Killing ‘Unborn Children’? The Catholic Church and Abortion Law in Poland Since 1989

Abstract

Legislation on abortion in Poland is among the strictest of all European countries. As with Malta and Ireland, the regulations in Poland do not allow for the termination of a pregnancy on the grounds of the difficult social or economic situation of a woman. Post-1989 developments with regard to abortion law in Poland show the influence of the Catholic Church as a very powerful societal actor on the drafting and implementation of one of the most important policies affecting women’s rights and gender relations. Catholic ‘pro-life’ circles exercised pressure in the process of drafting and adopting the new law, as well as at the stage of the law’s implementation. The symbolic victory of the Church over abortion law is evident in the shift in general discourse and in the official language of legal acts, where, for example, ‘foetus’ has been replaced by ‘conceived child’ (in the law) or by ‘unborn child’ (in discourse). As a consequence, for public opinion abortion is seen as tantamount to ‘the act of killing the unborn child’.

Religious influence in policy-making: a case of sexual education in Lithuania

“…The Catholic Church and religion have been associated with national identity and preservation of Lithuanian language even before the 1944 Soviet re-occupation, and this partly explains the role that the Catholic Church had in the independence movement as well as in politics during the first years that followed the Independence (Streikus, 2002). Similar ideas are expressed about the Catholic Church in Poland (Szocik & Szyja, 2015;Szelewa, 2016). The Catholic Church in Lithuania is still considered to be a moral authority in relation to policy-making, which creates institutional access and opportunities for informal religious influence and maintaining the status as an important social and religious actor in public life.…”

“…Regulation of reproductive rights, pornography, euthanasia, drugs, prostitution, same-sex partnerships and marriages are found in the sphere of morality policies and can be perceived as the attempts to determine a particular value system in the society (Mooney, 1999). The religious influence on abortion rights has been analysed to some extent (Minkenber, 2002;Szelewa, 2016; Forman-Rabinovici & Sommer, 2018). I suggest that sexual education policy is also a type of morality policy for several reasons.…”

A Primer on the Government and Politics of Poland

“…PO supports Poland's existing abortion "compromise," vigorously opposed by the Catholic Church, which has adopted an absolute opposition to all forms of abortion (Mishtal, 2015;Szelewa, 2016;Hussein, Cottingham, Nowicka, & Kismodi, 2018). (Abortion is illegal in Poland except in cases of rape, when the woman's life or health is in jeopardy, or if the fetus is irreparably damaged.)…”

Do costs and benefits of children matter for religious people? Perceived consequences of parenthood and fertility intentions in Poland

“…Consequently, after the collapse of communism, the Church gained a strong position in society (Szwed & Zielińska, 2017). That position, for example, enabled the Church to successfully lobby for stricter abortion laws, turning them into one of the most restrictive rules within Europe (Szelewa, 2016).…”