‘Defending the unborn’, ‘protecting women’ and ‘preserving culture and nation’: anti-abortion discourse in the Polish right-wing press

Abstract

Poland has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, and anti-abortion discourse shapes the debate and social attitudes towards the issue. The paper aims to reconstruct the way in which this discourse, as exemplified in the Polish right-wing press, constructs negative views about abortion and to identify the legitimation mechanisms it employs to sustain its interpretations. Based on our findings, resulting from a content analysis of articles from two right-wing weekly magazines, we distinguish three interrelated frames organising Polish anti-abortion discourse, centred on ‘defending the unborn’, ‘protecting women’, and ‘preserving culture and nation’. While the first two have occurred in the liberal contexts of Anglophone countries, with one replacing the other, in Polish anti-abortion discourse they co-exist. The construction of abortion as a threat to culture and nation is specific to Poland. We argue that by blending together community-related and individualistic arguments, Polish anti-abortion discourse adapts to wider societal changes observable in the country, thereby sustaining its power to define debate.

Keywords:

• Abortion
• discourse
• Poland
• right-wing press

Introduction

With one of the most restrictive laws regarding access to legal pregnancy termination in Europe, Poland has one of the lowest levels of acceptance of abortion in Europe and highly polarised opinions on the topic. The relatively negative perception of abortion in Poland persists despite an observable societal shift towards post-materialistic values usually associated with more liberal views (Marody 2019). The question about how to account for this paradox and for the strength of anti-abortion discourse in Poland motivated this enquiry. Existing research on the social construction of abortion stresses the impact of the cultural and social context in which abortion stigmatisation takes place (Marecek, Macleod, and Hoggart 2017; Kumar, Hessini, and Mitchell 2009), but also identifies some common elements. Pregnancy termination tends to be constructed as morally dubious and damaging to women’s health and emotional well-being. Such interpretations arise from the broader normative model which implies that a pregnant woman is already the mother to a child (Lowe and Page 2019b). Women who seek to terminate a pregnancy are thereby marked as inferior to the ‘ideals of womanhood’ that exist within a given culture (Kumar, Hessini, and Mitchell 2009). Thus, abortion as a challenge to principles of womanhood based on nurturing motherhood and sexual purity (Norris et al. 2011), is seen as disturbing the existing moral order (Kumar 2013).

In anti-abortion discourse, attribution of personhood to the foetus further strengthens the negative connotations of abortion by articulating it as a murder. It erases the pregnant woman from the picture and overstates the foetus’ independence from the person carrying it (Lupton 2013; Norris et al. 2011). Such an interpretation contributes to the ‘awfulisation of abortion’ (Hadley 1997) or ‘abortion negativity’ (Lee 2004). Similarly, legally imposed limitations fortify the sense of immorality of pregnancy termination, thus contributing to negative social perceptions of abortion, reinforcing legal limitations and serving as a barrier to changing the law (Norris et al. 2011). However, ‘abortion negativity’ is also resisted by individuals, the women’s movement and mass media portrayals, which attempt to ‘normalise’ and build a more neutral or positive picture of abortion (Purcell et al. 2020). Its construction therefore needs to be seen in the broader context of discursive struggles about pregnancy, abortion, femininity, and individual and collective rights.

Disagreements over interpretations of abortion can be seen as an example of discursive struggles. The ultimate aim of such struggles is to achieve hegemony and the ability to establish a given definition of social reality as taken for granted, normal and common sense (Laclau and Mouffe 2001). Yet even when a particular definition gains hegemonic status, it is never fixed and is always challenged, Since ‘counter-hegemonic opinions, views and versions of reality circulate in society’ (Doudaki 2015, 2). Because ‘[e]very system of authority attempts to establish and to cultivate the belief in its legitimacy’ (Weber 1964, 325), the ‘success’ of a given definition of reality, acceptance and the maintenance of its hegemonic status depends on its legitimation (Doudaki 2015). Following this, it may be assumed that the persistence of negative perceptions of abortion in Poland stems from the strength of anti-abortion discourse (Desperak 2003; Korolczuk 2019). Yet it also depends on the legitimation of this discourse and its ability to impose a certain interpretation of abortion. Enquiry into the legitimacy mechanisms that contribute to anti-abortion discourse in Poland guided our analysis. We were interested in finding out how the ‘negativity’ of abortion is justified in the Polish context and, by implication, why anti-abortion discourse is still ‘successful’.

Abortion in Poland

Polish law permits abortion only when pregnancy poses a threat to the life or health of a pregnant woman, when there is a high probability of a serious and irreversible defect in the foetus or incurable illness threatening its life, or when the pregnancy results from a crime (The Family Planning and Human Embryo Protection and Conditions of Permissibility of Abortion Act 1993).

In the early 1990s, conflict over the shape of this law reflected diversity in social perceptions of abortion, but also linked to the process of reconstruction of the Polish post-communist state (Kramer 2009). The proponents of more restrictive regulations defined them as contributing to a rejection of the communist past and a renewal of traditional Polish values (Watson 1993), identified with Catholicism. The law therefore also reflected an acceptance of the Catholic vision of the nation and the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church in the new state (Mishtal 2015, 42). The Church itself was a key actor in shaping both anti-abortion discourse and the 1993 law (Borowik 2002; Grzymała-Busse 2015, 158–160). Opponents of the law, including feminist and progressive groups, contested the restrictions it placed on accessing legal abortion twice (in 1993 and 1996), attempting, unsuccessfully, to liberalise regulations. But they also opposed the broader re-traditionalisation accompanying post-1989 Polish socio-political transformation and the privileged role of the Catholic church within this (Chełstowska 2011).

By the close of the 1990s, a change could be observed in debate on abortion, with anti-abortion discourse steadily gaining hegemonic status. Consequently, abortion turned from being a medical procedure into ‘killing a human being’ and, simultaneously, the voice of women and human rights arguments vanished from debate (Desperak 2003, 205). This discursive shift also found reflection in social attitudes. Public opinion polls show that between 1997 and the beginning of 2016, the number of people agreeing that a woman should have the right to an abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy declined from 65% to 42%. The number of those opposing this right increased from 30% to 47% (Herrmann 2016).

Since its establishment, the 1993 law has been challenged from both sides: those demanding further restrictions and those supporting liberalisation. These efforts intensified from around 2011, when numerous citizens’ or parliamentarians’ initiatives emerged, aiming to restrict or liberalise the existing law. Each of them triggered wider discussion and engaged various public actors (including the authors of initiatives, politicians, local and international civil society organisations, and representatives of the Roman Catholic Church). Even if the 1993 law itself remained unchanged, up until 2016 the anti-abortion discourse seemed more persuasive, as acceptance of the exemptions stipulated in the abortion law (especially regarding a serious and irreversible defect to the foetus or incurable illness) decreased from 2011. However, a major shift in debate came with mass demonstrations (the so-called Black Protests or Women’s Strike) of October 2016 and March 2017. The protests occurred in response to the position of the majoritarian (United Right) conservative government in support of a ‘Stop Abortion’ citizen’s bill. This proposed to outlaw abortion and introduce punishment for women who had undergone a termination. The prospect of the introduction of such a Draconian law brought crowds out onto the streets, forcing the ruling party to withdraw its support in for the bill in the parliament. Yet the protests also allowed for open discussion of women’s experiences of abortion in the political mainstream (Korolczuk 2016).

These new discursive representations of women and abortion had an impact on the wider public. Polls conducted immediately after the Women’s Strike in October 2016 showed a noticeable liberalisation in attitudes to abortion in comparison to earlier findings from the same year. Higher support was visible not only in the case of the conditions stipulated in the 1993 law, but also in more contested cases: such as when a woman is in a difficult economic (14% in March and 20% in October) or personal situation (13% and 17% respectively) (Rogulska 2019). More recent public polls confirm this shift in attitudes. In March and April 2019, over 50% of respondents agreed that a woman should have access to abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy (Chrzczonowicz 2019). Yet the data also revealed that about 40% of the population still supported the prohibition of abortion (Rogulska 2019), and new initiatives aiming to restrict the existing law proliferate. The recent ruling by the Constitutional Court (issued on 22 October 2020, but only effective after its publication on 27 January 2021), which declared the most frequent grounds for legal abortion (fatal or life-limiting foetal anomaly) unconstitutional, in practice outlaws abortion in Poland. The new wave of Black Protests following the announcement and publication of the ruling indicates lively resistance with respect to any such changes.¹

Method

The mass media play a central role in the (re)production of ‘abortion negativity’ (Purcell, Hilton, and McDaid 2014), and in Poland the conservative right wing press, ideologically (but not formally) linked to right-wing parties and the Catholic Church, has been identified as one of the key (re)producers of the anti-abortion discourse in the public sphere. In this study, we analysed articles from two right-wing opinion weeklies: W Sieci² and Do Rzeczy. Each self-identifies and is identified in mass-media research as being part of the conservative or right-wing press (Mielczarek 2018). Both titles rank among the top five in terms of circulation in the category of opinion weeklies, and lead among explicitly right-wing ones. Yet they both represent the mainstream in the Polish right-wing media milieu. This imposes a certain limitation on our study, in that it neither encapsulates the diversity of the anti-abortion discourse nor focuses only on strictly religious issues. Nonetheless, elements of the latter are visible in our material.

In building our sample, we included the articles related to pregnancy termination published in both weeklies over the period between 2013 and 2017, when changes in social opinion regarding abortion became visible (as explained in the previous section). In order to select articles relevant for our analysis, we conducted a keyword search in all issues of the journals published during that period to identify articles with titles including the key word ‘abortion’ or the phrase ‘termination of pregnancy’. As a result, we built a sample of 62 articles focusing on abortion in both Polish and other contexts, although the latter constituted minority cases.³ Most of the articles were published in late 2015 and 2016 when the right-wing United Right party came to power and latterly around or after the Women’s Strike events in Autumn 2016 and Spring 2017. The selected articles consisted mostly of opinion pieces and columns written by the journalists working for each weekly, some of them influential in shaping conservative-rightist discourse in Poland (e.g. Tomasz Terlikowski and Rafał Ziemkiewicz).

We treated each selected article as an ‘individual discursive event’ which serves an articulation or ‘actualisation’ of the anti-abortion discourse within which it is produced (Keller 2012, 53). At the analytical level, we view legitimation as enacted by arguments that explain certain social actions, ideas, thoughts and declarations, and aim to gain support and approval for a given interpretation (Reyes 2011). In our material, therefore, we looked for arguments providing answers to questions such as why should we see abortion in this or another way; and why should we deal with it in this or another way? (Van Leeuwen 2007). We did not apply preconceived categories to code the material, but rather used the general question ‘why’ to facilitate inductive coding allowing us to identify the main frames used to create the ‘awfulisation’ of abortion and then to reflect on the specific legitimation mechanisms sustaining such constructions.

The extracts below illustrate the identified frames were translated from Polish to English by an English language native speaker residing in Poland with good understanding of Polish language and culture. We wanted to make sure that the translator was able to capture the subtle, culturally dependent meanings of language constituting anti-abortion discourse and then to reflect it in English. However, remembering that translation is also a process of knowledge production involving certain power relations (Temple and Young 2004), we carefully discussed and reflected upon his word choices in the process.

Troubling abortion: representation of abortion in the polish right-wing press

The analysed material presents abortion in an overwhelmingly negative manner. The articles usually oppose attempts to liberalise the 1993 law or argue for further limitations. In the latter case, most discuss exclusion of the fatal or life-limiting foetal anomaly condition, and occasionally they are in favour of excluding the possibility of abortion in the case of pregnancy resulting from an unlawful act. Interestingly, there is a marked lack of argument for outlawing abortion when a woman’s life is threatened. This seems to constitute a ‘horizon’ of Polish anti-abortion discourse, as exemplified in both weeklies. Each of the main frames used to build the negativity of abortion is discussed below.

Rights and equality for unborn citizens: foetus-oriented arguments

Analysis of our material shows that much of the ‘awfulisation’ of abortion rests on the articulation of the foetus as an ‘unborn/conceived child’ or ‘conceived life’. Thus involves stressing the human characteristics of the foetus, described as a ‘child’ who ‘cries silently’, ‘feels pain’, ‘suffers unbearably’ and can ‘communicate’. The following passage aptly describes the approach, revealing how medical expertise is used to strengthen the argument (Van Leeuwen 2007).

It is not true, however, that a child does not feel anything during the pregnancy and its senses only develop in the last trimester. Dr Beata Pawlus, head of neonatology at the Holy Family hospital in Warsaw, says that the sense of touch is the first to develop, in the first trimester. The hand is able to grip in the ninth week of pregnancy, and in the 14th week the baby’s whole body becomes sensitive to touch, apart from the sides and the top of the head. (Wojtasinski, DR 32/2013)⁴

References such as these construct abortion as ‘killing’ or ‘murdering’, thus stressing the inhumanity of termination. Consequently, the law allowing for legal abortion implies a ‘barbaric right to kill’ (Nykiel, WS 45/2016). The criminal character of abortion is further strengthened by detailed and dramatically worded descriptions of (usually late) pregnancy terminations, presented as ‘killing alive’ (Nykiel WS 29/2014), ‘sucking a baby out using an electric sucker and dismembering their body’ (Nykiel WS 25/2014), and ‘leaving a born child to die’ (Terlikowski, DR 11/2016).

The image of a vulnerable child suffering in its mother’s uterus or being ‘murdered’ serves as a powerful tool of persuasion which aims to discourage the public from termination. Constructing the foetus as a human is also linked with its conceptualisation as a ‘young citizen’ with the right to life, but also to equal treatment and, as such, deserving protection from the state. As a result, abortion constitutes the ‘elimination of sick citizens from society at a stage of their development which engages lower financial costs’ (Nykiel, WS 25/2016). Arguments highlighting the civil rights of an ‘unborn’ citizen are not new (Cannold 2002). Adopted from the discursive repertoire of US anti-choice groups, with the help of the Roman Catholic Church, these arguments have been present in Polish anti-abortion discourse since the 1990s (Szelewa 2016). However, recently they have gained a new dimension. Abortion is not only conceptualised as a limitation to a person’s right to life, but also as discrimination. Such arguments occur mostly in relation to terminations related to a fatal or life-limiting foetal anomaly and are strengthened by presenting them as ‘eugenic abortions’ (often linked to arguments referring to culture and community). In consequence, existing law which allows for abortion under such circumstances is labelled as ‘criminal’, and as one which permits ‘murdering children suspected of Down syndrome’ (Terlikowski, DR 25/2016). The juxtaposition of this law with one banning discrimination against people with disabilities aims to highlight the contrast, but also to articulate abortion related to a fatal or life-limiting foetal anomaly as discriminatory practice. This combination of arguments about the right to life and non-discrimination is also used to argue against abortion related to crimes such as rape, but to a much lesser degree. Therefore, ‘children’ conceived in this way cannot be deprived of the right to life, nor can they be discriminated against based on the way the conception took place (Terlikowski, DR 22/2013). Such arguments, voiced in Poland since the beginning of the 2010s, reflect an extension of the use of human rights to anti-abortion discourse, observable also in other countries (see Lowe and Page 2019b).

Finally, the conceptualisation of ‘life’ as sacred from conception (Nykiel, WS 45/2016), since ‘along with God’s breathing of life, a new soul enters the woman’s body’ (Gadowski, WS 42/2016), adds another dimension to the negativity of abortion. It not only challenges human moral order, but also a ‘sacred order’ (Berger and Luckmann 1991). The conceptualisation of life in relation to creation also reveals the links between anti-abortion discourse and that promoted by the Roman Catholic Church (Borowik and Koralewska 2018).

Foetus-based arguments must also be viewed in the light of consequences for perceptions of the ‘maternal body’. As Deborah Lupton argues, with the personification of the foetus, the maternal body ‘tends to become viewed as an ‘environment’ or even an ‘incubator’ for the nourishment and protection of the unborn’ (2013, 23). The mother’s body thereby becomes a ‘public body’ subject to monitoring and critique by others (Lupton 2013, 111) as well as protection. In consequence, women who have had an abortion may be labelled ‘killers’ or ‘murderers’ and, by implication, ‘promiscuous, sinful, selfish, dirty, irresponsible, heartless or murderous’, and therefore seen as deviating from the category of ‘woman’ (Roe 1989). In Polish anti-abortion discourse, such women are often presented as the victims of consumer norms, feminists, doctors, or people ignorant of the state’s policies, not as independent agents responsible for their own actions. The problematic and stigmatised women, on the other hand, are the ‘other’ ones who support access to abortion.

Analysis of foetus-oriented arguments also highlights the use of human rights justifications to argue against abortion and build its negative perception. Here, as with the women-centred arguments discussed below, we can see that the language of human rights, usually associated with a pro-choice agenda, is used and reframed to legitimise anti-abortion claims. Presenting abortion as killing or murder constructs it as a threat to universal human rights, i.e. the right to life or non-discrimination (Zolkos 2006).

Protecting women – women-centred arguments

A second argument in building negative constructions of abortion relates to it being a procedure that jeopardises women’s welfare. Conceptualisation of this danger takes various forms. Firstly, abortion is constructed as a challenge to the psychological and mental wellbeing of women and, in consequence, the cause of ‘post-abortion syndrome’ and life-long trauma. Unequivocally negative descriptions of abortion as always ‘traumatic’ or ‘the most difficult decision to make’, and reference to scientific authorities aims to emphasise the inevitability of its harmful consequences for women. Since suffering from the ‘syndrome’, it is argued, affects not only individual woman, but also their relatives, abortion is conceptualised as having a wider social impact, so it is no longer just a ‘women’s issue’ (Nykiel WS 41/2016, Włoczyk, DR 28/2016). This justifies interventions aiming to protect both women and their relatives, for example by limiting access to abortion.

Secondly, arguments about the damaging impact of abortion stress its harmful effect on women’s moral integrity, their ‘natural’ call for motherhood and/or their purity (Wencel, WS 41/2017). Along such lines, abortion following rape is presented as the ‘secondary rape and [an] even more dramatic rape’ of a person (Terlikowski, DR 22/2013). Access to legal abortion (‘right to abortion’), on the other hand, is just a:

(…) mechanism protecting against the unintended consequences of a pleasure, so a woman, instead of gaining dignity, becomes easily subjectified and strongly subordinated to the fierce law of demand. (Lisicki, DR 42/2016)

In response, there is a need to introduce policy limiting or banning abortion to re-establish the lost moral order. An intervention of this kind would aim to ‘raise women’s consciousness and provide them with the tools to make a responsible decisions about the life of their child’ and will therefore help the mother’s love to develop. Also, such protection of the ‘conceived child’ would serve as a ‘last resort’ (Lisicki, DR 42/2016), restraining the desires and temptations created by contemporary society and therefore helping to protect women from succumbing to them.

Beyond this woman-protective logic lies a view of abortion as inherently irrational and wrong. It also carries with it a specific conceptualisation of women, who are portrayed as victims of the oppressive, pro-abortion society and/or as irrational or temporarily not fully conscious (Bault, DR 41/2016). In the former model, women are usually described as the objects of manipulation of doctors or family members, and therefore lacking agency. The latter one suggests that they are powerless and non-rational. Both models imply and justify women as needing protection and guidance from external entities. Usually, this role is assigned to the Church, anti-choice supporters or the state, all of whom are entitled to point women in the right direction and dictate what is best for them. Positioning women as vulnerable beings who need help from society to make the right decision about their lives reflects the traditional understanding of women’s role still strongly embedded in Polish culture. By implication, opposition to the liberalisation of abortion law or activism against termination of pregnancy aims to ‘rescue women and unborn children’ from the ‘drama of abortion’. Therefore, the ‘protection of women’ or ‘rescuing women’s fate’ constitutes the main goal of society (Nykiel, WS 45/2016). In our material, arguments about protecting women proliferated around the time of the Black Protests (2016), serving as a way to fortify the antagonistic logic of distinction between the ‘normal’ and ‘the other’/‘deviant’ women, which we address below.

Women-oriented arguments, as identified in our material, are by no means specific to the Polish context. Various studies, especially in the UK and North America, identified such justifications in the anti-abortion discourse as early as the mid-1980s (Cannold 2002; Lowe and Page 2019a). Furthermore, the more research suggests that such arguments are overtaking traditional foetal-centred tactics of ‘rescuing the unborn child’ (see e.g. Cannold 2002 for Australia and the United States; Saurette and Gordon 2013 for Canada; and Pierson and Bloomer 2017 for Ireland). While foetus-centred arguments construct women seeking abortions as murderers, for example, or people ‘governed by their irrational subjectivity’ and ‘either too selfish to act for the social good or having been tricked’, and therefore needing ‘legislation to protect themselves against themselves’ (Saurette and Gordon 2013), ‘rescuing women’ justifications are much more subtle. By focusing on well-being and the need to protect women, such arguments imitate the claims of pro-choice groups. Pro-choice arguments, however, build on powerful assumptions concerning women’s agency and self-determination and have an emancipatory dimension. On the other hand, the women-related arguments of anti-choice groups draw on the assumption that women lack the agency and capacity to make autonomous decisions, and thus need support or protection. Such arguments put women back into paternalistic relations (Cannold 2002; Pierson and Bloomer 2017) in which dignity, understood as compliance with the traditional role for women, replaces their agency. They therefore undermine women’s capacity to make autonomous decisions.

The pattern we observe in the Polish anti-abortion discourse therefore only partially follows the one observed in other countries. While women-oriented arguments are visibly present, they have not replaced foetal-focused tactics, but both these strategies co-exist and reinforce each other.

Preserving culture and nation – community-oriented arguments

Yet another strategy for building the negativity of abortion rests on its presentation as a threat to the fundamental tenets of Polish culture and therefore a danger to the survival of the nation. Conceptualisation of this threat takes three distinctive, yet interconnected forms. Firstly, presented as threatening are the activities of groups demanding easier access to abortion or, more specifically, the liberalisation of existing abortion law. Such groups are labelled as either ‘pro-abortionists’ or ‘feminists’, and their activities and/or demands are presented as ‘undermining this [Polish] culture and tradition’ or as failing to respect national tradition (Wencel, WS 41/2017). Not only are the supporters of easier access to legal abortion seen as threatening the culture and nation, but women who publicly speak about their abortion experience as normal, or as a relief, are also accused of ‘deconstructing a culture which indicates a specific value hierarchy’ (Baranowska, Niewińska DR 7/2014). Described as ‘contemporary barbarians’, they do not understand this culture and, as a result, seek to destroy its values. ‘Boasting’ of their experience of abortion, instead of feeling deeply ashamed, only points to their barbarity (Włoczyk, DR 7/2014).

Behind constructions of abortion as a threat to the Polish community lies a specific conceptualisation of women. Those who support access to abortion are usually labelled ‘feminists’ and presented as followers of bad, Western example. They are described as detached from ‘sensitivity, fragility, grace, chastity, creative intelligence, patience and the ability to sacrifice’ thereby depriving themselves of dignity (Wencel, WS 41/2017). Such women, who fail to comply with the traditional patterns of femininity, are portrayed as morally wrong – vulgar, stupid, insensible, reckless – and as promiscuous agents of negative social change. They are accused of deconstructing or challenging the culture creating a social order and desired pattern of gender relations based on ‘natural’ values, usually entwined with Catholic ones (Nykiel, WS 15/2016).

So, what bothers contemporary feminists most? In short: culture. All norms preventing women and men from succumbing too easily to their biological instincts and ensuring civilised, responsible relations between them. Because it is culture that counteracts the objectification of both sexes. (Kołodziejski, WS 10/2017)

As a result, the demands for access to abortion voiced by ‘feminists’ stem from their desire to destroy the (Polish) social order. They are also motivated by their hatred of ‘ordinary women’ who, ‘after finishing their work head back to pick up their child from school and … find sense in this’, instead of getting excited about ‘scenes of oral sex with a figure of the Pope’ (Kołodziejski, WS 10/2017). Establishing a division between ‘feminists’ and ‘ordinary’ women aims to create an antagonism and frame the ‘deviant’ woman as the ‘other’ who ‘rejects femininity and motherhood’, hates the family (Ziemkiewicz, DR 15/2015), supports abortion, and therefore constitutes a threat and a danger to the nation and its culture. ‘Feminists’ pose a threat to ‘normal’ women, because they aim to ‘manipulate’ and encourage women to take part in pro-choice initiatives such as the ‘Black Protests’. In contrast, ‘ordinary’ women, usually described as mothers and representing a cultural ideal of femininity, guarantee the community reproduction in both a biological and cultural sense, and thus allow it to be sustained (Wencel, WS 41/2017, see also Grzybowska, WS 41/2016). Significantly, the feminist ‘other’ is linked to leftist groups or international organisations, and therefore constructed as the ‘agents’ of radical or foreign influences (Nykiel, WS 25/2014). Accordingly, their activism and actions towards liberalising the abortion law may be understood as aiming to achieve a drastic and non-reversable change of a traditional family model and a vanishing of a traditional role of woman (Szwed and Zielińska 2017).

The strategy of building an antagonism between the ‘normal’ and ‘the other’/‘deviant’ woman constitutes a classic form of stigmatisation (Goffman 1963). Implying that there is such a thing as ‘normal’ allows the creation of something that is not normal, deviant or discredited, and therefore not belonging. This othering tactic has been recognised by researchers exploring right-wing discourse as a tool to discipline women (Snochowska-Gonzalez and Ramme 2019). Construction of the antagonism by making feminist women ‘the other’ also reinforces the argument discussed previously. Women who are ‘normal’ are manipulated by deviant ‘other’ women who have already lost their femininity (Grzybowska, WS 41/2016). Again, therefore, we can see how anti-abortion discourse imitates pro-choice arguments. Right-wing journalists adopted the term ‘objectification of women’ from feminist discourse to stress the importance of traditional values. Women are objectified by losing their ‘natural’ characteristics, and anti-abortion activists are presented as the defenders of women’s rights. The construction of feminists as the ‘other’ is also interesting in the context of studies from the USA (Roe 1989). In contrast to this research, however, in Polish anti-abortion discourse the stigmatised object is not women who have aborted, but modern, emancipated women who follow the ideal of liberal (and Western) society. The positioning of feminists as adversaries is further strengthened by linking them to other local ‘others’, such as leftists and liberals.

Secondly, abortion is conceptualised as an indicator of the decadence and decay of Western culture or the influence of international organisations (e.g. the United Nations), and as such is presented as undermining Polish culture and its fundamental values. Societies in which abortion is legal and/or easily accessible thus exemplify and symbolise a so-called ‘civilisation of death’. Poland, in contrast, presents a ‘civilisation of life’. This dichotomy aims not only to underline the difference between the Polish and Western European culture, but also to highlight the moral superiority of the former based on ‘protection of life’ guaranteed by the law in limiting access to abortion. Attitudes towards pregnancy termination thereby constitute the main line of demarcation between Poland and Western liberal Europe. As noted in other research, attitudes towards gender and sexual minorities and gender more generally play a similar role in right-wing populist discourse (Korolczuk and Graff 2018).

Opposition between these ‘civilisations’ also carries an additional meaning. It was the Polish pope, John Paul II, who first introduced this dichotomy and described Europe losing its Christian roots and identity as a ‘civilisation of death’ (Leszczyńska 2017, 72). The moral superiority of Polish culture in representing a ‘civilisation of life’ carries clear religious overtones. This also illustrates the nuance of the Roman Catholic Church’s contribution to abortion debate in Poland. The Church has had an impact through its institutional or discursive interventions in debate (Mishtal 2015), but also in a more subtle ways, such as by constructing Catholicism as a marker of national belonging.

The analysed material presents the actions of pro-choice activists aiming to liberalise abortion law in Poland as a replication of ‘the Western pattern’, leading to a decomposition of traditional values and habits and submission to more ‘repressive cultures’ (Zaremba, WS 15/2016; Kolodziejski, WS 10/2017). Reference to stories of live streaming of abortion procedures on YouTube or attempts to introduce late abortion serve as exemplifications of this moral decay. The prospect of there being a destruction of Christian values and norms (e.g. by turning churches into shops or not celebrating Christmas) also acts as a similar indicator, and the description of Western medical practices as macabre or killing, and abortion as part of a money-making business, further strengthens this dichotomy, as illustrated in the following passage.

At that time, Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist from Philadelphia convicted of horrific crimes, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was proven to have killed three infants born during late abortion. Gosnell killed them by cutting their spinal cord with scissors. In addition, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter of one of his patients. It turned out that he was terminating pregnancies in scandalous sanitary conditions. (Włoczyk, DR 28/2016)

At the base of such arguments lies a hierarchical order placing the Polish (Catholic) culture as morally superior to the values of Western culture, which, in contrast, is seen as money-oriented, promiscuous and lacking in moral fibre (Nykiel, WS 25/2014).

The construction of abortion as threatening to Polish culture and identity builds on the frequent use of emotional descriptions, false comparisons, and presentation of individual, dramatic stories. Such language use aims to build an atmosphere of the fear in which the liberalisation of abortion law is seen as leading to the unavoidable destruction of Polish culture. Researchers have pointed to the strength of such legitimising strategies and their ability to create and sustain social support (see, for example, Reyes 2011).

Finally, constructing abortion as a threat to survival of the nation links it to Polish experiences of totalitarianism and the ‘eugenic’ practices of Nazism, defining abortion as a procedure akin to wartime extermination practices. This occurs frequently in the context of discussion of abortion in relation to the incurable or damaged condition of a foetus. The use of words such as ‘macabre’, ‘selection’ or ‘extermination’ aims to link abortion and its supporters (e.g. pro-choice groups, societies with liberal abortion laws) to Nazism and the Holocaust: ‘It’s ugly, photographs from concentration camps are ugly too’ (Niewińska, DR 30/2017).

The extermination of children with Down syndrome (if it is they who are really meant by the phrase ‘serious and irreversible damage to the foetus’) in fact appears to be classical eugenic selection. (Zaremba, WS 15/2016)

Furthermore, linking abortion to Nazi totalitarianism suggests that abortion constitutes a step backward for humanity. By implication, those in favour of abortion are implicitly presented as morally inferior to the rest of humanity due to the ‘eugenic’ practices they support. Such discursive mechanisms referencing the collective memory of trauma in Polish history aim to magnify the threat abortion poses to contemporary Polish culture and society. By implication, they also reinforce antagonism towards the ‘other’, e.g. ‘pro-abortionists’ or countries with more liberal abortion laws.

Conclusions

This analysis of reporting in the Polish right-wing press has allowed us to distinguish three interrelated frames organising the anti-abortion discourse. Placing our findings in the wider context of research on abortion in both the international and the Polish contexts demonstrates some similarities as well as distinctive features of Polish anti-abortion discourse. Foetus- and women-oriented arguments, recognised in our material, resemble those elsewhere documented in research, especially from countries in the Anglosphere with liberal abortion provision. However, a closer look reveals the differences signalled in our analysis. Firstly, as mentioned above, foetus-oriented arguments tend to appear alongside women-oriented ones, whereas in these other countries the former is being replaced with the latter.

Secondly, we noticed that anti-abortion discourse in Poland conceptualises abortion stigma by attributing it to women demanding access to abortion (i.e. feminists), whereas women who have had an abortion are constructed as victims. This is interesting in the light of the findings of Kumar, Hessini, and Mitchell (2009), who claimed, albeit stressing the impact of different cultural contexts, that abortion stigma is primarily attributed to women having an abortion. We argue that the Polish anti-abortion discourse is characteristic in this way because it connects to discourses articulating Polish national identity in ethnic terms. The community-oriented arguments identified in our material, presenting abortion as a threat to community and culture, and ultimately to the Polish nation, validate such links. Since discourses articulating the nation in ethnic terms attribute responsibility for the community’s biological and cultural reproduction to women (Yuval-Davis 1997), it becomes problematic to construct women as threats to the community. This role is therefore assigned to other women, i.e. feminists, and their imputed association with other threats such as leftists and the West.

Close links between anti-abortion discourse and nationalist discourses may also explain the extensive use of community-oriented arguments in Polish anti-abortion discourse and their absence in the context of Anglophone countries, especially as articulations of nation also differ. In Poland, national identity is predominantly articulated in ethnic terms, stressing the importance of women’s reproductive functions. In the Anglosphere, national identity tends to be constructed in civic terms, thus attributing less importance to ‘blood’ as constituting the basis for community. Women’s reproductive role is therefore less important. However, further research is required to determine whether there are similarities to Poland in other contexts where anti-abortion and national discourses intersect (i.e. in terms of community-oriented arguments and/or different construction of stigma).

At the same time, our analysis also suggests an ambiguous construction of the ‘West’ in the Polish anti-abortion discourse. On the one hand, the West is portrayed as threatening the consistency of Polish tradition and culture through its liberalism and the individualism expressed in liberal abortion laws, but also in recognition of LGBT or women’s rights. On the other hand, anti-abortion discourse adopts the Western, individualistic language of human rights (Pierson and Bloomer 2017), with the meanings of the latter being transformed by stretching the right to life to the moment of conception and applying the non-discrimination principle to the foetus-citizen. This blend of community-related and individualistic arguments offers a wider frame. It helps to adjust anti-abortion discourse to the wider individualism observable in Poland and present it more as an expression of modern trends. These changes may help explain the persistence and social persuasiveness of the anti-abortion discourse in Poland. The lack of religious legitimation in our material possibly plays a similar adjustment role. Despite the Roman Catholic Church’s position in abortion debate, in our material any religious reference remains latent and used in the context of articulating Polish culture/identity. In keeping with the ongoing secularisation trends visible in contemporary Poland, these less direct references to religion may help address a larger audience.

Acknowledgements

We thank Irena Borowik and Marcin Zwierżdżyński for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, reviewers for their suggestions and remarks, and Ben Koschalka for translation and copy editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was developed as part of the project “Public Discourse in Poland and Religion. Models of Legitimation in the Debates on Biopolitics between 2004 and 2014”, funded by the Polish National Science Centre (UMO-2014/13/B/HS6/03311). Open access to the article was financed from Jagiellonian University funds under the Excellence Initiative – Research University programme (Priority Research Area Heritage).

Notes

1 The ruling is also contested due to reservations regarding its legitimacy stemming from political manipulation in the selection of judges to the Constitutional Court.

2 In 2013, and then since July 2017 this weekly has been published as Sieci.

3 We excluded from the sample articles that had the key words in the title but which occurred only once in the body of the text in a context that did not permit identification of the way in which anti-abortion arguments were legitimised.

4 All empirical sources are described by the author’s name, a code for the weekly (WS for W Sieci and DR for Do Rzeczy), issue number and year of publication.