Beyond Backsliding: Tracing the Roots of Poland's Troubles with Democracy in Transition-Era Reproductive Policies

In the past 10 years Poland went from a third wave democratization success story to one of the fastest declining democracies in the world. Gender equality has been an important component of democratic backsliding with continuous attacks on women’s rights and the LGBTQ+ community. While the PiS led government is clearly responsible for dismantling democratic institutions, restricting reproductive rights, and creating a welcoming environment for conservative movements it didn’t emerge from a vacuum. In this paper I argue that its entry to power and introduced policies were embedded in and enabled by a flawed democratic process and a limited understanding of the political demos, both of which arose from the democratic transition from communism. In order to understand contemporary Polish politics, I zoom in specifically on abortion policy, as a site, where the state reclaims its authority and control over citizenship and defines its boundaries. In Poland, as part of democratic transition, access to abortion was severely limited and consolidated in a conservative ‘compromise’ between political elites and the Catholic Church cementing a legacy of underrepresentation and exclusion. In this paper I explore the process itself, its outcomes, and implications for debates about backsliding and crisis of democracy today. I use the ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (Bacchi 2012) approach to discourse analysis. My analysis is based on policy texts and debates, as well as secondary data and archival documents from the time prior to, during, and following democratic transition in Poland.