Joe: "Throughout history, religion has served to institutionalize and reinforce societal taboos - but the taboos flowed from society, and did not appear by church decree"
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This a greatly oversimplified view, if I may so so, Joe. Sometimes it has been one way around, sometimes the other. "Church v State" has always been a profound issue, frequently coming to a head as in the case of Luther inducing the Reformation, & Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries soon after [one of those zeitgeist things rather than direct consequence, tho obviously not entirely so]. My impression is that in general throughout history, from OT times onward in the West & likewise in other parts of the world, the Church [in the broad sense] has most often had the best of it, at that. Certainly the influence has not been all one way as you appear from above quote to believe.

In Ireland, my feeling is that it has nearly always been the RC Church that has dominated where conflict of interest has arisen. And I would point out that pregnant Irish girls, as someone pointed out above, still have to make the journey to England, as they once did to California on chartered air flights for the purpose [see Ch 1 of David Lodge's distinguished campus novel Changing Places, 1975], to get a legal abortion -- or in any event did so until very recently.

In most cases, I repeat, it has been religion that led & society that followed. Still the case in most Islamic countries -- see all the threads about THAT particular issue! -- rather than the way round you suggested above, Joe.

~M~