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      Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Abortion, Catholicism, the Populist Right and Public Health Threats in Poland

      Religions
      MDPI AG

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          Abstract

          This article analyzes how and why a near-total abortion ban was recently secured by a populist ruling party with support from Catholic Church leaders and lay groups following earlier passage of one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. The paper further examines the public health threats posed by these measures, which have long been under-researched. These policy shifts are situated within the deeply embedded context of Poland’s abortion conflict and a setting that has long been challenging for reproductive health. The 1993 ban led to the resurgence of clandestine abortions, a near-total privatization of abortion services, and more women seeking abortion services overseas. In late 2020, the exemption for severe fetal anomalies that made up 97% of all legal abortion cases in prior years was eliminated. Neither ban has significantly reduced the number of women obtaining abortions, nor have they increased birth rates as anticipated by proponents who championed traditional family values that they equated with Catholicism and Polish national identity. The new blanket ban on abortion constitutes a health risk and a punitive measure achieved via a judgement of the Constitutional Tribunal stacked with loyalists by the ruling party. It did not reflect popular will, although societal attitudes on abortion are markedly less permissive than in much of Europe. Although the populist and religious right have realized their long-held goal of further restricting, if not eliminating, women’s access to abortion services, compelling criticisms have been raised about how this move compromises women’s health and autonomy. Ironically, the realization of this goal, which many Poles view as unduly extreme, may also undermine long-term support for both the political right and the Church. The wisdom of their move was widely questioned, sparked the largest protests since the end of Communist rule, and drew international criticism. It proved a polarizing action that alienated many young adults and may have accentuated a secularizing shift. Women and their partners are finding new ways to navigate many public health threats by increasingly traveling beyond Poland for safe abortion care and resorting to newly available medication abortion methods.

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          Most cited references33

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          The Politics of Gender after Socialism

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            The Politics of Duplicity : Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania

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              The creation of "monsters": the discourse of opposition to in vitro fertilization in Poland.

              In Poland, there is a campaign to criminalise in vitro fertilization, led by the Catholic church. This article explores how this campaign makes "monsters" of IVF children in its discourse, that is, embodiments of "the other" in the sense of Frankenstein's monster. Basing the analysis primarily on Catholic mass media publications, the article investigates the discursive strategies employed to oppose IVF, most notably by the Catholic clergy and activists and journalists associated with the Church. They attribute "monstrosity" to the children in the following ways: physical (possible bodily deformity), psychological (survivor syndrome, identity crisis), social (loneliness, uncertain place in family relations), and ethical (a life burdened with the deaths of many embryos). Although the world of families with IVF does not provide examples of children who could be considered monsters in any of these terms, these arguments have become the primary reasons given for banning IVF.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Religions
                Religions
                MDPI AG
                2077-1444
                October 2023
                October 08 2023
                : 14
                : 10
                : 1271
                Article
                10.3390/rel14101271
                d53db803-92c5-4de1-abe2-2aac77e05dc7
                © 2023

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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