In October 2020, a ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal effectively ending legal abortion incited mass protests across the country. Despite the demonstrations being directed at both the government and the Catholic Church, many devout Catholics joined the protests against the Church's opposition to family planning being enacted through state-imposed prohibition. Drawing on ongoing archival and ethnographic research, in this paper we address a number of issues relating to Catholicism and abortion: how it is possible that so many Catholics decided to take part in pro-choice marches openly opposing official Catholic teaching on birth control? What were their motivations?
W niniejszym artykule zajmuję się analizą argumentacji zawartej we wniosku grupy posłów do Trybunału Konstytucyjnego o stwierdzenie niezgodności z Konstytucją przepisów dopuszczających aborcję w przypadku ciężkiego i nieodwracalnego upośledzenia płodu. Przedmiotem rozważań nie są jednak dywagacje natury prawnej, ale kwestia legitymacji moralnej działania podjętego przez posłów. Szukam więc odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy ich inicjatywa broni się w świetle zasad moralności publicznej. Podstawę tej oceny stanowi najważniejsza współczesna koncepcja legitymacji działań politycznych, tj. teoria rozumu publicznego Johna Rawlsa. W pierwszej kolejności przybliżono więc, na czym polega teoria rozumu publicznego Rawlsa (skupiając się przede wszystkim na wskazaniu warunków, które na gruncie tej koncepcji decydują o legitymacji działań politycznych). Następnie omówiono pokrótce najważniejsze argumenty, jakie wysuwa grupa posłów na rzecz wysuwanego żądania. W głównej części tekstu dokonano oceny tego działania w świetle wyłożonych wcześniej warunków legitymacji. ; In the paper, I analyse the argumentation which supports the motion put forward by a group of Polish MPs challenging the constitutionality of the provision which allows abortion in the event of grave and irreversible fetal defects or an incurable illness that threatens the foetus life. My considerations do not concern the legality of this action. Instead, I am interested in the issue of moral legitimacy of the MPs' action. I search for the answer whether their initiative is defensible in terms of public morality. The evaluation is conducted according to the principles of the most important contemporary conception of political legitimacy, which is John Rawls's theory of public reason. Therefore, firstly, I give an account of the Rawlsian theory of public reason. I focus mainlyon the conditions that settle the criteria of the legitimacy of political actions. Then I summarise the arguments which support the demand of the MPs concerned. Finally, in the main part of the paper, I evaluate their action in the light of the theory of public reason.
This paper is devoted to the analysis of the socio-political changes that occurred in Poland in 2016 as a result of the outbreak of the so-called black protests. The protests, which later became known as the All-Poland Women's Strike, were activated several times in the following years, as a result of subsequent events related to the provisions regulating the right to abortion in Poland. The empirical findings contained in this text result from the analysis of statistical data (CBOS reports), dedicated to the research of political party electorates, which was carried out in 2015, 2017 and 2021. Moreover, the article presents own research conducted in the period from April to July 2021 using the method of analysis of the content published on social media by entities established after 2016. The results of the research confirm that the outbreak and the subsequent periodic activation of protests, supported by the activities of entities promoting the right to abortion, initiated two significant changes in Poland. The first is the clear polarization of political party electorates regarding the right to abortion, and the second is the intensification of the discourse on the very right to abortion, introducing new arguments regarding termination of pregnancy to the agenda (as well as other topics related to the situation of women and broadly understood sex education). Both of the indicated outcomes resulted in the phenomenon of abortion being visible in the public discourse, especially in social media. The following analysis is part of the trend of social research devoted to the importance of socio-political protests in democratic countries and the role of social media as an immanent tool used in the activity of new social movements.
