Anti-abortion Activism in Poland and the Republic of Ireland

c.1970s–1990s*

by 

Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, American Studies Center, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.

Laura Kelly, School of Humanities, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.

We are grateful for the support of our funding bodies; Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska's research is a result of the research project “Catholicising Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism: Activist Practices and Intimate Negotiations in Poland, 1930 — Present” (principal investigator Agnieszka Kościańska), funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (Opus 17 scheme, grant number 2019/33/B/HS3/01068) and Laura Kelly's research was funded by a Carnegie Trust for The Universities of Scotland Research Incentive Grant. We would also like to thank the “Catholicizing Reproduction, Reproducing Catholicism” research team (Jędrzej Burszta, Agata Chełstowska, Agata Ignaciuk, Natalia Jarska, Agnieszka Kosiorowska, Agnieszka Kościańska, and Natalia Pomian) for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. Finally, we are grateful to members of the KU Leuven Medicine and Catholicism since the Late 19th Century network. In particular we would like to thank the special issue editors, as well as Tinne Claes, Yuliya Hilevych, and Agata Ignaciuk for their valuable comments on earlier drafts and the three referees for their useful feedback.

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.