The Doctor-Pregnant Patient Relationship in Poland's Anti-Abortion Regime from the Power-Knowledge Perspective: Selected Case Studies

The reproductive potential of society has been at the center of the state's interest since the beginning of the modern age. Although the state, through various technologies of power such as governance, monitoring, and knowledge, has been exercising control over the reproductive capabilities of the mainly female body, rarely was it an object of in-depth reflection in biopolitical theory (Deutscher, 2008; 2012). Nonetheless, biopolitics provides theoretical and analytical tools to identify and explain mechanisms that the modern state and its functionaries employ to control a pregnant body. Among them is the Foucaultian concept of power-knowledge (Foucault, 1976). The proposed paper discusses the relationship between doctors and their pregnant patients in the context of anti-abortion politics in post-communist Poland. After the Constitutional Tribunal decision that the provision of the abortion act allowing termination of pregnancy due to a high probability of a severe and irreversible fetal impairment or an incurable life-threatening disease is unconstitutional in the Fall of 2020, Polish abortion law has become the most restrictive one in Europe. However, even before the sentence, restrictive but vague abortion regulations, criminal charges for the so-called assisting in abortion, the anti-abortion political climate, and the institution of the conscience clause led to the situation in which the doctor-patient relationship between obstetricians and gynaecologists and pregnant patients was highly asymmetrical in terms of power to the detriment of the patients. The paper aims to showcase that doctors who hold a dominant position and have significant discretionary power due to their highly specialized knowledge may act against the best interest of their patients in highly politicized fields of medicine. It is especially evident when a clash of values (professionalism, patients' interest, religious views) is accompanied by vague law regulations and political demands. Meaningful case studies are presented to illustrate the analyzed phenomenon. They are examples of abuse of power, failure to fulfill professional duties, and lack of professionalism shown by Polish gynaecologists and obstetricians in cases where acting in the best interest of pregnant patients may have led to legal abortion termination.