Going Global?: Polish 'Right to Life' and the International Anti-Abortion Movement at the Turn of the 1990s

• In Event: Reproductive Mobilizations and Interventions in State Socialist and Early Democratic Poland, 1950s-1990s

Abstract

This paper studies the transnational engagements of the Polish “pro-life” movement in late communist and early democratic Poland, focusing on the turn of the 1990s when abortion was heatedly debated by the public and when the new abortion legislation was considered by the Polish parliament. Scrutinizing mutual exchanges between Polish anti-abortion activists and international, mainly US-based associations and groups as the Human Life International or Operation Rescue, I pose questions regarding these exchanges’ character, impact, and the reasons for their intensification during the period under consideration. I rely on Polish and American “pro-life” periodicals as well as on archival sources, tackling more broader issues of transnational cooperation and the role, position, and image of Poland in the global anti-abortion movement.

Author

• Sylwia Kuzma-Markowska, U of Warsaw (Poland)