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The study aims to show how the media took over the role of law enforcement by categorising who and how broke the law during women's protests. These protests took place during the second wave of the pandemic. It all started with the judgment of the Constitutional Court, which decided to restrict abortion law in Poland. The method used in the study is a qualitative analysis of sources published on Tvp.info. The analysis made it possible to answer the question of how public television assessed and categorised the activity of protesters and why it is possible to talk about taking over the functions of the security services. As a result, the way the protests were reported became a form of mediatised control of protest. The research hypothesis is that National Television, as the ruling party's propaganda tool, was enabled in order to take over the police function of ensuring public order and security in crisis situations in relation to the protests. Based on the analysis, the paper introduces recommendations to the ruling party and subordinated national television in order to restore neutrality and realise the original functions of national television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses how the current sub-classification of pregnancies in Indian abortion laws, which is a selective privilege, conflicts with the autonomy of individuals over their own bodies. The MTP Act of 1971 was enacted at a time when most countries lacked comparable legislation. As a result of the preference for male foetuses over female foetuses in India, female foeticide and pre-natal determination of sex were criminal offences at the time, making it a significant breakthrough. Regarding abortion, the paper examines the extent and rationale for State intervention as parens patriae to protect the health and wellbeing of both the mother and the embryo at the national and international level. The global situation appears to be dire. According to a UN Report, 98% of countries permit abortion to save a woman's life. This is a very encouraging statistic. In actuality, a woman's existence in the twenty-first century is limited to her limbs and body. This is supported by the fact that only 34% of countries permit abortion solely on the request of the woman in cases of unintended pregnancy. In the context of eugenic model versus woman's autonomy, the recent issue of Poland, where a predominantly archaic Catholic mindset was conceptualised in actuality and where the most recent court ruling held that abortions for foetal abnormalities violate its Constitution, has been discussed. The paper examines European jurisprudence on abortion laws and the effect of COVID-19 on women's access to healthcare in India's rural and urban areas. The suggestions have been summed up in the current Indian laws and the need for all nations to move towards upholding womanhood and the autonomy of her privacy, rights, and decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches the Women's Strike (2020-2021) from the participants' perspective. First, the author outlines the political and cultural context, emphasizing the contemporary debate about abortion in Poland. Then, the analysis of the protests, conducted in line with Butler, Czarnacka, Graff, Korolczuk, and Majewska, is combined with the author's research outcomes based on the multi-sited participant observation and semi-structured qualitative interviews with participants of the protests. The main argument is that reevaluating the outcomes of a social movement that did not achieve its goal necessitates expanding the meaning of social change beyond the completion of said goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The radicalization of views and the conflict concerning the possibility of, and the rationale for, the institutionalization of termination of pregnancy in Poland usually gain prominence before elections, when political parties, when presenting their programs, bring controversial issues that evoke extreme emotions to the debate. The appearance of the topic of abortion in the discourse is always accompanied by increased attention of the media, which makes the issue even more attractive for politicians. An analysis is presented of the bills amending the Act of 7 January 1993 on family planning, protection of the human fetus, and the conditions of permissibility of abortion, also known as the "Family Planning Act" or the "Anti-Abortion Act," as well as of parliamentary debates1 focused on the issue of the right to abortion in Poland, that is primarily those debates where the issue of expanding or narrowing the enumerative catalog of prerequisites for permissibility of abortion was discussed. The temporal scope of the subject matter includes the legislative processes that took place before the eighth term of the Sejm. The paper is an attempt to interpret the regularities observed during the research and does not aspire to be an exhaustive description of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Athenaeum: Polskie Studia Politologiczne is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Security Studies Nicolaus Copernicus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The tendency towards the radicalization of abortion law is observed in numerous countries, including Poland. The aim of the present paper was to determine the main factors influencing the number of abortions performed worldwide and to indicate the main directions which should be followed to improve the patients' well-being. The authors conducted their search in the PubMed of the National Library of Medicine and Google Scholar. Databases were extensively searched for all original and review articles/book chapters in English until June 2021. The main problems associated with the contemporary policy of birth regulation include no possibility of undergoing a termination because of the conscience clause invoked by the medical personnel, restrictive abortion law and lack of sexual education. Minimal changes that should be considered are: improved sex education and the availability of contraception, free access to abortion-inducing drugs with adequate information provided by qualified medical personnel in countries with a conscience clause invoked by the personnel, and the development of an international network which would facilitate undergoing a pregnancy termination abroad to provide women with access to legal abortion assisted by professional medical personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of iconic popular culture symbols is an increasingly common strategy applied by social protest organizers. The Guy Fawkes mask from the 'V for Vendetta' comic book became a symbol of the Anonymous group, and later of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Salvador Dalí mask, popularized in the 'La casa de papel' Netflix series, was used in street protests in Spain and Italy. Motifs taken from the HBO adaptation of 'The Handmaid's Tale' novel gained high visibility in thousands of women's protests against the introduction of the de facto abortion ban in Poland. Basing on images documenting the Polish protests published in social media, we demonstrate how popular culture symbols are transformed into cultural codes which bridge on-street and online protest actions. This connection has become crucial in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using qualitative visual content analysis, we prepared a classification of the symbols employed. Our contribution to the theory of performative protests is to reveal the importance of analogies with the political series that Polish protesters have used by means of the general connotation: Poland is Gilead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the long history of Polish abortion activism from the late 1950s to the present day. Using feminist genealogy, we examine how (de)criminalization, (de)medicalization, and (de)stigmatization are addressed in the strategic narratives of three interconnected organizations: the Polish Planned Parenthood Association (PPPA), established in 1957; the Federation for Women and Family Planning (FWFP), established in 1991; and the Abortion Dream Team (ADT), established in 2016. The PPPA, active during the state-socialist period and supported by the state, applauded the legalization and medicalization of abortion while actively discouraging women from terminating pregnancies. The FWFP, which introduced the notion of abortion as a right during the democratic transition and continues to fight for access to legal abortion under current restrictions, leaves the medicalization of abortion largely unchallenged. The ADT encourages women to become their own abortion providers, to share their experiences, and to support other women. Focusing on the underlying spheres of social norms, practices, and networks, they actively work to remove the connotations of danger, sin, irresponsibility, and crime from abortion, fostering a concept of termination as the positive solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. Our analysis of the intersecting space between (de)criminalization, (de)medicalization, and (de)stigmatization challenges the idea of progress and modernity in abortion activism and brings to the fore the contextual implications of positioning, goals, and rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To Professor Martin Shapiro, With friendship, gratitude, and admiration The ruling of 22 October 2020 concerning termination of pregnancy in Case K 1/20, handed down by the body once known as the Polish Constitutional Court, has devastated the legal and social landscape in Poland. The decision ruled as unconstitutional the provision that allowed medically assisted termination in cases where prenatal screening or other medical considerations indicated a high probability of a severe and irreversible abnormality or an incurable disease of the fetus. This analysis argues that the ruling is the most serious attempt to discredit and humiliate the Polish Constitution of 1997, and stands as the ultimate proof of weaponising judicial review. The argument will be made that if one wishes to understand the extent of the capture of independent institutions by the ruling majority, the ruling under consideration must be read and considered in the light of a more general context. Only by going beyond and contextualising it, can one grasp the extent to which the constitutional profile of a state has been altered by methods of unconstitutional capture. The analysis argues that once we contextualise the ruling and view it in a more systemic light, there are important systemic signposts that will help to explain how we arrived here and, more importantly, what is next. These signposts, in turn, contain a cautionary tale of the institutional fragility that is relevant for liberal democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020 the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland held that the legislation that permitted abortion in cases of 'fatal foetal anomaly' was an unconstitutional interference with the right to life of the foetus. This article examines the recent decision, which prohibits abortion on the grounds of foetal anomaly, arguing that this decision is part of a broader scheme of Polish and transnational anti-abortion lawfare. This lawfare seeks both to (re)shape Polish law in an anti-abortion mould, and to take advantage of 'gaps' in European and international human rights law standards on abortion in order to claim rights compliance for law and policy that, in reality, restricts access to abortion in a manner that is incompatible with international human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative article explores anti‐abortion activism in Poland and Ireland from the period of the 1970s to the early 1990s. Drawing on a range of archival and printed sources, it sheds light on the Polish and Irish anti‐abortion movements as a part of transnational anti‐abortion efforts and underscores the importance of studying such phenomena transnationally, in a comparative perspective. We argue that despite political, social, and legislative differences that characterised both countries during this period, several pertinent parallels existed between Polish and Irish anti‐abortion activism. As we show, both movements relied on transnational anti‐abortion networks and discourses, employed medical knowledge to legitimise their efforts, and represented women undergoing abortion as victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Political Science Review / Przegląd Politologiczny is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Gender & Language is the property of Equinox Publishing Group and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On 22 October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland ruled that an abortion due to foetal impairment was unconstitutional. This article discusses the context of this controversial ruling as well as its main tenets, focusing on the interpretation of the human rights proffered by the Tribunal and on the rule of law concerns raised by the Tribunal's decision. Against the backdrop of a brief history of the legal regulation of abortion in Poland since 1945, the article offers a critical assessment of the human rights framework used in the Polish abortion debate. Based on a close reading of the Tribunal's ruling and the dissenting opinions, the article points out the particularities in the Tribunal's engagement with international law and human rights jurisprudence. The article argues that the Tribunal's decision is yet another symptom of the crisis in which the rule of law in Poland has found itself since 2015. It bears evidence to the closing of the jurisprudential horizon caused by the political change which has been taking place in Poland since 2015, consisting of the reduction of the role of international human rights debates as a reference in Polish constitutional jurisprudence. The ruling is therefore a portent of Poland's future compliance with its international commitments in human rights matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]