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.

摘要

波兰拥有欧洲最严格的堕胎法之一，反堕胎话语塑造了对该问题的辩论和社会态度。本文旨在重构这种话语的方式，如波兰右翼媒体所例证的那样，构建关于堕胎的负面观点，并确定它用来维持其解释的合法化机制。根据我们对两家右翼周刊文章内容分析的结果，我们区分了三个相互关联的框架，这些框架组织了波兰的反堕胎话语，以“保护胎儿”、“保护妇女”和“保护文化和国家'。虽然前两个发生在英语国家的自由主义背景下，一个取代另一个，但在波兰的反堕胎话语中它们并存。将堕胎视为对文化和国家的威胁是波兰特有的。我们认为，通过将与社区相关的和个人主义的论点融合在一起，波兰的反堕胎话语适应了该国可观察到的更广泛的社会变化，从而维持了其定义辩论的权力。