Poland.

Abortion was only legalized in Ireland in 2018.

Abortion is one of the few cultural topics which doesn't tend towards borad consensus. E.g. acceptance of gay rights has a tipping point and then drifts towards the 90s+%, but abortion does not.

It's still very limited in Ireland and it took the death of a pregnant woman to make this happen.

Her husband begged the doctors to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life but he was told "this is a Catholic country".

I marched myself on this dark day in Galway but Ireland still has a long way to go to become truly independent from its Catholic stranglehold. That caused so much pain especially to the youth.

But they are on their way yes, I was especially happy when the gay marriage made it through.

You don't think Ireland is part of western Europe? You don't think Poland counts as part of Europe and the EU?

It would be interesting to setup a sort of “quiz” about the US for Europeans and vice versa for Americans, I bet both would get those political points vastly wrong (eg, they’d think abortion laws way stricter or lax than they actually are, same with guns, etc). Most of what you know about other places comes from the media depicting it.